On the Women’s Side: the Turkish Constitutional Court Protecting Women’s Reproductive Rights

Valentina Rita Scotti & Ilayda Eskitascioglu

Koç University

On July 23rd 2020, the all-male Grand Chamber of the Turkish Constitutional Court issued its decision on the case of R.G. This  progressive judgment, published on the Official Gazette on September 10th 2020, declared that the procrastination of the decision on a victim’s request for terminating her pregnancy following a criminal act constituted a violation of the right to protect one’s corporeal and spiritual existence (provided under Article 17 of Turkish Constitution).  

In this post, we will briefly describe the regulation of abortion in Turkey, the background of the R.G. case and the Turkish constitutional court’s decision to then turn to discuss why we think this is decision may be interpreted as a landmark constitutional judgment.    

Domestic Legislation on Abortion  

Since 1983, abortion has been legal in Turkey up to the 10th week of pregnancy. Article 5 of the Law on Population Planning no. 2827/1983 ended the prohibition of abortion that had been in force since the founding of the Republic. According to this article, abortion is permitted until the 10th week of pregnancy. Moreover, single adult women can choose to have an abortion on their own, but consent is required from the husband in the case of married women, and from a parent or a tutor for women under the age of 18. If the pregnancy threatens the woman’s life or if there is a substantial fetal abnormality, abortion is permissible without a gestational time limit under the condition that the doctor notifies authorities with the necessary information. According to Article 99(6) of the Turkish Criminal Code, pregnancies resulting from the commission of a crime can be terminated up until the 20th week of pregnancy, provided that an expert doctor performs the abortion at a hospital. If it is performed in state hospitals, abortion is also covered by state health insurance. In recent years, however, access to abortion become increasingly difficult, especially in state hospitals because doctors often refuse to perform it or fail to correctly inform their patients about their rights in this regard.  

Background of the R.G. Case 

The 1983 legislation was in force when R.G., a minor residing in Mut (Southern Turkey), became pregnant after being raped by several minors and adult men. When a pregnancy was discovered in its 13th week during a medical examination, R.G.’s family filed a request for the termination of the pregnancy, which was dismissed in several instances on procedural and merit grounds despite the Forensic Medical Institute’s report stating that an abortion was in the interest of both the mother and the fetus.  

This bouncing back and forth caused a relevant time delay and R.G. passed the 20th week of pregnancy, making Article 99.6 of the Criminal Code – which states that “when a woman is pregnant due to an offence that she was a victim of, no penalty shall be imposed upon any person who terminates such pregnancy, if the term of pregnancy is not more than 20 weeks and there is consent from the woman” –not applicable to her case anymore. Therefore, R.G. submitted an individual application (bireysel başvuru) before the Constitutional Court alleging that her right to protect and improve her corporeal and spiritual existence had been violated since her request for the termination of an unwanted pregnancy was rejected repeatedly and she was forced to bear the burden of pregnancy.  

Judgment by the Constitutional Court 

Deciding on R.G.’s individual application, the Court analyzed the right to abortion in light of the European Court of Human Rights’ jurisprudence on the rights to personal autonomy and to mental or physical integrity (X and Y v. The Netherlands and Tysiąc v. Poland). The Court also considered that interferences with the latter fall within the scope of Article 17 of the Turkish Constitution, which states that “everyone has the right to life and the right to protect and improve his/her corporeal and spiritual existence”. The Court considered that by denying the applicant’s request to end her pregnancy merely on the ground that “termination of pregnancy would amount to a breach of the right to life unless there is a threat to the mother’s health or any exigent circumstances”, the magistrate failed to balance the woman’s right to protect her personal autonomy and physical integrity with the interests of the fetus. Additionally, the Court also concluded that the appellate authorities failed to take into consideration the unique challenges the procrastination of the decision on her request entailed for the applicant, underscoring that a decision which should have been issued as rapidly as possible was withheld for more than two months. Because of this delay, according to the Court, judicial authorities deprived R.G. of the opportunity to end an unwanted pregnancy and placed a disproportionate, excessive burden on the applicant, which amounted to a violation of the right to protect and improve the corporeal and spiritual existence in terms of Article 17 of the Turkish Constitution. To fully redress the consequences of the violation of the applicant’s constitutional rights, the Court awarded a net amount of 100,000 Turkish liras to the applicant for the non-pecuniary damage. 

The Court Stands on Women’s Side: a Landmark Judgment 

The R.G. decision can be considered a landmark case of the Turkish Constitutional Court mainly because of its significance with regard to the role of the Court in the protection of fundamental rights and specifically women’s rights, as well as for the impact that it will likely have on the legal system.  

Established by the 1961 Constitution according to the European continental model, the Constitutional Court underwent an important transformation with the 2010 constitutional reform (Kilinç, 2015), which, among other things, adopted a new appointment mechanism for constitutional judges that involves ordinary courts, the Parliament and the President instead of only the latter (Article 146 of the Constitution). Additionally, that same constitutional reform granted the Court with new judicial review powers to decide individual complaints for the violation of rights: ‘Everyone may apply to the Constitutional Court on the grounds that one of the fundamental rights and freedoms within the scope of the European Convention on Human Rights which are guaranteed by the Constitution has been violated by public authorities’ (Article 148 of the Constitution).  

Throughout this evolution, the Court turned from being a counter-majoritarian institution accused of political unfairness and of supporting secularists and bureaucrats forming the so-called Republican Alliance, to a deferent body supporting AKP’s conservative policies even in the adjudication of individual complaints for rights violations (Oder, 2017). In this context, the decision on this abortion case not only provides for an interpretation of the norms in favor of women’s rights, but also marks a distance between the Court and the governmental approach to these issues, which has been traditionally hostile to the full application of the legal provisions on abortion. The new turn the Court has taken with this judgment, with respect to its own political position, adds to the consideration of it being a landmark judgment.  

The decision is also relevant when considering Turkey’s recent conservative turn with regard to the protection of women’s rights in the international arena. The withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention in name of the protection of the traditional understanding of the family in spite of the opposition by the civil society, has confirmed a conservative approach of the Turkish Government to women’s rights. Much in line with the decisions taken in other European countries, such as Poland, where religion and conservatism are orienting the policies on women’s rights, the Turkish government’s approach could have resulted in a restrictive judicial interpretation of reproductive rights. However, the decision of the Turkish Constitutional Court confirms that reproductive rights are still protected in the country despite the stance of the current Government on these issues. If the Turkish Constitutional Court keeps its role of guarantor of fundamental rights like it did in the R.G. decision, the latter would mark the starting point of new era in the judicial protection of rights in Turkey – making it a landmark constitutional judgment.   

Valentina Rita Scotti is a Postdoctoral researcher at Koç University School of Law . Ilayda Eskitascioglu is a Ph.D. candidate at Koç University School of Law. 

Suggested citation: Valentina Rita Scotti and Ilayda Eskitascioglu ‘On the Women’s Side: the Turkish Constitutional Court Protecting Women’s Reproductive Rights’, IACL-AIDC Blog (17 June 2021) https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/menaregion/17-5-21-mena-reproductive-rights.