Online privacy of spouses can be violated in some cases, top Turkish court rules

ISTANBUL

A top court has issued a second key ruling for divorce cases and privacy rights in Turkey in two months.

Turkey's Court of Appeals has ruled that a woman who infiltrated her estranged husband’s email and Facebook accounts to prove to his family that he was cheating on her did not violate any laws, daily Miliiyet reported Dec. 5.

The verdict upheld a decision of a lower court that acquitted the woman who was sued by her husband, who she later divorced.

The 12th Penal Chamber of the Court of Appeals stressed the “irreconcilable difference" between the two. “The husband had told his uncle that he did not engage in any extramarital affairs, implicating the woman of lying,” the verdict said.

It also stressed that the woman had accessed the man’s online accounts to prove his guilt and acquit herself, not to commit a crime by violating the “confidentiality of personal communication.”

The same top court had issued a different verdict in a similar issue late November in a separate case, ruling that “personal privacy rights are valid even between married couples.”

In the case in Ankara, the Court of Appeals had rejected the footage of family quarrels recorded by a man to prove his irreconcilable differences with his wife.

“Even spouses have a domain for their personal lives. As such, if the video or the audio is secretly recorded by a spouse who did not inform the other, it cannot be accepted as evidence,” the verdict stated.