Shattered Hopes: When the European Court of Human Rights Shuts its Doors to the Kurdish Displaced
- Perhaps no other ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has so deeply disappointed the Kurdish human rights victims and rejoiced the Turkish government at the same time, as did an inadmissibility decision issued in January 2006. In İçyer v. Turkey, the Court rejected as “manifestly ill-founded” the complaint by a Kurdish peasant who in 1994 had forcibly been evicted by security forces from his village. What made this decision particularly devastating for the displaced and joyous for the government was the fact that the ECtHR rejected the application of not only Mr. İçyer, but also of 1,500 others whose petitions had been pending before the Court.This article traces the evolution of the ECtHR's jurisprudence on Kurdish displacement cases and argues that the Council of Europe's enlargement as well as Turkey's EU accession process has had an adverse effect on the victims' quest for justice in Strasbourg.