Who is Yüksel Yalçınkaya?

Yüksel Yalçınkaya was a teacher in Kayseri who was dismissed in 2016 under Decree‑Law No 672. He received a 6 year 3 month prison sentence for terrorism based on alleged ByLock use, a Bank Asya account and membership of certain associations and unions. After exhausting domestic remedies he applied to the European Court of Human Rights, which found that several of his rights—including the right to a fair trial—had been violated. The judgment sets a precedent for thousands of similar cases in Turkey.

Importance of the ECtHR Judgment

The European Court of Human Rights held that the use of the ByLock application, having an account at Bank Asya and membership of certain associations or unions cannot, by themselves, constitute sufficient evidence of membership of a terrorist organisation, thereby establishing precedent‑setting case‑law.

The case concerns a breach of the principle of “no punishment without law” (Article 7) stemming from the applicant’s conviction for membership of an armed terrorist organisation based solely on alleged use of the encrypted messaging app “ByLock”, without an individualised assessment of the material and mental elements of the offence.

The case also involves a violation of the right to a fair trial (Article 6) because the domestic courts failed to give due consideration to the applicant’s arguments on the collection and processing of electronic evidence.

It further entails a violation of the freedom of assembly and association (Article 11) because the national courts unpredictably expanded the scope of the offence by relying on the applicant’s membership of a trade union and an association deemed linked to a terrorist organisation.

Under Article 46 the Court held that reopening the criminal proceedings—if requested—would be the most appropriate way to bring the violations to an end and to afford the applicant redress, and that the authorities must take suitable general measures to tackle the systemic problem arising from domestic courts’ approach to ByLock use.

The judgment could serve as a precedent for roughly 8,500 applications currently pending before the Court and potentially for up to 100,000 cases overall.