Turkey: Appeal periods have been amended

With Law No. 7035 (“The Law Amending Certain Laws For The Purposes of Resolving the Issues Arising From the Operation of Reginal Courts of Justice and Regional Administrative Courts”), the period for appeal of the decisions which are subject to appeal as stated under Article 361 of the Civil Procedure Law No. 6100 has been amended from one month to two weeks as from the date of the notification of the judgements.

In Criminal Proceedings

In accordance with Article 21 of Law No. 7035, the 7-day appeal period set forth in Article 291 of the Criminal Procedure Code No. 5271 has been extended to 15 days. The aim is that parties exercise their appeal rights more effectively.

With this amendment, appeal shall be lodged within 15 days after the judgment has been made public or date of notification.

In Civil Proceedings

Furthermore, by Article 31 of Law No. 7035, the “one month” clause in the first paragraph of Article 361 of the Civil Procedure Law No. 6100 has been shortened to “two weeks”. This way, appeals may be filed within 2 weeks from the date of the appealable final decisions given by the District General Courts and the decisions made on request for cancellation of arbitration awards.

With the Civil Procedure Law No. 6100 dated 12 January 2011, the application procedure for appeal (istinaf) was arranged as a lower step before the appeal (temyiz) application in Turkish law. It was aimed that these courts, which have been operating since 20 June 2016, would alleviate the workload of the Court of Appeal (Yargıtay).

So Regional Courts of Justice (Bölge Adliye Mahkemeleri)  are consulted by the appeal (istinaf) legal remedy against the decisions of the courts of first instance,. After that, the appealable decisions of Regional Courts of Justice could be appealed to the Court of Appeal (Yargıtay) by the appeal (temyiz) legal remedy.

However in Law No. 6100, the application period for Regional Courts of Justice was 2 weeks, while the application period for the Court of Appeal was 1 month. According to the preamble of the Article, the amendment is supposed to eliminate this contradiction and to provide monotony in the application periods to the Court of Appeal and to the Regional Courts of Justice.

Effective Date

According to provisional Article 1 of Law No. 7035, the above-mentioned amendments to the appeal periods shall apply to decisions made on and after the date this law enters into force. The date of entry into force is specified in Article 34 as the date of publication of the Law which is August 5, 2017.

Thus, for decisions made before 5 August, the 7-days appeal period - not the 15-days period - will be applied –- in terms of criminal proceedings, while the 1 month appeal period –not 2 weeks-  will be applied in terms of civil proceedings.

Conclusion

As a result, Law no. 7035 contains significant changes to the meaning of procedural law. In particular, the reduction of the appeal period in civil proceedings could lead to a loss of rights. It is worthwhile paying attention to prevent this loss of rights and maybe to check twice.

Dr. Gökce Uzar Schüller, Attorney at Law
Munich and Istanbul

Pelin Kimiz, Trainee
Munich