Sharia, Democracy, and Freedom of Expression: Unpacking the ECtHR’s Stance
by Ahmet Said Aydil
Question(s) at stake
Whether statements made in a television broadcast criticizing democracy and secularism, calling for the establishment of a sharia-based order, and describing children born of civil marriages as illegitimate are protected by freedom of expression.
Outcome of the ruling
The ECtHR ruled that merely defending sharia, without calling for the use of violence to establish it, could not be considered a form of hate speech. In this particular case, the applicant had been convicted of incitement to hatred based on religious intolerance. The Court considered the television programme as a means to inform the public about a matter of general interest in Türkiye, and the applicant’s views were expressed within the context of a pluralistic debate. The Court concluded that the interference with the applicant’s freedom of expression was not “necessary in a democratic society” and found a violation of Article 10.
Country:
Official citation
Gündüz v. Turkey, App. no. 35071/97, judgment of 4 December 2003
Topic(s)
Keywords:
Freedom of expression Hate speech
Tag(s):
Bibliographic information
Access case report
View case report in the CUREDI databaseAbout the authors
Ahmet Said Aydil (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Department Law and Anthropology, Germany)
Ahmet Said Aydil is a PhD Candidate in the Law and Anthropology Department at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkiye). Following his graduation, he completed his legal internship, working in areas such as commercial law, international arbitration law, criminal law, and administrative law. In 2020 he passed the Turkish Bar and became a licensed attorney.
Aydil also holds an LLM from the Europa Institute, Saarland University, in International and European Human Rights Protection Law and European Economic Law. Under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Thomas Giegrich, his master’s thesis analysed the decline in human rights commitmens in Europe, driven by the rise of populist politics and the mishandling of the refugee influx of 2015, and evaluated potential remedies at the European Union and Council of Europe levels. His current research falls within the framework of the database project “Cultural and Religious Diversity under State Law across Europe” (CUREDI) at the MPI.