300 thousand individual applications to Constitutional Court in 8 years

* Photo: Anadolu Agency (AA)

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Introduced in Turkey on September 23, 2012 in an attempt to decrease the number of applications made to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the right to make an individual application was used by nearly 300 thousand people in the country in the last eight years.

As reported by the state-run Anadolu Agency (AA), 1,342 people made an individual application to the supreme court in 2012. This number was 9,897 in 2013, 20,578 in 2014 and 20,376 people in 2015.

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2016 saw the highest number of applications

The highest number of applications was made to the Constitutional Court in 2016, when thousands of people were dismissed from public service by Statutory Decrees in the aftermath of the military coup attempt on July 15, 2016. 80,756 people made an individual application in 2016.

The number of individual applications submitted to the Constitutional Court dropped by half in 2017; 40,530 people made an individual application to the supreme court that year. While 2018 saw 38,186 individual applications, this number was 42,971 in 2019 and 40,402 in 2020.

228 thousand applications found 'inadmissible'

295,038 individual applications were made to the Constitutional Court from September 23, 2012 to December 31, 2020. While 257,108 of these applications have been finalized, 37,930 applications are still pending.

Of the finalized applications, the Constitutional Court found no violations of rights in 738 applications and rejected 1,265 applications for reasons such as the drop of charges and closure.

While the supreme court concluded that at least one right was violated in 14,027 applications, it gave a ruling of administrative rejection in 12,223 applications and found 228,855 applications "inadmissible".

The Constitutional Court can conclude that more than one right of an applicant is violated. Over the past eight years, the supreme court gave 14,273 rulings of right violation within this framework.

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Highest number of applications for fair trial

While the highest number of individual applications were about the right to a fair trial, this right was followed by the "right to protection of privacy and family life", "prohibition of ill treatment", "right to an effective remedy", "right to personal liberty and security", "right to life", "right to assembly and demonstrations", "prohibition of discrimination", "freedom of assembly", "right to protection of tangible-intangible assets", "presumption of innocence", "no crime, no punishment without a previous penal law", "freedom of religion and conscience", "right to elect, to be elected and engage in political activity", "right to education" and "right to make an individual application". (RT/SD)