Turkey to continue year-round daylight saving despite court ruling

ANKARA/ISTANBUL

The Turkish government intends to continue with daylight saving time this year, Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ said Sept. 28.
“As the government we favor continuing daylight saving time as it is,” Bozdağ told reporters.

The Council of State, Turkey’s highest administrative court, on Sept. 27 ordered a stay of the cabinet decision to make daylight saving time last for the entire year.

Bozdağ said the government is likely to make legislative changes to continue with the year-round daylight saving.

“Necessary steps are to be taken in the upcoming days. Legislative changes are likely to be made regarding the matter through a statutory decree before the due date,” he said.

Turkey moved to daylight saving time on March 27, 2016, at 3:00 a.m. local time, moving clocks forward one hour, and has not resumed standard Turkish time since.

The decision caused a parent to appeal to court that children had to go to school before sunrise as the daylight saving time was being used in winters.

The Council of State backed the parent’s arguments and ruled for a stay of execution of the permanent summertime practice.

Also commenting on the issue, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Berat Albayrak confirmed they will “continue keeping summer time all year long.”

“We will continue in the same direction regarding the daylight saving time. We will continue after making the necessary regulations,”

Albayrak said on Sept. 28 at the Energy Efficiency Award Ceremony organized by the Istanbul Chamber of Industry, adding that the Council of State ruling is “a technical issue.”

“The daylight saving time made a major contribution to Turkey regarding productivity. We recently received reports on the figures [of productivity]. We asked for an economic numeral analysis. We had already made studies on the issue as the ministry, but we wanted a third party to analyze it,” Albayrak said, adding that the analysis was carried out by Istanbul Technical University (İTÜ).

“We carried out a study with İTÜ, which is among the best universities in Turkey, and for some, the best one in technical fields, and saw that the daylight saving time created a positive impact,” he said.

He added that savings worth 540 million Turkish Liras were made due to the summertime practice.