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This is the conclusion reached by the European Court of Human Rights in the case of ÇAĞIL v. TÜRKİYE (No. 19085/18).
The case concerned the events of 2015, when the applicant and three other people were charged with threats, public insults and bodily harm as a result of a fight near a café. The first-instance court found the applicant guilty and sentenced him to 87 one-day fines (approximately EUR 594), 25 one-day fines (approximately EUR 170) and 120 one-day fines (approximately EUR 683). The sentence was final as each of the fines did not exceed the threshold for appeal under national law. The Constitutional Court dismissed the applicant's complaint regarding the inability to file a cassation appeal.
The ECHR confirmed that restriction of access to court is possible subject to the principle of proportionality. The Court noted that the applicant would have been entitled to cassation appeal if he had been sentenced to imprisonment or if the fines exceeded the established threshold. However, in case of non-payment, the fines could not be automatically replaced by imprisonment, but only by community service.
In addition, the ECHR considered the possibility of the prosecutor filing a cassation appeal in cases where the accused does not have such a right. The Court noted the lack of explanations from the government to justify such inequality. However, the applicant did not prove that this violated his rights, and the national appeal system remained balanced. Thus, the ECHR concluded that there was no violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention in this case.
A more detailed description of this judgment will be available in the following reviews of the ECHR case law, and the previous review is available here.
The official text of the judgment in ÇAĞIL v. TÜRKİYE is available on the website of the European Court of Human Rights: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-240186.
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