Turkish Constitutional Court finds rights violations in nearly 12,000 cases in 2021

Turkey's Constitutional Court has found at least one rights violation in 11,830 of the personal applications in 2021. The right to a fair trial was the freedom that was violated the most often among the cases that were ruled on.

Wednesday January 19 2022 12:26 pm

Duvar English

The Turkish Constitutional Court (AYM) on Jan. 17 published personal application statistics covering the period between 2012 and 2021. A total of 361,159 individual petitions have been made since the personal application process was launched in 2012.

Some 66,121 applications were made only in 2021.

The top court ruled on 302,429 of these petitions, noting at least one rights violation in 25,857 of the applications, and ruling for an administrative dismissal on 12,627 applications. Some 11,830 of 25,857 rights violation rulings were made only in 2021 -- 45.8% of the total.

An overwhelming 261,681 petitions were ruled inadmissible by the court between 2012 and 2021.

The right to a fair trial was the freedom that was violated the most often among the cases that were ruled on, with a violation being observed in the 20,084 applications -- 76.8% of rulings.

Property rights were the second most commonly violated, although it still only showed up in 11.4% of rulings, followed by violations of the right to the protection of private and family life, and violations of the freedom of expression, with 2.6% and 2.5% of rulings in order.

The largest number of individual petitions to the court were made in 2016 with over 80,000 applications, when a failed coup attempt prompted Ankara to lay off thousands of public workers with state of emergency decrees to "cleanse the government of coup plotters."

The mechanism of individual petitions to the Constitutional Court mandates that the person applying must have exhausted all other legal means to solve their problem, meaning that they've failed to find justice in lower courts.