In the recent years, there were several developments in open access to information resources in Turkey. One of the most important ones is primary legal information resources namely legislation, the official gazette and case law.  I want to address these resources in more detail below:

The Turkish Official Gazette known as Resmi Gazete,   is available electronically since 2011 with all the coverage from February 7, 1921 to present free of charge at http://www.resmigazete.gov.tr  without any obligation for subscription.  The language of the Official Gazette was in Ottoman until December 1, 1928. Since then, it has been published in Turkish with the acception and use of the Turkish Alphabet. There isn’t any official translation in English.

The Legislative Information System (Mevzuat Bilgi Sistemi) covers all the legislation including laws, decrees having force of law, regulations, by-laws, circulars, repealed laws and International agreements. Amendments are daily consolidated and principal regulation republished as a single text. It is also in Turkish and available at http://mevzuat.basbakanlik.gov.tr free of charge.

In Case Law,  some of the High Court Decisions (Precedents) could be found on their web sites: The Constitutional Court (Anayasa Mahkemesi), The Court of Cassation (Yargitay), The Council of State (Danistay), The Military Court of Cassation (Askeri Yargitay), The High Military Administrative Court (Askeri Yuksek Idare Mahkemesi),  The Turkish Court of Accounts (Sayistay).

Last but not least, there is a database in the web page of Ministry of Foreign Affairs covering the International Agreements that Turkey took part at http://ua.mfa.gov.tr.

 

Kerem Kahvecioglu