Cyprus-Forum.com

[Pyrpolizer]

Turkey is wolf for the Gcs though. So you must choose another guardian.

[MR-from-NG]

Turkey is wolf for the Gcs though. So you must choose another guardian.

Fair point. The solution to this problem is obviously "compromise" which neither side has any intentions of doing

[CopperLine]

From 'ECHR survey of activities 2006', which is the latest full year data available :

'By the end of 2006, there were 89,887 applications pending before the Court, approximately one-quarter (some 23,000) of which had yet to be allocated to the appropriate judicial formation (Committee or Chamber). Some 20 per cent of the cases are directed against Russia. About 12 per cent of the cases concern Romania and a further 10 per cent Turkey.' [p3]

'The highest number of judgments concerned Turkey (334), Slovenia (190), Ukraine (120), Poland (115), Italy (103), Russia (102for over 70 per cent of the judgments.' [p3]

'Chambers decide by a majority vote. Any judge who has taken part in the consideration of the case is entitled to append to the judgment a separate opinion, either concurring or dissenting, or a bare statement of dissent.'[p5]

You will find the dissenting opinion of Judge Eronen in the full Varnava case report at http://cmiskp.echr.coe.int/tkp197/view.asp?item=2&portal=hbkm&action=html&highlight=&sessionid=4547958&skin=hudoc-en I'm prepared to bet that 99% of forum members here will not even understand most of the case report let alone Eronen's dissenting opinion in this case. It is just so easy for people who are essentially ignorant of the workings of law to dismiss a judgement or an opinion that they don't like or don't agree with as evidence of corruption, stupidity, venality or any other decadent condition. There may be lots of opinions and judgements that we personally disagree with or might come to a different view about, but that does not mean that the process or interpretation of the law is corrupt.

I've not had time to read and digest this latest ECHR judgement let alone Eronen's dissenting opinion so I don't know whether I agree with the majority or the dissenting opinion. But how people who haven't even read neither majority nor dissenting opinion can already conclude that it is Turkish judicial corruption is beyond belief. There's a word for that reaction : it is called 'bigotry'. There's another word for it 'prejudice', that is to pre-judge the case before looking at the material. This is something that some Forum members are experts in; it is not what the ECHR did nor is it what Judge Eronen did.

RAFAELLA claimed that Turkish judges never go against Turkey. Not true. Take a sample of the last ten cases in which Turkey was the respondent state, which begins with the Varnava and others case, and what do we find ? We find that just in one of the ten cases was there a dissenting opinion of a Turkish judge. The expression of a dissenting opinion is not evidence of Turkish judicial corruption - it is evidence that a judge is taking the judicial process seriously. The expression of dissenting opinions are part and parcel, indeed crucial, to the development of law.

Varnava and others v Turkey (majority decision, dissenting opinion, 16064/90 and others)
Resul Sadak v Turkey (unanimous decision, 74318/01)
Enzile Ozdemir v Turkey (unanimous decision, 54169/00)
Yurdatapan v Turkey (unanimous decision, 70335/01)
Fevzi Saygili v Turkey (unanimous decision, 74243/01)
Eris v Turkey (unanimous decision, majority decision, no dissent, 28268/02)
Karyagdi v Turkey (unanimous decision, 22956/04)
Ayaz v Turkey (unanimous decision, 44132/98 )
Ak v Turkey (unanimous decision, 44132/98 )
Saygili v Turkey (unanimous decision, 19353/03)

[CopperLine]

Rafaella'a actual words were

If you check all the decesions of ECHR against Tr you will find that the only ones who never find Tr quilty are turkish judges.

On reflection that might not mean what I initially took it to mean as 'Turkish judges never go against Turkey'. The problem is that there are several ambiguities in her sentence, but I think there are two principal possible different meanings :

1. All cases in which Turkey is respondent and in which there is a Turkish judge, the Turkish judge never finds Turkey 'guilty'.

2. All cases in which Turkey is respondent and in which there is a Turkish judge, of all judges it is only Turkish judges who have ever found Turkey 'not guilty'.

In my last post I was responding to point 1. If Rafaella has evidence for point 2. I'd be interested in seeing it. I'm not aware that a reliable survey of dissenting ECHR opinions has been conducted, but if you've got the data I'd be fascinated to see it.


The fact that people present the ECHR judgments as if it is a simple 'guilty - not guilty' option is to fundamentally misunderstand how courts work, how judgments are given, and how judicial opinion develops. Even a ten second look at an ECHR judgement should disabuse people of such a simplistic idea.

[Viewpoint]

Would be exactly the same if the tables were turned.

The tables were turned for 11 years before and it WAS NOT exactly the same remember? 800 dead in 11 years is not equal to 6000 dead in 1 month.

