A report released on Thursday by the Council of Europe’s European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) has revealed that Turkey is investing as little as 18.2 euros per capita in its judicial system.
The 2018 edition of the CEPEJ report, titled “European judicial systems — Efficiency and quality of justice,” is based on statistics from the year 2016.
The amount Turkey spends on its judicial system per capita is behind the average amount of 58.1 euros per capita in Europe.
In the CEPEJ’s previous report, which was based on data from 2014, Turkey spent 20.9 euros per capita on its judicial system.
According to the report, among all European countries Switzerland allocates the largest amount of money to its judicial system, 214.8 euros per capita. It is followed by Luxembourg with 118.6 euros, Germany with 121.9 euros, Holland with 119.2 euros and Sweden with 118.6 euros.
The European Council member countries that allocate the least amount of public funding to their judicial systems per capita are Azerbaijan with 7.8 euros, Ukraine with 8.1 euros, Moldova with 8.3 euros, Armenia with 8.4 euros and Georgia with 9.7 euros.
With regard to the amount of revenue states generate through court taxes and fees, Turkey is among the states that make the largest amount of revenue.
Germany is the number one country in Europe in terms of high revenue from court taxes and fees, with 4.3 billion euros. It is followed by Austria with around 1.1 billion euros and then by Turkey with around 903 million euros. The average amount of revenue from court taxes and fees in Europe is approximately 242 million euros.
Among European countries, only in France, Luxembourg and Spain are citizens not required to pay court taxes or fees.
With regard to the number of judges, prosecutors and lawyers, Turkey is cited in the lower ranks in the CEPEJ report, which shows that there are only 14 judges and six prosecutors for every 100,000 people in the country. The European average per 100,000 people is 22 judges and 12 prosecutors.
In Europe, 47 percent of judges are male while 53 percent are female. In Turkey, 58 percent of judges are male while 42 percent of them are female.
A judge who is at the beginning of their career in Europe makes a yearly gross salary of around 50,000 euros and a higher judge earns as much as 96,000 euros, while a new judge earns around a 24,000 euro gross salary in Turkey and a senior one earns 44,000 euros.
Turkey’s government and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are heavily criticized for having taken the country’s judiciary under their absolute control. Judges and prosecutors who make decisions or initiate investigations that Erdoğan does not like are fired from their jobs and in most cases jailed.
Several thousand judges and prosecutors have been dismissed from their posts in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016, while many of them were jailed under the pretext of an anti-coup fight.