ECHR: Turkey violated privacy of Kurdish prisoners
The European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday that Turkey violated the privacy of Kurdish prisoners by refusing to send letters written in Kurdish to their families.
Prison authorities at Tekirdağ and Bolu, where the 10 plaintiffs were serving sentences, had refused in 2008 to dispatch their letters on the grounds that they were unable to be monitored because they were written in Kurdish.
Tuesday's ruling concluded that Turkey has no legal basis to refuse the dispatch of letters written in languages other than Turkish, and that it breaches the right to respect for private and family life, and correspondence.