a) DGMs in Turkey were first introduced to the Turkish legal sysiem in 1973 when 1961 constitution was amended by the Statute numbered 1699. Later, Art. 143 of the 1982 Constitution re-regulated these special criminal courts. in the reasoning of the relevant provisions of the constructing statute, it was stated that new forms of crimes and criminalities were developed, and thus in order to follovv up with newly created forms of crimes there was need to create new procedures, and to establish special courts in order to take speedy and right decisions concerning those acts vvhich threaten the existence and continuity of the State.

b) it must be stated at the outset that those criminal acts vvhich fail under the jurisdiction of DMGs are not at ali new crimes ör criminalities. To the contrary, they were those crimes vvhich already existed in TCK (Turkish Criminal Code) and fell under the jurisdiction of High Criminal Courts beforo they have been separated and placed under the jurisdiction of DGMs. For instance, only second paragraph (and not the who!e articlei of Art. 312 ci TCK has been moved to under the jurisdiction of DGMs.

Those articles do not reguire special dealing. and they regulate diverse erime types at times largely differing from each other. Since 1926 (vvhen the current Turkish Criminal Code was adapted from Italy) such crimes have been tried by High Criminal Courts who has been indeed specialised in such erime types. in judicial practice, criminal cases take longer to conclude due to jurisdictional disputes betvveen High Criminal Courts and DGMs över who is authorised to try the case in question. Moreover, with regarcl to case concluding times DGMs score no better than High Criminal Courts.

c) DGMs aro in fact not special but emergency, exceptional iribunals. Special tribunais :orce the need for themselves and they are preferred över law. With more cletailed, powerful and gualified special provisions in their special fields, they stann in favour of the accused. VVİth a special. that ıs more suitable and detaılecl, criminal procedure they are more helpful in producıng just decisions vvithout clcnying the general rights of the accused. Hovvever. some rights of the accused, recognised by the general criminal procedure, are denied ör limited by the criminal procedure in DGMs. Also, during martial law. those offences, vvhich caused the ıntroduction of the martial law, are dealt wıth by martial law courts. thus ordinary criminal courts will hand down the decision of "non-jurisdiction" and thus cases will take longer to be concluded.

For this reason, National Security Council (the body that governed Turkey between 12 September 1980 and early 1983, and it continued to function until late 1989 though to a limited extent) decided to establish a kind of courts similar to those that work during martial law. Therefore, it was decided that DGMs vvill deal with the sarne types of crimes both during ordinary rule and miütary rule (martial law).

d) Courts sirnilar to DGMs cannot be found in any country who is the member of the Council of Europe. Even the term "State security" deserves some attention. Every court is in fact responsible for preserving the security of the State. But at the same time, the State is not in a status above the citizen ;n the eyes of law and the jucliciary. in a dispute betvveen the State and a citizen. both sides have to be treated egually.

An individual's security ıs just as important as that of the State. Also, Dased on the existence and continuity of the State, it is not compatible with the international lavv to establish DGMs to deal with some criminal cases vvhich vvere created through some artificial erime and criminality concepts.

Moreover, those crimes, which have been moved to under the jurisdiction of DGMs, specify a wide range of punishments from one-year imprisonment to capital punishment. They hear such diverse offences as joining to a criminal organisation armed wıth vveapons, expressıon of thought, drug dealing, snıuggling of goods, ete. Such diversity with regard to jurisdiction, is not consistent vvith the expected purposes of a special court.

e) in many of its judgements, the Honourable Court states that the impartiality of courts are important, that distributing justice only is not sufficient. that at the same time it should be visible to everyone that justice has been done, so that everybody should reasonably believe that justice is manifestly distributed. in öne of its judgements, the respected Court stressed the importance of the lack of prejudice \vnich may affect the hearıng of the case in guestion. it was stated that memoers of a tribunal must not have any sentiment ör benefit against ör in favour of any of the two parties in a dispute. in Piersack v. Be/gium, 1992, objective indecision vvas defined as the impression, truslvvorthiness, and impartiality of the court as perceived by the accused, and it vvas stressed that in respecı to impartiality, the court is obliged to avoid any reasonable suspicion (see Cubber v. Belgium, 1984; Hauschildt v. Denmark. 1989; Holm v. Svveden,1992).

f) CONCLUSION: As the above account suggests, such attributes of DGMs as their existence, status. and trial procedure; their being extraordinary tribunals, their not being appear impartial, their being appear to be in reas.onable suspicion with regard to ımpartiality. ete. case them to stand in breach of the attributes demanded by Art. 6/1 of the Convention. Therefore, we kincıly demand from the Honourable Court to conduct an abstract revievv for "the Establishment and Trial Procodure of DGMs Act", numbered 2845. and then decıde that the DGMs are not "independent and impartial tribunals established by law".

Haci Ali Özhan............................................................................ hacialiozhan@hotmail.com