Turkey’s Constitutional Court received 428,554 individual applications between 2012 and June 30 of this year, with some 70 percent of them concerning violations of the right to a fair or timely trial, local media reported over the weekend, citing the statistics announced by the court on its website.
The right to file an individual application with the Constitutional Court was introduced in 2012.
The court broke down the figures according to the number of applications made by year. In 2012, it received 1,342 individual applications, while it received a whopping 80,756 in 2016, a year marked by a military coup attempt. In 2017 the number of individual applications fell to 40,530, before it increased again to 66,121 in 2021. And between Jan. 1 and June 30 of this year, the figure was 67,395.
Of the total number of applications between 2012 and 2022, some 70 percent of the applicants said their right to a fair or timely trial had been violated, according to the statistics, which also showed that the court has settled 320,253 of the cases so far, corresponding to 74.7 percent of total applications.
Fully 108,301 applications filed with the court were still waiting to be concluded as of June 30.
The court found 64.4 percent of the settled cases (276,188) to be “inadmissible.” It found that “at least one [constitutional] right was violated” in just 6.7 percent, or 28,838, of the total settled applications.
Of the 29,196 violation rulings, 60.6 percent (17,681) were related to a violation of the applicant’s right to trial within a reasonable period of time; 10.6 percent (3,095) to a violation of the right to own property; 10 percent (2,908) to a violation of the right to a fair trial; 8.8 percent (2,561) to a violation of the right of freedom of expression; 2.6 percent (761) to a violation of the right to protection of individual and family life; and 1.8 percent (522) concerned violation the right guaranteeing freedom from torture and ill-treatment.