- in Turkey
The decision of the Constitutional Court ("CC"), dated 15 October 2025 and numbered 2022/53511 (the "Decision"), in which the Court held that the right to a fair trial was violated due to the failure to serve the expert report relied upon in the proceedings concerning an administrative fine on the applicant, was published in the Official Gazette dated 19 January 2026 and numbered 33142.
Background of the Individual Application
The applicant applied to the criminal judgeship of peace seeking the annulment of the administrative fine imposed on him/her. Although the expert report forming the basis of the administrative sanction was relied upon in the course of the proceedings, this report was not served on the applicant and was not accessible through the National Judiciary Informatics System ("NJIS"). Accordingly, the applicant asserted that he/she had been unable to submit objections and statements regarding the said report, and that this situation had violated the right of defence as well as the principle of equality of arms in judicial proceedings.
The CC, assessed in its Decision, whether the reliance on an expert report not having been served to all the parties as the basis of the judgment, constituted a violation of the right to a fair trial guaranteed under Article 36 of the Constitution, particularly with regard to the principles of equality of arms and adversarial proceedings.
The CC's Evaluation
The CC, referring to several of its previous decisions of a similar nature, emphasized that the scope and content of the principles of equality of arms and adversarial proceedings have been well-established in its case law. The CC underlined that judicial authorities must provide parties with reasonable and effective opportunities to present and examine evidence and to challenge the evidence submitted by the opposing party. The CC noted that depriving a party of the opportunity to be heard or to comment on the evidence relied upon by the court would render the judicial process unbalanced and asymmetric to the detriment of that party.
In this context, the CC observed that although the case file had been referred to an expert and the decision had been based on the resulting expert report in the proceedings concerning the administrative fine, the report had neither been served on the applicant nor otherwise made accessible through NJIS. Consequently, the applicant had been deprived of the opportunity to review, assess, and object to the report forming the basis of the judgment. The CC concluded that this situation violated the principles of equality of arms and adversarial proceedings, which are safeguarded under the right to a fair trial enshrined in Article 36 of the Constitution.
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