YUMAK AND SADAK v. TURKEY JUDGMENT
1
In the case of Yumak and Sadak v. Turkey,
The European Court of Human Rights, sitting as a Grand Chamber
composed of:
Boštjan M. Zupančič, President,
Peer Lorenzen,
Françoise Tulkens,
Josep Casadevall,
Rıza Türmen,
Corneliu Bîrsan,
Volodymyr Butkevych,
Nina Vajić,
Anatoly Kovler,
Vladimiro Zagrebelsky,
Elisabeth Steiner,
Javier Borrego Borrego,
Khanlar Hajiyev,
Renate Jaeger,
Ján Šikuta,
Isabelle Berro-Lefèvre,
Päivi Hirvelä, judges,
and Vincent Berger, Jurisconsult,
Having deliberated in private on 21 November 2007 and 4 June 2008,
Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on the lastmentioned date:
PROCEDURE
1. The case originated in an application (no. 10226/03) against the
Republic of Turkey lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms
(“the Convention”) by two Turkish nationals, Mr Mehmet Yumak and
Mr Resul Sadak (“the applicants”), on 1 March 2003.
2. The applicants, who had been granted legal aid, were represented by
Mr T. Elçi, a lawyer practising in Diyarbakır. The Turkish Government
(“the Government”) were represented by their Agent.
3. The applicants alleged that the electoral threshold of 10% imposed
nationally for parliamentary elections interfered with the free expression of
the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature. They relied on
Article 3 of Protocol No. 1.
4. The application was allocated to the Second Section of the Court
(Rule 52 § 1 of the Rules of Court). On 9 May 2006 it was declared partly
admissible by a Chamber of that Section composed of Jean-Paul Costa,