ABOUT US

The Republic of Turkey is a democratic, secular and social state governed by the rule of law. The constitutional order of the Turkish Republic is based on the principle of separation of powers.

Judicial power, one of the equal three powers, legislative power, executive and judicial power, shall be exercised by independent courts on behalf of the Turkish Legislative and Executive organs and the administration shall comply with the decisions of the judicial organs. No organ, authority, officer or individual may give any order or instruction to the courts or judges relating to the exercise of judiciary power and may not send them circular notes or make recommendations or suggestions.

The Supreme Court (Yargitay), the supreme court in charge of reviewing the decisions and judgements given by courts of justice from the point of conformity to the law, is to ensure the unification by the legal practice and to illuminate the interpretation of provisions of codes.

The Supreme Court was established in 1868 before the Republic of Turkey  in the context of Ottoman reformation. The formation and manner of working of this Court have been regulated by the special code. This Code ,being stil in force, is the Code of Supreme Court dated 1983, numbered 2797. According to the division of work, the Court is divided into civil and criminal chambers. There are 23 civil and 15 criminal chambers. Quorum for meeting of a chamber is five person, four of which are member-judges an done is the president of the chamber. Judgments are made by majority of vote. All presidents and judge-members of civil chambers form the Assembly of Civil Chambers and all presidents and judge-members of criminal chambers constitute the Assembly of Criminal Chambers, General Board of Civil and Criminal Department, conclude appellate review on the lower court's judgement, in case the decision of the lower court does not comply with that of  the chamber, persisting in its own decision.

General boards of every two divisions, both civil and criminal, has undertaken the functioning of unification of judgments, which binds all other courts and chambers of the Supreme Court. In the Supreme Court, in total 387 high judges consisting of the first president of the entire court, two vice president, chief prosecutor, vice chief prosecutor, 38 head of chamber and other high judges; 812 judge-rapporteur whose duty is to carry out preliminary preparation and to explain case-file to the judge-members of this Court and 200 prosecutor of the Court work in the Supreme Court. One of judge-members is selected by the first president of the Court as a General Secretary.

In the civil chambers, average case (2006 - 2010) file number coming to these chambers annualy is 350.000 and duration of handling the case file changes from two months to three months. In the criminal chambers, on average 250.000 case files are concluded annualy. Because of the fact that criminal case files are examined by prosecutors of the Supreme Court before the chambers and these prosecutors prepare and submit a written recommendation concerning the appeal to the chambers, duration of handling the criminal case file is more longer than that of civil case file. However, duration of handling the file in criminal chambers is very close to that of civil chambers.

In our country there is a two- level judiciary system. According to this system, the decisions of first instance courts are evaluated by the Supreme Court on the aspects of the lawfulness of the implementation and the act of proving.

The establishment of the judiciary as a three level system in which the Court of Appeal takes place was carried out in our country for some time but it was abolished in 1924 because of the acceptance of these courts as the obstacle of the rapid processing of justice on the conditions of that days as the process of applying the western law system was accepted. But nowadays it has been planned to establish three-level judiciary system again.

Today the conditions of the early years of the Republic has been changed and there is a necessity to harmonise our domestic legislation with the European Union Law System on the way going to the membership of the European Union. In western countries, the supreme courts corresponding to our Supreme Court have duty as a ' jurisprudence court' and according to this role, they only deal with points of laws and they don't deal with the point of facts.

But the Supreme Court both makes the unification of judgements and supervises the evidentiary of facts of the crimes by evaluating the decisions of first instance courts.

Nowadays the world is in a process of a fast development and change. By the same way Turkey has also important advances in economic, social cultural and law areas. Our country preferred the acceptance of the Western Law System by the establishment of the Republic in 1923 and took place among those countries as a self-respecting member. To protect the human rights and freedoms properly and to provide the balance of the society -without making a concession from the uniform structure of the State- some changes and arrangements have been made in our positive law and also the studies are going on to apply new laws on the issues where no regulation takes place on the integration process with European Union. Because of these reasons, the need of a reform in judiciary which responds to the changing conditions is believed by competent authorities and it is emphasized in the annual government programmes. It must be clarified with a great importance that in a democratic state which is  based on the rule of law an independent, efficient and rapid judiciary is the assurance of the state and the society.