Could you supply independent details of these 6000? how many did GCs or Greeks kill? during the coup? Could it be as high as 2500 or is it easier to blame the Turkish Army?

[Noaxetogrind]

It could only happen in Cyprus. 30+ years after the event taking cases to the ECHR. Such hatred!

Can you imagine what would have happened if there had been an ECHR in the 1970s and other nationalities had taken Germany to court after their actions in the last war? There would not have been enough judges in the world to hear the cases. Perhaps the 'forgiveness gene' is missing from Cypriots'.

Now that GCs are in the EU surely it is time to act like decent Europeans and forgive and forget after all the EU will hopefully lead to all being one nation one day with no more wars.

You will also learn that the judgements of the ECHR are regularly received with incredulity by the normal residents of the established EU.

No disrespect meant to the families in this case nor to the Turkish Cypriots who suffering goes back to 1960 in a Cyprus, which I, in my ignorance at the time, I thought was a reasonable place.

[CopperLine]

I suspect that 'the judgements of the ECHR [that you say, Noaxetogrind] are regularly received with incredulity by the normal residents of the established EU' are not in fact ECHR judgments but those of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), a quite different beast.

ECHR is the European Court of Human Rights, which is NOT an EU organisation and includes many non-EU states as signatories of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The ECJ by contrast is the highest court of the European Union, which has jursidiction over EU member states only, and was created and modified by various treaties which EU states signed voluntarily as part of the integration process. It is the ECJ which gets the bad press in the UK yellow press such as the Daily Mail and The Sun. Most Mail and Sun readers will never have heard of the ECHR let alone its judgments.

[Jerry]

Hang on a minute Copperline, isn't it a basic rule in the legal profession that if you have an interest in one of the parties you stand down. It certainly applies in lower UK Courts, or at least it used to. I don't understand how a Court as important as the ECHR lets Turkish judges sit on case that involves anything to do with Turkey, it's fundamentally wrong even if their judgements appear to be impartial. Perhaps you can explain this apparent anomaly. It goes without saying I would not expect a Greek judge to be involved either.

[CopperLine]

I agree Jerry that in comparison to domestic/municipal courts there's something not quite right for judges from a given country to sit in cases in which that state is a respondent. However, this was always the set up of the ECHR and of course it is not just Turkish judges who sit in cases dealing with Turkey, but Irish judges dealing with Ireland, Finnish judges on Finland, and so on.

(You can find the source and composition of ECHR at http://www.echr.coe.int/ECHR/EN/Header/The+Court/The+Court/History+of+the+Court/ and the appointment of judges at Articles 19, 21, 22 & 23 of the Convention at http://www.echr.coe.int/NR/rdonlyres/D5CC24A7-DC13-4318-B457-5C9014916D7A/0/EnglishAnglais.pdf

Having said that, because the ECHR is a creation of international treaty (like all international courts), it is written into the treaty that judges appointed to the court must be independent from national 'interests'. Of course people might say 'yeah, right. independent, my eye' to that. People may be very sceptical. To that reaction I'd say two things : First, keep being sceptical because the exercise of justice/law should always be subject to social scrutiny and democratic testing and it should never be assumed that the law/courts will act impartially. Second, this scepticism might not be so great if more people realised how difficult it is to follow through a line of legal reasoning and still keep to a given government/political policy. In other words, even if a judge wanted to toe the 'party line' it is quite difficult to do so without it becoming obvious. Part of the point of my last couple of posts is that the evidence from the ECHR record is that Turkish judges do not follow and support Turkey's policy on a wide even full range of issues.

For what it is worth, I actually think that ECHR judges are on the whole independent from the state authorities from which they come. When I read properly this latest case I'll try to post a comment on Eronen's dissenting opinion.

[phoenix]

It could only happen in Cyprus. 30+ years after the event taking cases to the ECHR. Such hatred!

Can you imagine what would have happened if there had been an ECHR in the 1970s and other nationalities had taken Germany to court after their actions in the last war? There would not have been enough judges in the world to hear the cases. Perhaps the 'forgiveness gene' is missing from Cypriots'.

Now that GCs are in the EU surely it is time to act like decent Europeans and forgive and forget after all the EU will hopefully lead to all being one nation one day with no more wars.

You will also learn that the judgements of the ECHR are regularly received with incredulity by the normal residents of the established EU.

No disrespect meant to the families in this case nor to the Turkish Cypriots who suffering goes back to 1960 in a Cyprus, which I, in my ignorance at the time, I thought was a reasonable place.

A crime is a crime irrespective of the length of time past.

Why do we still persist with DNA fingerprinting to try and catch murderers or rapists from 30 years back when the technology did not exist? . . . . . Or do you think they should stop looking for these criminals because they have got away with their crimes for so long.

Go and grind your axe . . . it's as blunt and dull as your brain