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 principle of separation of powers.

Judicial power, which is the one of 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 decisions of the judicial organs. No organ, authority, office or individual may give order or instruction to courts or judges relating to exercise of judiciary power, send them circulars or make recommendations or suggestions.

The Supreme Court (Yargıtay), which is supreme court in charge of reviewing the decisions and judgements given by courts of justice from point of conformity to law, is to ensure the unification in the legal practice and to enlighten 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 which is being force is Code of Supreme Court dated 1983, numbered 2797. According to division of work, the Court is divided into civil and criminal chambers. There are 21 civil and 11 criminal chambers. Quorum of meeting of a chamber is five person, four of which are member-judges, one of which is president of the chamber. Judgments are taken by majority. All presidents and judge-members of civil chambers form General Civil Assembly, and all presidents and judge-members of criminal chambers constitute General Criminal Assembly General Assemblies, general boards of civil and criminal law, conclude appellate review on the lower court's judgement, if the lower court does not comply with the chamber's decision, persisting in its own decision

General boards of every two divisions, together civil and criminal, has undertake the functioning of unification of judgments, which binds all other courts and chambers of the Supreme Court. In the Supreme Court, total 250 high judges, which consist of first president of the entire court, two agent-president, chief prosecutor, agent-chief prosecutor, 32 head of chamber and other high judges; 440 rapporteur-judge whose duty is to carry out preliminary preparation and to explain case-file to the judge-members of this Court and 144 prosecutor of the Court work in the Supreme Court. One of judge-members is selected by first president of the Court as a general secretary.

In the civil chambers, average case-file number which come to these chambers annualy is 261716 and duration of handling the case-file changes from two months to three months. In the criminal chambers, 139025 case-files are concluded on the average 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, in the criminal chambers duration of handling the file is very near the 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 which Court of Appeal takes place in the system is carried out in our country in some period but it is 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 when the process of applying the western law system is accepted. But nowadays it is planned to establishment three level judiciary system again.

Today the conditions of the early years of the Republic is 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 which correspond our Supreme Court have duty as a "jurispuridence court" and according to this role, they only deal with points of laws and they don't deal with 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 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 responses 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 based on the rule of law, an independent, efficient and rapid judiciary is the assurance of the state and the society.