Seventy-one percent of Turkish citizens believe there is no justice in Turkey, according to a new survey reported by Turkish Minute.
The survey, conducted by ASAL Research on 1,800 people in 26 of 81 provinces, found only 21.1 percent believes justice exists in the country, while 7.9 percent gave no answer.
This comes before President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s expected announcement of a new judicial reform plan on Thursday. The move will be the fourth reform plan since 2009, after similar documents in 2015 and 2019.
Legal expert Mehmet Gün criticized the upcoming reform plan in an article published on Wednesday on the Yetkinreport news website. He said previous reforms in 2009, 2015 and 2019 were ineffective and amounted to “to-do lists” rather than real changes.
Gün, who heads the Better Judiciary Association, said his organization submitted 80 reform proposals to the government in 2020 after President Erdoğan promised legal reforms, but received no response.
“It is necessary to define the problem in the judiciary accurately,” Gün said, adding that the reform packages prepared so far did not include the assessment of success or failure.
Among the major problems for Gün is the political influence on the judiciary. He argued that every government coming to power has tried to influence the judiciary to its advantage and that this prevented the beginning of constructive reform.
He says the judiciary should be independent of the political authority to function properly and favors an independent regulatory body similar to those in the energy and healthcare sectors.
The Council of Judges and Prosecutors, responsible for the appointment and promotion of judges, is controlled by the government, Gün claims. He further says such a structure undermines judicial independence.
The reform plan comes at a time when Turkey’s judiciary is beset with challenges that include corruption allegations, limited access to justice and poor training of legal professionals, Gün said.
