Prison authorities at Tekirda and Bolu, where the 10 plaintiffs were serving sentences, had refused in 2008 to dispatch their letters on the grounds that they were unable to be monitored because they were written in Kurdish.

Tuesday's ruling concluded that Turkey has no legal basis to refuse the dispatch of letters written in languages other than Turkish, and that it breaches the right to respect for private and family life, and correspondence. The ruling added that a ministerial bill was adopted in 2009 following the complaints that "strives for the removal of restrictions over letters written in a language other than Turkish".