The highest judicial body in the Turkish legal system is the Turkish Constitutional Court. Everyone may apply to the Constitutional Court on the grounds that any of the fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Turkish Constitution and within the scope of the European Convention on Human Rights, have been violated by the public authority. This is called the right for individual application.
Individual application refers to all of the administrative and judicial remedies prescribed by law in cases where any of the fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey and the European Convention on Human Rights and the additional protocols to which Turkey is a party are violated due to the action, movement or negligence of the public power. It is a way of seeking human rights after consumption of all other legal ligiation ways.
Violations of individual rights resulting from employee-employer disputes are sometimes reflected in the Turkish Constitutional Court, and the decisions given by the court can be decisive in employment relations.
In this context, an important jurisprudence regarding employee-employer relations has been created with the decision of the Turkish Constitutional Court published in the Turkish Official Gazette dated 27.03.2024. With the aforementioned Decision No. 2019/20965 of the Constitutional Court, a rejection decision was made stating that the applicant’s freedom of expression was not violated in the case requesting a determination of violation of rights due to the termination of the employment contract of the applicant, who worked as a worker in a cleaning company, due to his post on his social media account.
In the justification of the decision of the Turkish Constitutional Court, it was stated that “the employee’s employment contract was terminated by stating that the worker’s social media post contained insults to the President and praising the coup d’etat that took place in Turkey in 2016, the lack of a relationship of trust between the employee and the employer was cited as a reason for termination, it has been determined by the final decision of the Supreme Court of Appeals that the applicant was linked and affiliated with terrorist organizations, it is valid to give justification for the termination of the employment contract on the grounds that the employee’s statement of thought has damaged the relationship of trust between them and the employer, and in this context, an employer cannot be expected to work with a personnel who praises or encourages the coup d’etat and terrorrist organisations, and the reasons for termination was clearly stated and the employment contract was lawfully terminated.”
According to this Constitutional Court jurisprudence, the principles of “words and expressions that propagate terrorism or terrorist organizations, legitimize, praise or encourage terrorism and violence are and cannot be accepted within the scope of freedom, and such actions may be grounds for termination of the employee’s employment contract by the employer (on the grounds of breach of trust relationship)” has been introduced as an important judicial decision regarding the employment relationship.
