Turkey’s Constitutional Court has ruled that at least one fundamental right was violated in more than 79,500 cases over the past 13 years, raising fresh concerns among rights advocates about the country’s deteriorating human rights record, Turkish Minute reported.
According to new data released by the court, between September 23, 2012, when individual applications to the Constitutional Court were first allowed, and June 30, 2025, a total of 686,484 complaints were filed. The court has since processed 573,180 of them, rejecting 475,850 as inadmissible and finding violations in 79,565 cases.
The high court reported that 83.5 percent of the total applications have been reviewed so far, while 113,304 remain pending.
Violations related to fair trial, free expression and privacy
Of the 79,565 total cases where at least one violation of a constitutional right was confirmed, the most frequent was the right to a trial within a reasonable period of time, cited in 56,443 cases. Other violations included the right to a fair trial (7,587 cases), property rights (5,813), freedom of expression (4,552), the right to privacy and family life (1,976) and freedom of assembly (1,548). The remainder involved violations of various other fundamental rights.
The sharp rise in applications, particularly in recent years, reveals growing public discontent with the judiciary and broader concerns over civil liberties in Turkey. In 2022, the court received a record 109,779 applications. That figure was 108,816 in 2023, 70,699 in 2024 and 36,031 in just the first half of 2025.
Over the past decade, Turkey’s human rights record has sharply deteriorated, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused of consolidating his one-man rule. Critics say dissent is increasingly silenced and political opponents are frequently jailed on trumped-up charges, particularly following a coup attempt in July 2016 when the government launched a massive crackdown on non-loyalist citizens under the pretext of an anti-coup fight.
