Avrupa İnsan Hakları Sözleşmesi'nde Bireysel Başvurunun Kabuledilebilirlik Şartları

This article examines in detail, as at its date of publication, the conditions under which individual applications to the European Court of Human Rights are admissible. It explains these conditions — the "filter" mechanism of the application process — both in their theoretical framework and with examples from the Court's case-law.

1. Introduction and general framework. The article opens by observing that the Convention is a revolutionary system, affording individuals the possibility of applying to an international judicial organ against their own states. Its most important reform, it is emphasised, was Protocol No. 11, which abolished the old dual structure of Commission and Court and established a single, permanent Court receiving applications directly.

2. The substantive admissibility conditions. In this section, the body of the article, the preconditions an application must satisfy before the Court can examine it on the merits are set out:

• Exhaustion of domestic remedies: the most fundamental rule. Before carrying a complaint to Strasbourg, the applicant must have tried all effective and accessible judicial avenues in their own country (the courts, the Constitutional Court, and so on). The exceptions are also noted: where domestic remedies exist in theory but are ineffective in practice, where it is entirely clear they would produce no result ("manifestly futile"), or where the violation of a right has become a systematic administrative practice, the obligation to exhaust them may fall away.
• The six-month rule: the application must be lodged within six months of the date on which the final domestic decision (of the Court of Cassation or the Constitutional Court, for example) was delivered or learned of. The period is preclusive. (Note: the period was later reduced to four months; at the time the article was written it was six.)
• Compatibility with the Convention (ratione): the complaint must concern a right guaranteed by the Convention. The Court examines its jurisdiction from four aspects: ratione personae (the applicant must be a victim directly affected by the violation); ratione loci (the violation must have occurred within the respondent state's jurisdiction); ratione temporis (the violation must post-date the state's ratification of the Convention); ratione materiae (the complaint must relate to a right contained in the Convention).
• Other procedural conditions: applications may not be anonymous — the applicant's identity must be known; an application substantially the same as one already examined by the Court, or submitted to another international organ, is rejected; the application must not be manifestly ill-founded — it must have an arguable core and must not be wholly fanciful, arbitrary or devoid of evidence; and the right of application must not be abused — it cannot be used contrary to the Convention's purpose (for political propaganda, insult, or to mislead the Court).

3. Conclusion. The article closes by noting that these admissibility conditions perform a vital "filtering" function enabling the Court to manage its workload. The author emphasises that the Convention system is not a "court of appeal" — it does not quash national judgments — but an additional international mechanism of guarantee reviewing whether states act in conformity with the Convention. The closing message: Turkish lawyers and courts must know and apply these principles and the Strasbourg case-law well, precisely so that cases need not go to Strasbourg.