A decision of the Turkish Constitutional Court on an individual application is read abroad in two settings: as an annex to an application to the European Court of Human Rights, or as proof to an authority in another country of how proceedings in Türkiye ended. It does not look like other Turkish court decisions. It has a formal first page, numbered paragraphs and an operative part in lettered orders, and that shape is prescribed in the Internal Rules of the Court, which is also what citations to these decisions rely on.
Commission or Section
The Internal Rules deal with the form of Commission decisions in Article 77 and that of Section decisions in Article 78. In a Commission decision the header carries the emblem, the words “Anayasa Mahkemesi” and the Commission, and in decisions given by way of a list the summaries of the procedure, the facts and the complaints may be absent (Article 77(3)); decisions of inadmissibility are final and are served on those concerned (Law No. 6216, Article 48(4)). A Commission decision of a few lines is not an incomplete decision, and whether the body that decided was a Commission or a Section stays as printed, the two never sharing one English word.
The first page and the application number
The first page of a Section decision carries the emblem, the words “Anayasa Mahkemesi”, the Section, the application number and the date of the decision (Article 78(1)(a)). In practice the name by which the application is known, usually the applicant’s name, appears there too. The place of the emblem is marked in translation with a note such as “[Emblem]”. The application number is copied with its year, its sequence and its slash untouched, and a reference in the form “B. No: 2019/12345” is left as it stands. The name of the Section is the name of a unit of the Court and is given with its Turkish form at the first mention.
Paragraph numbers survive translation
After the first page the decision runs in numbered paragraphs covering the bench and the rapporteur, the parties and their representatives, the procedure followed, the facts, a summary of the complaints and the observations, the reasoning, the operative part and the costs (Article 78(1)(b)). Decisions also carry intermediate headings with Roman numerals, which come from the practice of the Court rather than from the Internal Rules, so in English the numbering of the headings and the numbering of the paragraphs remain two separate systems. Sentences inside a paragraph may be reordered to read naturally, but paragraph boundaries and their numbers are not touched, and the references and paragraph numbers of quoted judgments of the European Court of Human Rights are reproduced as given.
Violation, and what has to be done
The reasoning deals first with admissibility, then with the merits. Under Article 50(1) of Law No. 6216 the Court decides whether the applicant’s right was violated and, in a violation decision, rules on what has to be done to remove the violation and its consequences; the same paragraph sets two limits, in that the Court may not review expediency and may not give a decision in the nature of an administrative act or action. The section on redress matches the lettered orders: where the violation stems from a court decision, the file is sent to the court concerned for a fresh trial, and where that route serves no legal purpose, compensation may be awarded or the way to an action before the ordinary courts may be indicated (Article 50(2)). The wording used in the reasoning and in the operative part is rendered with the same English term in both places.
Lettered orders in the operative part
The operative part consists of orders in letters: that the application is admissible, that a named right was violated, that a copy of the decision be sent to the court concerned for a fresh trial, that compensation be paid to the applicant. Where the verbs are printed in capitals, that typography carries the legal result forward and can be kept in English with capitals or bold. The letters and their order do not change. An order that the application is inadmissible and an order that no violation was found are two different outcomes and are rendered with two different formulas. The order on compensation and costs keeps its own letter and its currency.
Dissents, signatures and where the text came from
Members may append a dissenting opinion or a separate or additional reasoning (Article 78(2)), and dissents are submitted within fifteen days of the decision (Article 81(2)); they stand at the end under headings of their own, and where they are left untranslated a note records it. Decisions are signed by the president and the members of the bench and sealed with the seal of the Court (Article 81(1)). Section decisions with their reasoning are served on those concerned and on the Ministry of Justice and published on the website of the Court (Law No. 6216, Article 50(3)); pilot and leading decisions are published in the Official Gazette as well (Internal Rules, Articles 81(4) and 81(5)), so whether the translation was made from the served copy or from the website belongs in the translator’s note. Acte Tercüme translates Constitutional Court decisions on individual applications into English with their dissenting opinions.