Right to Petition on Constitutional Interpretation

Right to Individual Petition on Constitutional Interpretation

Right to Individual Petition on Constitutional Interpretation: Interpretation of International Law and the Turkish Judicial System

The Turkish Constitutional Court started accepting individual petitions for violations of fundamental rights and freedoms and delivering remedies to those whose rights were found to be violated on of 23 September 2012. According to Turkish Constitutional Court statistics, as of 23 September 2014, 26,642 applications have been lodged with the Court. At this date the Court had delivered 11,146 judgments comprising of decisions on join cases, administrative rejections, inadmissibility, admissibility, violation, striking out of the list and withdrawal decisions. Of all of these 267 were admissibility decisions. The Court delivered 6,460 admissibility decisions. 302 cases had been finalized with a violation judgment.

Across the literature on constitutional law and international law no systematic study has been carried out to date about the effects of this case law on constitutional interpretation, international law interpretation and on the Turkish judicial system. The Turkish Constitutional Court also awaits study from a comparative constitutional law perspective. Existing studies thus far have focused on the procedural aspects of the right to individual petition and interpretative analysis of the individual high profile judgments of the Turkish Constitutional Court.

Authors: Bertil Emrah Oder, Başak Çalı