The third Case Law Forum on the Judgments of the Turkish Constitutional Court related to Civil Proceedings was organized on 23-24 November 2017 in Ankara within the framework of the Joint Project on Supporting Individual Application to the Constitutional Court in Turkey.
Representatives of the Constitutional Court, the Court of Cassation, Ministry of Justice, Council of Judges and Prosecutors, the Union of Turkish Bar Associations and nine Regional Courts of Appeals discussed and evaluated the individual application judgments of the Constitutional Court related to civil proceedings in the forum, which aimed to contribute to harmonising the case laws of supreme courts of Turkey in line with the European Court of Human Rights. Academics from various universities and a lawyer from the European Court of Human Rights in addition to the representatives of high courts, participated in the forum which offered an opportunity to evaluate the compliance of judgments of the Court of Cassation and Constitutional Court with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.
In his opening speech, Michael Ingledow, Head of Council of Europe Ankara Programme Office highlighted that human rights should be protected at all levels of judiciary effectively, the review made by the European Court of Human Rights and the Constitutional Court was of subsidiary nature and the fundamental rights and freedoms should be primarily protected by instance courts.
Mehmet Kürtül, Vice-president of the Court of Cassation underlined in his speech that the project planned to be implemented with the Council of Europe on strengthening the institutional capacity of the Court of Cassation would be useful for further improvement of the individual application system. He added that such meetings organised on specific subjects provided an opportunity to discuss the case laws which would also contribute to raising awareness among judicial actors.
Prof Engin Yıldırım, Vice President of the Constitutional Court referred to the effective functioning of the individual application system in his speech and pointed out that individual application judgments were closely followed both by supreme judicial authorities and lower courts. He added that the Court is considering “constitutional significance” as an admissibility criterion in individual applications and they expect increase in the rate of remedy of alleged violation of fundamental rights and freedoms by instance courts with the implementation of this criterion. He concluded that project activities such as the case law forum enabled assessment of the current situation.
A book consisting of a selection of Constitutional Court individual application judgments related to civil proceedings was published and distributed to the participants. The book will be distributed to all stakeholders.
The agenda of the forum and the judgments discussed in the forum
Please click for details of the book titled “Individual Application Judgments related to Civil Judiciary” (only in Turkish)
Please click here to watch the videos of presentations (only in Turkish)
