Failure to Serve the Publication-Ban Decision in Printed Publications Constitutes a Violation

Details of the Regulation

A large number of applicants, including journalists, authors, political parties and publishing houses, filed individual applications with the Constitutional Court after the Criminal Courts of Peace issued decisions prohibiting the collection, printing, reproduction, distribution and sale of books, magazines, brochures and newspapers that they had authored or published. The applicants argued that the freedoms of expression and the press had been violated because the publication-ban decisions had not been served on them, the statutory time limits for filing a lawsuit or conducting an investigation had not been complied with, and these precautionary measures had been transformed into permanent publication bans.

In its examination, the Grand Chamber of the Constitutional Court emphasized that publication-ban measures within the scope of Press Law No. 5187 and Article 28 of the constitution are temporary protective measures. The Court concluded that the continuation of a publication-ban measure without initiating an investigation or prosecution, or after the statutory periods had been exceeded, the failure to serve the decisions on the persons concerned and thus deny them an effective opportunity to object, and the failure to render a decision on the merits within a reasonable period deprived the interference of its basis in legality.

The Constitutional Court decided, by majority vote and with the dissent of Ömer ÇINAR, that the freedoms of expression and the press guaranteed under Articles 26 and 28 of the constitution had been violated. It was decided that a copy of the decision be sent to the relevant lower courts for retrial in order to eliminate the consequences of the violation, and that non-pecuniary damages be awarded to the applicants.