PodcastTop court: Locals courts violated rights of workers sacked with gov't decree by dismissing their lawsuits
Local courts have violated the rights of two contractor workers employed in public projects by dismissing their re-employment lawsuits, said Turkey's Constitutional Court. The workers were sacked with a state of emergency decree over allegations of involvement in terror groups.
Duvar English
Turkey's Constitutional Court has said in two separate rulings that local courts have violated the rights of two applicants after dismissing their lawsuits seeking to be reinstated back to their jobs.
The cases concern the applications of Berrin Baran Eker and Emin Arda Büyük, who were employed at two separate private contractors conducting works for a municipality and a public university, ANKA news agency reported on Aug. 14.
The municipality in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır and the university in the Aegean province of Muğla asked the contractors to terminate the employment contracts of Eker and Büyük citing their alleged involvement in terror groups.
The contractors abided by this decision and sacked Eker and Büyük citing the statutory decrees (KHK) issued during a two-year state of emergency after the failed coup attempt of July 2016.
Eker and Büyük took the case to the local courts, which ruled for the lawsuits to be dismissed. The two then applied to the appeals courts, only to face a similar dismissal result. Eker and Büyük then took their case to the Constitutional Court saying that the allegations of membership to a terror organization were not based on any evidence and their rights to a fair trial had been violated.
The Constitutional Court took the Justice Ministry's defense in the case, which argued that the local courts' and appeals courts' dismissal of the re-employment lawsuits were in line with the legislation and judicial opinion.
The top court said in two separate rulings that the local courts and appeals courts had violated the applicants' rights to a fair trial as they had refused to hear out the applicants' arguments. The top court ruled a re-trial of the two cases and thereby sent the files back to the local courts.
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