The European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in Benli v. Türkiye (no. 29949/20) on 15 September 2026, finding violations of Article 8 of the Convention on two counts. The judgment was given unanimously by a three-judge Committee, the formation reserved for cases covered by well-established case law. It is final and cannot be referred to the Grand Chamber.

The applicant, Salih Benli, a judge at the time, was detained on 21 July 2016, six days after the coup attempt, on charges of membership of an armed terrorist organisation. He was held first in Diyarbakır and, from 17 August 2016, in Şanlıurfa T-Type High-Security Prison. He was convicted at first instance and released on 23 March 2018.

According to the Government’s own account, Benli had fifteen meetings with his lawyer between 1 September 2016 and 23 March 2018. All fifteen were monitored, with an officer present in the room.

The measure rested on a notice issued by the Diyarbakır chief public prosecutor’s office on 23 July 2016, which invoked section 6(1)(d) of Emergency Decree No. 667. That notice directed the prison administration to place an officer at meetings between detainees and their lawyers, and to seize documents exchanged between them and the records they kept of those meetings.

The Court held that the discretion the provision gave prosecutors was not subject to any conditions, that its scope and manner of exercise were undefined, and that no specific guarantees were provided, so its application was liable to be arbitrary and incompatible with the lawfulness requirement of Article 8. It followed its 2023 judgment in Canavcı and Others v. Türkiye, finding nothing to justify departing from it.

Turkey invoked its derogation of 21 July 2016 under Article 15. The Court held that the absence of safeguards against arbitrariness and abuse in section 6(1)(d) cannot be regarded as justified by that derogation.

On the second count, the Court found that the recording and storage of Benli’s letters to his wife on the National Judicial Network System (UYAP) was not in accordance with law. It followed Nuh Uzun and Others v. Turkey (2022), in which it held that the Ministry of Justice letters underlying the practice had never been communicated to prisoners and so failed the quality-of-law requirement. Turkey argued that stored material had been deleted in March 2022; the Court noted that those safeguards entered into force long after the measure had been applied to Benli.

Benli complained to the Şanlıurfa enforcement judge in January 2017, was refused, and had his objection dismissed by the Şanlıurfa Assize Court. In March 2017 he applied to the Turkish Constitutional Court, relying directly on Article 8 and citing the Strasbourg case law. In March 2020 that court declared the application inadmissible, examining the lawyer-monitoring complaint as one about time and facilities to prepare a defence and rejecting it for non-exhaustion because his criminal proceedings were ongoing, and dismissing the remainder as manifestly ill-founded.

Before the Strasbourg Court, the Government repeated the non-exhaustion argument. The Court rejected it, holding that Benli had raised his private-life complaint before the Constitutional Court.

He claimed €15,000 in non-pecuniary damage and €6,000 in costs. The Court awarded €2,000 and €500.

The application was lodged on 29 June 2020 and decided six years and three months later, in a formation reserved for questions the Court regards as already settled.