The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) announced the court’s 2021 balance sheet at a press conference held today at its headquarters in Strasbourg.
According to the Court’s statistics for 2021, about 22 percent of the total 70,150 applications pending before the ECtHR as of 31 December were applications related to Turkey.
Of the 70,150 pending applications, 15,250 were related to Turkey.
For 2020, this number is 11 thousand 750; At the end of 2019, it was 9 thousand 257.
Russia ranks first with 17 thousand 13 applications in the list of countries with the highest number of case applications at the end of 2021, followed by Turkey with 15 thousand 251 applications. Ukraine ranks third after Turkey with 11 thousand 372 applications.
Turkey was the Council of Europe member state with the highest number of cases allocated in 2021 with 9 thousand 548 cases.
It was followed by Russia with 9 thousand 432 cases and Ukraine with 3 thousand 721 cases.
The ECtHR states that the increase in applications from Turkey, as well as from Poland, Russia and Greece, made the most important contribution to the annual 6 percent increase in the number of applications.
78 decisions about Turkey announced
In 2021, 78 decisions regarding 567 different applications regarding Turkey were announced. In 76 of these decisions, there was at least one violation of the Human Rights Convention.
In 2021, the ECHR found 31 violations of freedom of expression, 29 rights to freedom and security and 22 violations of the right to a fair trial.
Among the countries with the highest number of cases per capita, Montenegro is in the first place with 6.14 applications per 10 thousand people; England, where 0.03 applications are made for every 10 thousand people, is in the last place.
The final decision of the ECtHR regarding Turkey is in the case of Deniz Yücel, the Turkey correspondent of the German newspaper Die Welt, who was arrested on 27 February 2017 on charges of “propagandizing for a terrorist organization” and “openly inciting the people to hatred and enmity”. It was in violation of the Convention (ECHR).
Impact lawsuits
Sharing updates on the functioning of the court in 2021, President of the ECHR Robert Spano stated that a new litigation strategy called impact lawsuits has been put into practice.
According to Spano’s explanation, impact lawsuits are those where the solutions adopted lead to a change in international, domestic law or practice; new technological problems that have never been addressed by the courts; covers situations where new issues are being addressed in the field of human rights.
As of January 1, 2022, there are more than 500 cases falling into this category, and they concern freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, telephone tapping and surveillance of journalists, pandemic cases, discrimination against sexual minority individuals, the right to information, and environmental pollution.
Spano said that the measure of the Court’s success should now be the nature of the cases examined and the method in which they are handled, rather than the total number of cases heard in a given period of time.