Aktaş and Aslaniskender v. Turkey

Information Note on the Court’s case-law 230
June 2019
Aktaş and Aslaniskender v. Turkey - 18684/07 and 21101/07
Judgment 25.6.2019 [Section II]
Article 8
Positive obligations
Article 8-1
Respect for family life
Respect for private life
Refusal to change surname on the sole grounds that the new name requested is not Turkish: violation
Facts – The first applicant, a Turkish national of Assyrian ethnic origin, obtained Swiss nationality, giving “Amno” (an Assyrian name) as his surname. He was issued with a Swiss passport in that name. He applied to change his surname “Aktaş” to “Amno”, on the grounds that: (i) he was an ethnic Assyrian and that he and his family were known by the name of “Amno”; (ii) his brother had already been granted the name change requested; (iii) having two different surnames on his two identity documents posed practical problems in his daily life.
The court asked the Turkish Language Institute whether the requested surname was a Turkish word. The institute replied that “Amno” was not a Turkish word. The applicant’s application for a name change was therefore dismissed.
The second applicant, a Buddhist, obtained the registration of the Buddhist religion on his Turkish identity card in place of “Islam”. He brought an action to change his forename and surname to “Padmapanys Leonalexandros”, relying on his religious beliefs, his personal freedom and his freedom of conscience and expression.
An Indologist pointed out that the forename requested was a Sanskrit term relevant to Buddhism, but that that did not apply to the surname requested, which was a literal Greek translation of his current surname. The applicant then changed the requested surname to a Sanskrit one (“Paramabindu”). The court agreed to the changes requested, but its judgment was quashed as regards the surname: the applicant was only allowed to change his forename.
Law – Article 8: The domestic authorities’ refusal to allow the applicants to change their surnames, which was a matter for their private and family lives, fell to be assessed from the angle of the State’s positive obligations in that sphere.
While acknowledging that there may be good reasons why a person might wish to change his name, the Court had already accepted that general-interest reasons could justify legally restricting such a possibility, for example in order to guarantee proper population registration or to protect the means of personal identification and match the bearers of a given name with a specific family. The Contracting State had a wide margin of appreciation in this sphere.
In the instant case, in rejecting the requests for name changes, the courts gave the sole reason that under section 3 of Law no. 2525 and Article 5 of the Regulations on Surnames, names which were not “of Turkish language” could not be chosen as surnames.
Incidentally, the Court observed that the impugned refusal was only legally based on the latter of the two above-mentioned texts, which was the only one actually providing for such refusal. The wording of section 3 of Law no. 2525 did not lay down any general ban on non-Turkish-language names, but only the use of names “of foreign race and nation”; even subject to the manner in which it might be interpreted, the latter concept would appear to differ from the former one.
The Court had to assess whether the application of the legislation displayed the requisite flexibility to meet the needs of persons requesting name changes. In that context, it was incumbent on the domestic courts to demonstrate that they had balanced the competing interests.
It transpired from the reasoning of their decisions that the courts had conducted a purely formalistic examination of the legislative and statutory texts: they had not taken into account the arguments and the specific and personal situations of the applicants, or balanced the competing interests.
No explanation had been given of how or why changing the applicants’ names to non-Turkish ones was in any way contrary to the general interest. This was particularly obvious in the case of the first applicant, whose brother had secured a favourable decision in respect of the same name change.
Accordingly, the State had failed to strike a fair balance between the competing interest of the applicants and of society as a whole.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41: EUR 1,500 to each of the applicants in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
(See also Güzel Erdagöz v. Turkey, 37483/02, 21 October 2008, Information Note 112)
 
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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