Freedom and Democracy Party (ÖZDEP) v. Turkey, No. 23885/94, ECtHR (Grand Chamber), 8 December 1999

Dissolution of a pro-Kurdish political party. Political programmes supposedly challenging the territorial integrity and secular nature of the State and the unity of the nation.

Art. 11 ECHR

1. The banning of a party is contrary to the Convention if nothing in its political programme, whose aim is in essence the establishment of “a social order encompassing the Turkish and Kurdish peoples”, could be considered as a call for the use of violence, an uprising or any other form of rejection of democratic principles.

2. A political party’s programme referring to the right to self-determination of “national or religious minorities” does not justify the party’s dissolution if its words did not encourage separation from the State but were intended instead to emphasise that the proposed political project must be underpinned by the freely given and democratically expressed consent of such minorities.

(In the present case, the Turkish Constitutional Court made an order dissolving a pro-Kurdish party on the grounds that its programme sought to undermine the territorial integrity and secular nature of the State and the unity of the nation).

The ECtHR unanimously held that the applicant party’s dissolution, which had been disproportionate to the aim pursued and consequently unnecessary in a democratic society, had breached article 11 of the Convention.