Ferhat Tepe
person- Image
- Sex
- Male
- Civil status
- Single
- Date body found
- Aug 9, 1993
- Occupation
- Journalist
- Event description
Per ECHR ruling delivered on 9th August 2003, Ferhat Tepe was the Bitlis correspondent for the Özgür Gündem newspaper. His father, who was the district chairman of the DEP (Democracy Party), got into a heated debate with the commander of the 6th Armored Brigade over Kurdish rights during a meeting. Shortly later, Ferhat Tepe was placed under detention and released. Per witness accounts, soon afterwards, on 28th July 1993, he was forced into a white car by a man known to work for the police force.
Tepe’s dead body was discovered near the Hazar Lake on 4th August 1993 and buried in a pauper’s grave in Elazığ, following an autopsy that did not register the torture signs, which his family noticed when they found about his burial and had him excavated.
On 4th May 1995, his father applied to the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled that Turkey had violated the articles 2 (right to life) and now defunct article 38 (right to effective investigation) of the Convention.
In 2016, the Constitutional Court ruled that the state had failed to perform an effective investigation into the case and awarded the family monetary compensation.
The investigation which was closed in 2013 due to statute of limitations was not re-opened despite the family’s objection.
- Geolocation
Latitude: 38.40056899999999
Longitude: 42.109502
- Geolocation
- City
- Bitlis
- Date of disappearance
- Jul 28, 1993
- Year of disappearance
- 1993
- Age at the time of disappearance
- Yaş:19
- Status of the victim
- Discovered dead and returned to the family
- Type of source material
- Decision by the Constitutional Court
- ECHR decision
- Printed or online news
- Statement by victim/complainant
- Decision by the prosecution office
- Decision of non-prosecution due to statute of limitations
- Verdict of ECHR
- Violation of the right(s)
- Articles violated according to ECHR verdict
- Article 13: Right to an effective remedy
- Article 2: Procedural violation of the right to life
- Article 38: Examination of the case
- Summary of the legal proceedings
Per ECHR’s ruling delivered on 9th August 2003, Ferhat Tepe’s father applied to the European Court of Human Rights in 1995 for his abduction and subsequent murder in 1993.
Though there were several witnesses in the case against the Turkish state, the key ones shied away from testifying, being threatened by government sources. Hence the Court could only decide on the insufficiency of the investigation carried on by the State of Turkey, i.e. a violation of the 2nd article of the European Convention on Human Rights and article 38 which said an effective investigation had not been made on the case by the relevant offices in Turkey. Hence, the Court required the state of Turkey to pay for non-pecuniary damages.
In 2013, the investigation into Ferhat Tepe’s murder was closed by the Elazığ Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office due to statute of limitations and the family’s appeal to have it re-opened was overturned. However, in 2016, the Constitutional Court ruled that the state had failed to perform an effective investigation into the case and awarded the family monetary compensation.