Confidence in Judicial System Extremely Low, Says Constitutional Court Deputy President
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Engin Yıldırım, Deputy President of the Constitutional Court, has spoken at the closing conference of the "Joint Project for Supporting the Individual Application System to the Constitutional Court" in İstanbul.
Yıldırım said that the project, which aims to strengthen the individual application system to AYM, has achieved its objective in general.
Referring to a recent research study, Yıldırım made the following remarks on people's confidence in the judiciary:
"Unfortunately, there is a result in public opinion polls. "Confidence in the Turkish judiciary system is extremely low. Maybe there are small differences between this or that judicial body but overall, people living in Turkey do not have much confidence in the Turkish judiciary system." This is a very serious problem. "
"In general, people living in Turkey do not much confidence in the Turkish judicial system. This is a very serious problem.
"According to an academic study which has not yet been published and I have had the opportunity to read, as income, age and level of education increase, trust in the judiciary decreases further. This is probably related to the rise and non-fulfillment of expectations, but it points to a serious situation.
"And perhaps the most striking result is that there is a serious difference of confidence between those who are involved in any part of the judicial system and those who are not involved in any way at all. Those who have interacted with the judiciary have much lower confidence in the judiciary than those who have not. "
On the individual application system, Yıldırım said, "In fact, the individual application is not a system, but a sub-system of our judicial system. Like all systems, there are inputs, processes, outputs. We rather focus on processes and outputs as far as I can see. The most challenging aspect of this system is the inputs.
"Namely, the number of applications... How can this be reduced? The way to reduce this, I'm not going into the technical aspect and saying this in terms of mentality, is to establish a right-based and conscience-based judicial culture.
Labov: Many countries do not have this perfect procedure
Mikhail Labov, Head of Human Rights Policy and Cooperation Department of the Council of Europe General Directorate of Human Rights and Rule of Law, stated that the project lasted 45 months and 10 days and that it was a unique project with its subject, duration and discussions.
"When the individual application system was first adopted in Turkey I and my friends from other countries were very jealous of Turkey. We were very jealous that Turkey, in full accordance with the contract, having such a mechanism to exhaust domestic remedies. "Many countries currently do not have this excellent procedure.
"Of course there are issues that need to be solved and we have discussed them. It is necessary to draw attention to the issue of execution of decisions. It is very important both to enforce and implement decisions. Decisions should really be expressed and implemented in a meaningful way." (TP/VK)