United Communist Party of Turkey and Others v. Turkey, No. 19392/92, ECtHR (Grand Chamber), 30 January 1998

Dissolution of a political party on account of its name. Role of political parties in a pluralist and democratic society.

Art. 11 ECHR

1. Political parties are a form of association playing an essential role in ensuring pluralism and the proper functioning of democracy. They make irreplaceable contribution to political debate, which is at very core of concept of democratic society.

2. Protection afforded under article 11 of the Convention is not limited to the founding of an association, but rather lasts for an association’s entire life.  

3. An association, including a political party, is not excluded from the protection afforded by the Convention simply because its activities are regarded by the national authorities as undermining the constitutional structures of the State and calling for the imposition of restrictions.

4. There can be no justification for hindering a political group solely because it seeks to debate in public the situation of part of the State’s population – such as the citizens of Kurdish origin – and to take part in the nation’s political life in order to find, according to democratic rules, solutions capable of satisfying everyone concerned.

5. A political party’s choice of name could not in principle justify a measure as drastic as the immediate and permanent dissolution, in the absence of other relevant and sufficient circumstances.

(In the case at hand, the Turkish Constitutional Court dissolved a political party on the sole grounds that it had included the word “communist” in its name and had supposedly encouraged separatism and the nation’s division, even before it had been able to start its activities. The ECtHR unanimously held that, in absence of any activity by the applicant party, its dissolution breached article 11 of the Convention).

The present decision inaugurated a well-established orientation in the ECtHR’s case law with regard to the banning of political parties by the Turkish Constitutional Court, which will be significantly overruled by the Grand Chamber’s judgment Refah Partisi and Others v. Turkey in 2003.