According to the authorities, Erdal Tercan is a terrorist (Tercan v. Turkey, 6158/18).
Erdal Tercan (in photo) was a professor at the Law Faculty of Akdeniz University. At the time of the judgment, he was in prison under suspicion of being a member of a so-called “Fetullahist Terrorist Organisation/Parallel State Structure”. Tercan was appointed as a judge of the Turkish Constitutional Court by Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2011, to serve until the age of 65. The case concerned the remanding in custody of a former judge of the Turkish Constitutional Court and his continued pre-trial detention, together with a search of his home, in the aftermath of the attempted coup of July 2016, on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist organisation. Tercan argued that Turkey had violated his right to liberty and security, the right to respect for private and family life and for one’s home, and the right to a fair trial.
The Court found a violation of his rights on account of the unlawfulness of Tercan’s arrest and remand in custody, the lack of plausible reasons at the time of Tercan’s arrest and remand in custody, to suspect him of committing an offence. The Court ruled that Turkey was to pay Tercan €20,000 of non-pecuniary damages.
