ÇAKICI v. TURKEY JUDGMENT
25
Commission’s decision on admissibility, no complaint was made in respect
of Ahmet Çakıcı’s wife and children. The compass of the case before the
Court being delimited by the Commission’s decision on admissibility (see,
amongst other authorities, the McMichael v. the United Kingdom judgment
of 24 February 1995, Series A no. 307-B, p. 50, § 71), the Court will
accordingly examine this aspect of the application in relation to the
applicant alone.
98. The Court observes that in the Kurt case (Kurt judgment cited above,
pp. 1187-88, §§ 130-34), which concerned the disappearance of the
applicant’s son during an unacknowledged detention, it found that the
applicant had suffered a breach of Article 3 having regard to the particular
circumstances of the case. It referred particularly to the fact that she was the
mother of a victim of a serious human rights violation and herself the victim
of the authorities’ complacency in the face of her anguish and distress. The
Kurt case does not however establish any general principle that a family
member of a “disappeared person” is thereby a victim of treatment contrary
to Article 3.
Whether a family member is such a victim will depend on the existence
of special factors which gives the suffering of the applicant a dimension and
character distinct from the emotional distress which may be regarded as
inevitably caused to relatives of a victim of a serious human rights violation.
Relevant elements will include the proximity of the family tie – in that
context, a certain weight will attach to the parent-child bond –, the particular
circumstances of the relationship, the extent to which the family member
witnessed the events in question, the involvement of the family member in
the attempts to obtain information about the disappeared person and the way
in which the authorities responded to those enquiries. The Court would
further emphasise that the essence of such a violation does not so much lie
in the fact of the “disappearance” of the family member but rather concerns
the authorities’ reactions and attitudes to the situation when it is brought to
their attention. It is especially in respect of the latter that a relative may
claim directly to be a victim of the authorities’ conduct.
99. In the present case, the applicant was the brother of the disappeared
person. Unlike the applicant in the Kurt case, he was not present when the
security forces took his brother, as he lived with his own family in another
town. It appears also that, while the applicant was involved in making
various petitions and enquiries to the authorities, he did not bear the brunt of
this task, his father Tevfik Çakıcı taking the initiative in presenting the
petition of 22 December 1993 to the Diyarbakır National Security Court.
Nor have any aggravating features arising from the response of the
authorities been brought to the attention of the Court in this case.
Consequently, the Court perceives no special features existing in this case
which would justify finding an additional violation of Article 3 of the