The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has once again convicted Turkey of violating freedom of expression, following a pogrom unleashed in the country following a 2016 coup attempt.
A Turkish teacher appealed to the court in April 2015, posting messages in favor of Fethullah Gulen, who, along with his movement, has been used as a target by the government of Tayyip Erdogan in the persecution that followed the failed coup.
These posts “do not incite violence and do not incite rebellion,” the European Court of Human Rights said in a statement.
The teacher was sentenced to seven months in prison by a Turkish court for “praising the crime and the criminal” in November 2016, a few months after the July 15, 2016 coup attempt.
The Turkish court had used the coup attempt to rule that the teacher’s messages were a “clear and immediate threat to public order”.
In its ruling, the European Court of Human Rights, on the other hand, ruled that the Turkish teacher’s messages “constituted peaceful interference in the public debate and did not contain any incitement to revolt”, and therefore could not pose an immediate and real threat to public order, a coup attempt, more than a year later. “
The judges of the Court emphasize that the Turkish justice had convicted the teacher based on a “reverse argument” that constitutes “too broad and unpredictable interpretation” of the law.
Turkey was therefore convicted of violating freedom of expression, but without financial sanction, as the teacher’s appeal did not include such a request, as provided by the Court’s rules.
Ankara has been repeatedly convicted in recent years by the European Court of Human Rights of human rights abuses committed in the context of the pogrom following the coup attempt.
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