Deniz Yucel: Turkey told to pay damages to detained journalist

Country listed as having the highest number of human rights infringements in the 47-member Council of Europe

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Turkey breached the rights of German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yucel. Photo: Die Welt/AFP

A European human rights court has ordered Turkey to pay €12,300 ($14,000) in damages to a German-Turkish journalist who was detained for a year because of his reporting of the country’s attempted coup and subsequent clampdown.

Deniz Yucel was accused by the Turkish authorities of propaganda for terrorism and incitement to hatred because of his reporting on Turkey’s Kurdish minority and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Mr Yucel, who reported for the German daily Die Welt, was arrested after reporting that the email account of then energy minister Berat Albayrak had been hacked. Mr Albayrak is also President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's son-in-law.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that the journalist's detention “amounted to an 'interference' with his exercise of his right to freedom of expression”. There was no “plausible” reason to suspect him of a committing an offence, it said.

“Imposing a measure resulting in deprivation of liberty, as in this case, invariably [has] a chilling effect on freedom of expression by intimidating civil society and reducing dissident voices to silence,” the European judges said on Tuesday.

The case took relations between Ankara and Berlin to new lows, coming alongside detentions of other journalists and activists.

Mr Yucel’s 2018 release helped to ease the diplomatic tensions, and Turkey's constitutional court found in 2019 that his rights had been breached.

Mr Yucel told AFP that it was “pleasing” to have a judgment against Turkey from the European court.

Since his return to Germany, he has been convicted in absentia in Turkey of spreading propaganda for his work on the Kurds and the PKK, and sentenced to almost three years in jail.

He also faces two other cases, one for “slandering the Turkish nation, the Turkish state and its organs” as well as Mr Erdogan himself, and another for libel.

Thousands have been charged and sentenced over the crime of insulting Mr Erdogan in the seven years since he moved from being prime minister to president.

In 2020, 31,297 investigations were launched in relation to the charge, 7,790 cases were filed and 3,325 resulted in convictions, according to Justice Ministry data. Those numbers were slightly lower than in the previous year.

“The Turkish president repeatedly made absurd allegations against me in public,” said Mr Yucel.

The findings came as the European Court of Human Rights revealed that there had been 76 judgments against Turkey in 2021. Only Russia, Ukraine and Romania had more judgments against them last year.

Turkey remains top of the list for infringements since 1959 when the court was set up, with 3,385. The ECHR is the court for the Council of Europe, the leading human rights organisation in Europe, with 47 members.