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In the landmark decision Opuz v Turkey, the most prominent issue had been the inactiveness of the public authorities. Despite numerous assaults on both the applicant and her mother, the complaints lodged, and medical reports and witnesses, public authorities failed to effectively prevent harm and protect the victims. One glaring reason behind the lack of action by the police and other State officials had been this stereotypical view that domestic violence was a private family affair with which they could not interfere. Further, when the victims were forced to withdraw their complaints the public authorities did not take into account the possibility that the victims could have been coerced or threatened, given the nature of the case where the perpetrator continuously threatened and assaulted e victims. The complete disregard of the victims’ complaints and the documented abuse they suffered, in turn, led to the killing of applicant’s mother. Traditional and social gender roles further pose as the basis of such violence where…
Opuz is a special case in the sense that gender stereotypes’ presence and their impact on the occurrence of domestic violence, responses or lack thereof to domestic violence, and the hearing of the case concerning domestic violence. ECtHR’s judgment, in this context, carries utmost importance in unearthing the shortcomings of domestic courts in Tur-
The acceptance that domestic violence is an issue that falls within the ambit and…
It was further remarkable for the Court to analyze Opuz under Articles 2 and 3, as it sometimes opted for an evaluation of Article 8 in domestic violence cases. In fact, the Court seemed like it did not know how to classify domestic violence, vacillating between applying Article 2, Article 3 and Article 8. For example, in Bevacqua and S v Bulgaria
The Court relied on the physical and psychological integrity of persons in its examination…
However, in Kalucza specifically, the Court actually did make a sound evaluation of the facts of the case. In other words, it did show that it was capable of donning somewhat of a gender lens when assessing such cases, but in a two-step-forward-one-step-back fashion refused to take this approach further and did not see the case under Article 3. Kalucza…
A woman victim who falls outside this perfect victim blueprint, which is a prescription…
“Mutuality” presupposes equal footing, which is a null claim in gender-based violence…
Another one of the Court’s inexplicable derivations from its judgment in Opuz is…
In the case, the victim Selma Civek had complained many times to public authorities that the perpetrator H.C. had assaulted her and threatened her with death, but her repeated complaints and search for protection were unheeded by the public authorities, which resulted in Selma Civek to be stabbed to death by the perpetrator. In his defense, H.C. asserted that he had been “provoked” into this act as his honor as a husband was tarnished because Selma Civek had been “unfaithful”, and that he “lost control”.(203)…
While the Court had uttered the same premise in Opuz as a principle as well(206),…
Notably, the Court did decide on another domestic violence case concerning Turkey…
In its assessment, the Court reiterated that the positive obligation to protect the…
After such a period of confusion with regards to how to approach and characterize…
In Talpis, while the Court had been in agreement on there being a breach of Article 3 (unanimous) and Article 2 (six votes to one), the decision on violation of Article 14 raised some questions amongst the Court. Notably, the dissenting opinions seemingly focused on the need for a more concrete demonstration of how public authorities’ conduct amounted to discrimination, or how they exhibited discriminatory intent, rather than “pure passivity”.(217)…
However, this line of thinking is denotive of the male oriented point of view’s transmission…
Of course, it is not as simple as to argue that inaction of public authorities always…
In Bălșan v Romania(220), the Court emphasized the fact that the public authorities had to have been aware of the abuse the applicant was being subjected to, given her repeated attempts of emergency calls to the police, requests for protection, formal criminal complaints, etc. Every time, however, the authorities and domestic courts either ignored the applicant or acquitted the perpetrator, going so far as to claim that the applicant “provoked” the perpetrator. In light of these facts, the Court contended that such an approach had rendered the national legal framework in place useless and was further inconsistent with international standards on violence against women. Moreover, the Court held, public authori-
