Euro court fines Turkey 80,000 euros

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

The European court ruled that Turkey had violated Article 2 and Aricle 3 of the European convention in two separate cases.

The European Court of Human Rights has fined Turkey over 80,000 euros for violating articles on the right to life, as well as ill-treatment and investigation, in the separate cases of Menekşe Şentürk and Yasin Böber. 

Şentürk was sent from hospital to hospital during childbirth, and lost her life while she was being transferred via ambulance to the fifth hospital without a doctor on board. She was refused treatment in several hospitals due to an alleged lack of doctors and was kept for four hours in a research hospital. 

She was then sent home, but returned to the hospital in the evening hours of the same day, where it was discovered that Şentürk’s child was dead. The mother and father were then allegedly asked for money for an operation but were sent to another hospital when they failed to produce the funds. Menekşe, however, died before the ambulance arrived at the last hospital.

‘Right to life violated’

The European court ruled that Turkey had violated Article 2 of the European convention, which focuses on the right to life, and fined Turkey 65,000 euros in compensation, as well as 4,000 euros for legal expenses. 

Böber, meanwhile, suffered a broken leg when two police officers subjected him to brutality in Istanbul in June 2003. Böber allegedly tried to intervene during a dispute between a taxi driver and two police officers, but was allegedly pushed to the ground and punched by the officers in response. The officers allegedly put him in a police car where one of them closed the door on his leg, breaking it. The court found Turkey guilty of violating the principles of ill-treatment and investigation as part of Article 3 of the convention. Turkey was fined 19,500 euros for non-pecuniary damages and another 2,000 euros for costs and expenses.