Turkey’s Constitutional Court has ruled that a court mechanism that allowed some convictions to be effectively suspended can no longer be used, striking down parts of Article 231 of the Code of Criminal Procedure that let judges defer verdicts in cases where prison sentences did not exceed two years, Turkish Minute reported.
The Constitutional Court said the law had no specific safeguard to prevent public officials convicted of torture or ill-treatment from benefiting from the suspended sentence mechanism.
Since there was no exception for torture and ill treatment cases, the court annulled the relevant provision.
The annulment will take effect nine months after publication, giving lawmakers time to amend the law so the suspended sentence mechanism does not cover torture and ill-treatment convictions.
The ruling, published Wednesday in the Official Gazette, annuls provisions that enabled courts to apply a procedure that defers the announcement of a verdict and keeps a conviction from taking legal effect. Under the system, the conviction is not entered into the defendant’s criminal record as long as the person does not commit a similar offense during a probation period.
In its reasoning the court said there was no specific legal safeguard preventing the procedure from being applied to torture and ill-treatment committed by public officials in the course of their job, finding that this gap conflicted with the constitution’s absolute ban on torture. It said allowing the mechanism in such cases violated the constitution, including Article 17, which prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment.
The decision followed an application filed by the main opposition Republican People’s Party, which challenged the constitutionality of the verdict deferral system in cases involving serious human rights violations.
The court also recalled earlier assessments linking the practice to impunity, saying it had caused systemic problems in relation to the right to life and the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment. It said the practice had affected a broad range of fundamental rights, including freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly and lacked adequate protections against arbitrary state action.
Rights groups have long argued that the use of verdict deferrals in cases involving state violence has shielded perpetrators from accountability.
The Constitutional Court said the annulment will take effect nine months after publication.
The decision comes against persistent allegations of torture and ill-treatment in Turkey. According to a report released in November by the Human Rights Association, at least 3,254 cases of torture or ill-treatment were recorded in 2024, including incidents in police custody, during protests and in prisons.
The association documented hundreds of cases involving abuse in detention facilities and said police interventions at peaceful demonstrations accounted for the largest share of reported violations. It also recorded deaths in custody under suspicious circumstances and warned that the true scale of abuse is likely higher than official figures suggest.
