ELCI AND OTHERS v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 95 Article 35 § 4) in the present case, and decide that the applications were manifestly ill-founded or that no violation of the Convention be found. 603. The applicants relied on the text of the Commission's decision on admissibility of 2 December 1996 to reject the Government's plea of nonexhaustion of domestic remedies. The applicants had complained to the Public Prosecutor, the Investigating Judge and the State Security Court, but their complaints were not taken up or investigated. The evidence from Government witnesses to the Delegates confirmed the practice of the authorities to dismiss all allegations of misconduct on the part of the security forces. No effective remedy was identified by the Government in relation to the applicants' complaints. The applicants also refuted the Government's plea that their claims were groundless. 604. The Court reiterates that the rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies referred to in Article 35 § 1 of the Convention obliges applicants to use first the remedies that are normally available and sufficient in the domestic legal system to enable them to obtain redress for the breaches alleged. The existence of the remedies must be sufficiently certain, in practice as well as in theory, failing which they will lack the requisite accessibility and effectiveness. Article 35 § 1 also requires that the complaints intended to be brought subsequently before the Court should have been made to the appropriate domestic body, at least in substance and in compliance with the formal requirements laid down in domestic law, but not that recourse should be had to remedies which are inadequate or ineffective (see the Aksoy v. Turkey judgment of 18 December 1996, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1996-VI, pp. 2275-76, §§ 51-52; the Akdivar and Others v. Turkey, judgment of 16 September 1996, Reports 1996-IV, p. 1210, §§ 65-67; Şarli v. Turkey, judgment of 22 May 2001, no. 24490/94, § 59). 605. The Court emphasises that the application of the rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies must make due allowance for the fact that it is being applied in the context of machinery for the protection of human rights that the Contracting States have agreed to establish. Accordingly, it has recognised that Article 35 § 1 must be applied with some degree of flexibility and without excessive formalism. It has further recognised that the rule of exhaustion is neither absolute nor capable of being applied automatically; for the purposes of reviewing whether it has been observed, it is essential to have regard to the circumstances of the individual cases. This means, in particular, that the Court must take realistic account not only of the existence of formal remedies in the legal system of the Contracting State concerned but also of the general context in which they operate, as well as the personal circumstances of the applicants. It must then examine whether, in all the circumstances of the case, the applicants did everything that could reasonably be expected of them to exhaust domestic remedies (cf. the above