President Arslan delivered a speech at the 133^rd Plenary Session of the Venice Commission. At the very beginning of his speech, President Arslan referred to Rudyard Kipling’s famous words: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet” and noted “These words are often quoted or rather misquoted to underline the divide between the east and the west. Undoubtedly, there are significant social, cultural and political differences between eastern and western societies. However, Kipling also stated that this division will disappear ‘When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!’”

President Arslan, noting that human history had witnessed the raise of many strong men and women to unite the political and legal values of the twin parts of the earth, stated that Mevlânâ Jalâlu’ddîn Rûmî, a 13^th century poet and thinker who had lived in central Türkiye had been one of them, and he continued “According to Rûmî the law functions to resolve quarrels and disputes among people in a peaceful way. Therefore, he regarded the judge, who applied the law to resolve conflicts, as ‘a mercy (bestowed by God) and the means of removing strife’. He said that judge was ‘a drop from the ocean of the justice of the Resurrection’”.

Stressing that Rumî’s definition of justice, which was simply putting everything in its right place, was also still relevant, President Arslan continued:

“The thoughts of Rûmî, like many others from the eastern and western parts of the world, reveal that we have common values and principles to be protected by the judiciary. In this regard, it is clear that today constitutional courts exist to protect the foundational pillars of constitutional democracy, such as the principles of rule of law, separation of powers and human rights.”

 President Arslan stressed that the Constitutional Court of Türkiye was the bulwark of the constitutional principles and values, most notably basic rights and liberties of individuals. Pointing out that the introduction of the constitutional complaint mechanism by the  constitutional amendment of 2010 was a turning point in the field of constitutional justice in Türkiye, President Arslan stated “the main function of constitutional complaints is to protect constitutionally guaranteed rights of individuals”.

President Arslan noted that the constitutional complaint provided the Constitutional Court with the opportunity to adopt a rights-based approach which gave certain priority to the protection of individual rights and liberties vis-à-vis any social and political interests. Stressing that the rights-based approach, which was based on the assumption that freedom was the rule and restriction was the exception, required the Constitution to be interpreted in favour of rights and liberties, President Arslan specified that with its rights-based approach, the Court delivered many violation judgments resolving the legal problems of different segments of society.

President Arslan, further indicating that the Court’s case law set out the standards to protect constitutional rights in conformity with the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, added that the Constitutional Court, in deciding cases, took into account the case law of the Strasbourg Court, as well as the reports and opinions of the Venice Commission on certain constitutional matters.

President Arslan noted that against all odds, a decade of experience proved that the individual application to the Constitutional Court was an effective domestic remedy to be exhausted before lodging an application to the Strasbourg Court.

Indicating that formidable challenges were faced in terms of maintaining the constitutional complaint as an effective and successful remedy, President Arslan emphasized that the most serious of these challenges was the intensive workload that posed the danger of overburdening the Court.

President Arslan, specifying that in order to manage the workload problem, the Constitutional Court adopted two effective means, stated “First, the Court has established a very efficient system for filtering inadmissible applications. Second, following the practice of the Strasbourg Court, the Constitutional Court has also adopted ‘the pilot judgment procedure’ that is applicable in cases where an application raises a systematic and structural problem causing massive and repetitive violations.”

Concluding his speech, President Arslan stressed that the Constitutional Court was wholeheartedly endeavouring to keep the constitutional complaint as an example of good practices within the Council of Europe, and added that as a founding member of the Council of Europe, Türkiye was committed to these basic values which were deeply entrenched in the Constitution.

Click for the speech delivered by President Zühtü Arslan.