The Refah case

In 1998, the Islamically oriented Welfare party (Refah partisi) in Turkey was dissolved by order of the Turkish Constitutional Court as a "center of activities against the principle of secularism." Six of the party's representatives, including the chairman, Necmettin Erbakan, were banned from political activities for five years. They complained to the European Court of Human Rights.

In 2001, the Court found that there had been no violation of the complainants' right to freedom of association under the Convention (Article 11).

• >>Refah (Welfare) Party et al v. Turkey (Word doc., HUDOC base)

This ruling was appealed to a Grand Chamber of the Court. On 13 February 2003, the Grand Chamber upheld the previous judgment.

• >>Grand Chamber judgment in the Refah case (Word doc., HUDOC base)

My papers

A conference about the first (2001) judgement was held at the Central European University in Budapest, 2-3 June 2002. I contributed the following paper on the questionable claims made about Islam in the Court's judgement:

• "Strasbourg's Construction of Islam: A Critique of theRefah <>judgement"
  (The paper has been removed from this site as of September 2005)
  

A more concise, Norwegian-language version of this paper has appeared as

• "Islam sett fra Strasbourg: En kritikk av Refah-dommen", Mennesker & Rettigheter (Nordic Journal for Human Rights) 20:3 (2002), 47-60. [Not available online.]

An updated version, taking into account the Grand Chamber judgment, was presented at a follow-up conference at the CEU in Budapest, 12-15 June 2003:

• >>"Refah Revisited: Strasbourg's Construction of Islam", available since September 2005 at the Strasbourgconference.org site.

That paper is to be included, with minor revisions and brief additional commentary on the Şahin v. Turkey headscarf case, in a forthcoming book on Islam and emerging legal issues in Europe.

On request, I have provided case notes summarising Refah I & II and adding some tentative criticism of aspects of the judgment that are not dealt with in the above papers. Available online at:

• >>"Refah Partisi (The Welfare Party) and Others v. Turkey". International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law, vol. 6 no. 1 (September 2003).

Relevant website

Erdogan v. Turkey

The case of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's conviction for "incitement to religious hatred" after reciting a poem may be of related interest. This conviction disqualified Erdogan from running for office until a constitutional change in 2002 removed that obstacle. On 9 March 2003, Erdogan's AK Party won a by-election in the province of Siirt, clearing the way for Erdogan to enter parliament and take over from Gul as prime minister. Two months earlier, Sabih Kanadoglu, chief prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals, had requested that the AK be banned as a party established on religious principles, contrary to the Turkish Constitution. (Sources: Various agencies, 10 Mar 03; id., 10 Jan 03; The Economist, 19 Dec 02)

The ECHR ruled the application partially inadmissible (28 Nov 02) in

• >>Erdogan contre la Turquie (Word doc., HUDOC base)

However, Erdogan's application was struck (6 May 03) on his own request, as he had become prime minister of Turkey and thus found himself simultaneously in the position of applicant and respondent...!

• >>Erdogan contre la Turquie: Decision finale (text doc., HUDOC base)

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