Turkey’s Constitutional Court has annulled the provision of a decree preventing civil servants dismissed under emergency decrees in the aftermath of a coup attempt in 2016 who were later reinstated from seeking damages, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported.
The Constitutional Court found the rule unconstitutional because it allowed for indefinite application beyond the state of emergency rather than being limited to that time frame. The court also said the rule conflicted with the state’s duty to provide fair compensation for damages caused by its actions.
The court’s ruling, prompted by an appeal from the Council of State’s 5th Chamber, was published in the Official Gazette on Monday.
The provision, part of Law No. 7098 enacted on February 13, 2018, was found to be unconstitutional by unanimous decision.
Sezgin Tanrıkulu, human rights defender and a lawmaker from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), commented on the ruling on social media, calling the Constitutional Court’s decision significant.
“The only comment that can be made about the Justice and Development Party’s [AKP] victimization of thousands of public employees with this unlawful decree is: There’s no place for the AKP to hide,’” Tanrıkulu said.
On June 30, 2022 the court annulled a similar clause that barred claims for damages for people reinstated by the State of Emergency Procedures Investigation Commission, stating there was no reason to deviate from this earlier ruling.
Following their reinstatement, the public servants were able to recover their unpaid salaries but were not allowed to seek pecuniary or non-pecuniary damages caused by their unlawful dismissal from public service.
Following the abortive putsch, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight. Over 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, as well as 29,444 members of the armed forces, were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.
Former public servants were not only fired from their jobs; they were also banned from working again in the public sector and getting a passport. The government also made it difficult for them to work formally in the private sector. Notes were put on the social security database about dismissed public servants to deter potential employers.
A joint report released by the Justice for Victims Platform and Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a human rights defender and lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), states that dismissed public servants lost 70 percent of their average monthly income, reducing them to dire financial straits.
According to victims’ family members taking part in a survey, the biggest problem they have been facing is economic hardship (97.9 percent) followed by psychological problems (88.6 percent), loss of social prestige and social exclusion (83.7 percent), disintegration of social circles (83.1 percent), unemployment/lack of employment (80.4 percent) and lack of social security (73.2 percent).
The survey indicates that 99.1 percent of the victims are college or university graduates or holders of master’s or doctoral degrees, which means an immense loss of human resources for Turkey’s public administration.