Events
Various news about the applicants were made on the websites of the newspapers broadcasting on a national scale and on some websites. The applicants’ requests to prevent access to these contents were rejected by the courts, and the applicants filed individual applications to the Constitutional Court.
allegations
The applicants claimed that the right to an effective application in connection with the right to honor and reputation was violated due to the refusal of their requests to block access to internet content, which they claimed violated their personal rights.
Court’s Evaluation
The Constitutional Court has examined in detail the procedure for removing the content brought by the Law No. 5651 and preventing access to the publication in various decisions made since 2017; It has been decided that this method is an exceptional way to be able to fight against crimes committed on the internet more effectively and to protect private life and personal rights quickly and effectively.
Within the framework of the procedure determined by the Constitutional Court, Keskin Kalem Yayıncılık ve Ticaret A.Ş. et al. ([GK], App. No: 2018/14884) concluded in its pilot decision that Law No. 5651 does not have basic guarantees regarding the protection of freedoms of expression and press, and decided to report the circumstance to the legislature in order to solve the structural problem.
As stated in the aforementioned pilot decision, a large number of complaints are brought before the Constitutional Court through individual applications, alleging violations of the freedoms of expression and press, since the blocking of access stipulated by Article 9 of the Law No. 5651 is a frequently resorted to intervention tool.
However, it cannot be considered that the legal basis, which does not have basic guarantees, poses a problem in terms of only one of the two conflicting rights. The existing mechanism, which does not have the opportunity to examine the merits of the complaints and cannot offer an appropriate remedy when necessary, is far from being an effective remedy for those who apply to the criminal judgeships of peace with the allegation that their personal rights have been violated due to internet broadcasting.
As a matter of fact, the concrete applications this time relate to the allegations that the honor and reputation rights of the applicants, who could not obtain the protection they wanted due to the rejection of their requests to block access to the internet content, were violated.
In these applications, where the violation of personal rights was not obvious at first glance, it was seen that by establishing a balance between conflicting interests, it was not possible to determine whether the allegations in the news were true and whether they violated the personal rights of the applicants in an urgent manner with a non-contradictory examination and with the decisions made over the file.
Blocking access to content on the Internet is a heavy intervention tool, as it indefinitely prevents access to that content within the borders of a certain country, from the date of the decision. It is a method that should not be used as long as it is possible to fight harmful content on the Internet with other methods.
On the other hand, besides the opportunities it provides in the use of fundamental rights and freedoms, the internet also reveals different ways of intervention towards fundamental rights and freedoms, private lives and moral integrity of individuals.
Although the Constitutional Court cannot impose a positive obligation on the state to conduct a contradictory trial in all cases and automatically due to the difficulties created by the internet environment, in cases where the formation of a party is ensured, the state can find the opportunity to put forward their defenses, including presenting evidence against interference, to be heard and to contradictory judgments. emphasized that they are obliged to establish a judicial system in which they can have the right to trial and to establish an effective judicial review mechanism.
In the said pilot decision, the Constitutional Court revealed the need to reconsider the existing system that is currently operating in our country in order to eliminate the ongoing violation of freedom of expression and press and its consequences, and to prevent similar new violations. that it is at the discretion of the legislature. In addition, he reminded the minimum minimum standards that would be beneficial to be taken into account in new legal arrangements to prevent interferences with the online environment from violating Articles 13 and 26 of the Constitution.
In the light of these evaluations, it has been concluded from the examination of the application at hand that the problem not only causes violations of freedom of expression, but also does not provide an effective protection against attacks on personal rights due to the fact that Article 9 of Law No. 5651 does not have basic guarantees.
For the reasons explained, the Constitutional Court decided that the right to an effective application in connection with the right to protect honor and reputation had been violated.
You can reach our other article samples and petition samples by clicking here.