Top Turkish court finds no violation of rights in refusal to give opposition daily Evrensel to inmate
Turkey’s Constitutional Court has ruled that a prison administration’s refusal to give the opposition daily Evrensel to an inmate did not constitute as a violation of rights.
Duvar English
Turkey’s Constitutional Court has ruled that a prison administration’s refusal to give the daily Evrensel to an imate could not be considered as a rights violation.
“The applicant (inmate) has the opportunity to access on average 1,800 other newspapers among which are 29 national newspapers wide circulated and which has a content variety,” the top court said in its ruling.
The case concerns the application of inmate Mustafa Koca jailed in the Sincan Prison in Ankara. In 2021, Koca applied to the prison administration to subscribe to the Evrensel newspaper. The prison administration turned down Koca’s request, citing the Press Advertisement Agency (BİK)’s decision revoking Evrensel’s right to receive public ads.
This prompted Koca to file an application with the judiciary. Once a local court gave a similar decision, Koca this time took his case to the Constitutional Court, saying that “the rejection of his request to buy newspaper had prevented his freedom of speech.”
The top court, however, ruled that Koca’s right had not been violated, saying that he could access other newspapers in the prison.