The Constitutional Court of Turkey ruled on the application made by 11 prisoners in different prisons regarding the confiscation of letters sent by prisoners in prisons by disciplinary committees. 

Prisoners Kamil Özdemir, Aydın Çiçin, Hasan Didar, Hasan Umut Özer, İsa Kaya, Mehmet Karaman, Muhammed Salih Gürakar, Mümin Evran, Nurettin Bülbül, Selman Esmer and Serkan Cengiz appealed to the Execution Judgeships in their cities after their letters were seized by disciplinary boards.

 

When the Execution Judges rejected the appeals the prisoners took the matter to the High Criminal Court. The Court rejected the appeals and upheld the decisions without providing a concrete justification for the content of the letters. In response, 11 prisoners filed an individual application to the Constitutional Court, claiming that they were not provided with sufficient justification and that their freedom of communication was violated. 

 

LETTER TO JOURNALIST REACHED AFTER 4 YEARS

 

Some of the letters blocked by the Disciplinary Board as "objectionable" were addressed to family and friends, while others were addressed to politicians, journalists or public figures. The letters contained observations on daily life and statements about the practices in prisons. A letter that Hasan Umut Özer, a prisoner in Sincan High Security Prison No 1, wanted to send to journalist and writer Hüseyin Aykol during his stay in Karabük T-Type Prison in 2018 was delivered to Aykol after an interval of 4 years.

The Constitutional Court merged the applications filed at different times due to the legal connection in terms of subject matter.

 

CONSTITUTIONAL COURT: OBJECTIONABLE PARTS MAY BE UNDERLINED

 

Evaluation the application within the scope of the freedom of communication guaranteed under Article 22 of the Constitution, the court stated that the inspection and detention of prisoners’ letters constituted and interference with the freedom of communication. On the other hand, the Constitutional Court found that the decisions of the disciplinary board and the judicial authorities did not provide concrete and coherent justifications for the content of the letters, did not clearly state which expressions were objectionable and why, and did not evaluate the possibility of sending the letters by crossing out the objectionable parts. 

 

'NOT NECESSARY IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY'

 

On the other hand, the Constitutional Court underlined that if the correspondence is deemed partially objectionable, it should also be evaluated whether the objectionable parts should be crossed out and the correspondence should be delivered to the addressee and emphasised that “the intervention is not necessary in a democratic society”. 

 

For all these reasons, the Court ruled that the freedom of communication of 11 prisoners was violated.