The European Union-Council of Europe Joint Project on “Supporting the Effective Implementation of Turkish Constitutional Court (TCC) Judgments in the Field of Fundamental Rights” organised a Roundtable Meeting on 12-13 May 2022 in Ankara. This meeting brought the TCC rapporteurs together with two lawyers working at the Filtering Section of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a discussion under the main objective of the Project on ensuring case-law consistency.
The meeting commenced with the presentations on the working methods of the Filtering Section of the ECtHR. Rapporteurs of the TCC then presented on the methods developed to cope with its heavy workload of the court. Organised in a peer-to-peer format, the first day of the roundtable meeting served for in-depth discussions on the key human rights themes concerning individual applications lodged from penitentiary institutions (freedom of expression of prisoners (e.g. chanting of slogans, hunger strikes); right to privacy in prison (surveillance of correspondences and visits, gifts); right to education (access to books, sitting exams); right to access to publications (prohibitions and restrictions on certain books and periodical and non-periodical publications) right to an effective remedy (legal review of measures), fair trial rights and disciplinary measures), including topical gender equality issues.
The second day of the event focused on admissibility questions stemming from the quality and substantiation of complaints such as manifestly ill-founded, confusing, far-fetched and unsubstantiated complaints. Several of TCC’s inadmissibility decisions were presented to the group, upon which the ECtHR lawyers shared their views. There were additional deliberations on victim status and substantiation in applications with freedom of expression related claims.
At the end of this highly interactive event, the participants expressed their gratitude for such a beneficial meeting, suggesting the organisation of similar rights-themed meetings in the future. The ECtHR lawyers further stated that they had got an insight as to the decision-making process before the TCC thanks to the rapporteurs’ informative briefings.
The Joint Project on “Supporting the Effective Implementation of Turkish Constitutional Court Judgments in the Field of Fundamental Rights” is co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe. The Turkish Constitutional Court is the end beneficiary of the Project.
