Turkey Worst Violator of Human Rights: ECtHR

In an annual report released on Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the top judicial body to rule on human rights violations in Europe, once again found that Turkey is by far the worst violator of human rights among the 47 signatory states of the European Convention on Human Rights, reports Today’s Zaman.

In statistical data on violation judgments by country for the last year, Turkey once more topped the chart with 18.55 percent of all violation judgments, practically the same as last year’s figure of 18.81, followed by Russia with 14.48 percent and Romania 9.54 percent. In 2010, a total of 278 judgments were entered for Turkey and only in nine cases did the court find no violations.

The most common human rights violation committed by Turkey was against Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which concerns the right to a fair trial (42 cases) and lengthy proceedings (83 cases). This article was often raised as the reason for the rulings against Turkey.

Article 5, which talks about the right to liberty and security, was the second most-cited article in judgments filed against Turkey last year. The overwhelming number of these cases had originated in the ‘90s, during which decade gross human rights violations were committed by state security forces in the fight against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) terror campaign. The court found Turkey in violation of this article in 80 cases in 2010 alone. The court registry recorded no friendly settlements by Turkey last year.

The only good news for Turkey in the ECtHR report is that Turkey performed much better compared to other countries when factoring population figures in. In that sense, Turkey is ahead of 22 member states of the Council of Europe, with a 0.80 average rate that calculates the number of applications to the ECtHR per 10,000 inhabitants. The European Convention on Human Rights, drafted in 1950, places Turkey under the jurisdiction of the ECtHR. In 1987, Turkey accepted the right of individuals to make applications to the ECtHR and in 1990, recognized the compulsory jurisdiction of the court. However, Turkey has still not ratified some of the protocols of the convention despite having signed them.