Aziz v. Cyprus, No. 69949/01, ECtHR (Second Section), 22 June 2004

Unequal treatment in elections between Cypriot citizens and discrimination on ethnic grounds.

Art. 14 ECHR
Art. 3 Prot. 1 ECHR

1. States enjoy a wide margin of appreciation in regulating parliamentary elections, but this should not be such as to exclude some citizens from political participation. When this happens it is a violation of Article 3 Protocol 1 of the ECHR.

2. In particular, preventing the right to vote for certain citizens on the basis of their ethnicity constitutes discrimination in violation of art. 14 ECHR.
(In the present case, the Cypriot Ministry of the Interior's refusal to allow one of its nationals to be entered on the electoral roll for the parliamentary elections on the sole ground that he is of Turkish ethnicity constitutes blatant discrimination, which does not find objective or reasonable justification).