XY (Turkey) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

An asylum risk assessment on return must be conducted in the round and in light of up-to-date country conditions. Country-guidance risk factors are not a checklist. Past persecution linked to a family member remains part of the claimant’s material history. The family member’s death does not, by itself, erase that history or establish that official interest has ended. The absence of a record on the GBTS system does not show that the claimant will not come to the authorities’ attention, since other information sources may be available. A decision-maker errs in law by reducing the assessment to ethnicity and religion without considering past experiences, family connections, information sources and current objective evidence. Remission is appropriate where more than one outcome remains possible.

The appellant, a Turkish national of Kurdish ethnicity and Alevi Muslim, claimed asylum after repeated detention and mistreatment of him and his wife by Turkish authorities between 1996 and 2002. The claimed official interest was linked to his father’s activities for the proscribed PSK. The father later disappeared and was recorded as dead.

The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, in the decision promulgated on 19 July 2007 (AIT No. HX/41661/2002), accepted the core history and that it amounted to persecutory behaviour, but dismissed the appeal. It concluded that the father’s death ended official interest and that the appellant’s ethnicity and religion did not independently create a real risk. The central issue before the Court of Appeal was whether that assessment complied with the country-guidance framework in [2004] UKIAT 00312.

1. Disposition. The appeal was allowed. It could not be allowed outright because more than one outcome remained possible. The matter was remitted to the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal for redetermination, with the President or a nominee to give directions on the tribunal’s constitution and the scope of the rehearing. The appellant received his costs and anonymity was preserved.
2. Required risk assessment. Carnwath LJ, with Moses LJ and Sedley LJ agreeing, held that the framework in IK (Turkey) CG [2004] UKIAT 00312, drawing on A (Turkey) CG [2003] UKIAT 00034, required a rounded assessment based on careful scrutiny of the evidence, the various risk factors and the current political and human-rights context. The risk-factor list was not to be applied as a checklist.
3. Material history and family connections. The tribunal was entitled to find that the appellant’s past mistreatment was associated with his father’s activities. That finding was only the starting point. The father’s death did not justify treating the material history as erased, or treating family connections and background experiences as irrelevant. The tribunal therefore failed to assess the totality of the risk when it concluded that official interest had ended and considered only ethnicity and religious persuasion.
4. Information and country evidence. The fact that the appellant was unlikely to appear on the GBTS system did not establish that he would not come to official attention. The tribunal also had to consider other records and information available to the Turkish authorities. It further had to address the more recent objective evidence, including material said to show deterioration since the conditions considered in IK. The error was one of legal approach, not perversity.
5. Additional observation. Sedley LJ separately endorsed the independence of judicial fact-finding and evaluation in the context of section 8 of the 2004 Act. The preserved factual findings were to be taken into account on remission, but the risk assessment remained to be determined.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): allowed the appeal against the AIT’s decision of 19 July 2007 and remitted the matter for redetermination.
• Asylum and Immigration Tribunal: accepted the appellant’s core account and past persecutory treatment, but concluded that the father’s death ended official interest and dismissed the appeal.