‘Revolutionary’ draft regulations on judicial system planned: Justice minister

ANKARA

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Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ has said they were preparing to submit three separate legislative packages of draft regulations, which he referred to as “revolutionary,” aimed at expediting the legal processes in Turkey’s judiciary system.

The draft regulations have mechanisms which are new to the Turkish legal system, such as the implementation of “mediation” in business cases and “plea bargaining,” a system which is prevalent in the U.S. 

Bozdağ said that within the package, they aimed to increase sentence terms included under the fining option from three months to six months and that for other kinds of offenses within the borders of other applications such as delaying, fining and applications that do not oversee imprisonment even with convictions, they wanted to apply court fining options without taking the cases to the court. 

Bozdağ also said they planned to expand the system of “reconciliation” in a way that would include more offenses, as business-related lawsuits constituted a great burden on the legal system and most of these cases could be solved through reconciliation. 

Saying there were currently some serious suggestions and projects to disseminate the reconciliation system, Bozdağ said they decided to take a step in this regard.  

With the package, another change to the Turkish legal system would be “plea bargaining.” 

“Incorporating this kind of judicial organ into the Turkish legal system is extremely important and historic. As of now, we will carry this into a very narrow area... We do not have an approach that ‘bargaining is the direction taken in all offenses.’ We are considering this for offenses that are going to be very effective. If the implementation becomes successful, its content may be expanded by the time,” said Bozdağ.