Turkey's Constitutional Court President calls for ‘separation of powers’

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The 60th foundation anniversary of the Constitutional Court was marked with a ceremony yesterday (April 26).

The ceremony was attended by President and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Parliamentary Speaker Mustafa Şentop, Vice President Fuat Oktay, main opposition CHP Chair Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, İYİ Party Chair Meral Akşener, Minister of National Defense Hulusi Akar, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ, Court of Cassation President Mehmet Akarca, Court of Accounts President Metin Yener and Court of Cassation Chief Public Prosecutor Bekir Şahin as well as several other guests from Turkey and abroad.

Making the opening speech, Constitutional Court President Zühtü Arslan underlined that the main duty of courts is to protect justice.

Noting that one cannot talk about a constitution where there is no separation of powers, Arslan said that individual applications were the turning point in Turkey's constitutional justice. Arslan briefly added:

Individual applications

"The Constitutional Court has been really faced with the heaviest and most intense workload of its 60 years of history.

"There has especially been a very swift increase in the number of individual applications. As of today (April 26), 95 thousand individual applications have been pending before the Constitutional Court.

"There are not as many applications pending before the Constitutional Court of any country receiving individual applications as Turkey; there are not as many applications even before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which receives applications from 47 countries.

"The ECtHR receives applications from 47 countries and 72 thousand applications are pending before the ECtHR. This number is 95 thousand for the Constitutional Court. These applications have gone well beyond the limits of manageability, which requires an urgent intervention."

Accordingly, Constitutional Court President Arslan requested that the necessary legal arrangements be introduced within this context.

He underlined the importance of "bringing the objective effect of individual applications into life, namely depleting the sourse of the rights violations in order to radically resolve the issue with the workload."

"This is only possible if the laws, administrative authorities' decisions or court rulings leading to the violation in question are eliminated following the Constitutional Court's ruling of rights violation," stressed Arslan: "We can prevent new applications and new violations if we do this." (EMK/SD)