The General Assembly of Civil Chambers of the Court of Appeals of Turkey (“General Assembly”) has preserved the decision of the Joint Chambers of the Court of Appeal dated 4 February 1948 (numbered 1944/10 and 1948/3; the “Joint Chambers’ Decision of 1948”), which prevents amending the pleading after the decision of overturn.

In the application on the respective issue, the applicant argued that the amendment of the pleading after the decision of overturn should be possible since the Code of Civil Procedure numbered 6100 (“CPC 6100”) allows for this and therefore the Joint Chambers’ Decision of 1948 should no longer be applicable. The applicant also stated that there was an inconsistency between the decisions of the chambers of the Court of Appeal regarding said proceeding, which was required to be resolved.

The majority of the General Assembly refused to change the Joint Chambers’ Decision of 1948. Firstly, the majority stated that CPC 6100 limits the term to amend the pleading by the inquiry phase and there are not any other explicit or implicit regulations permitting the parties to amend the pleading after the decision of overturn. Therefore, it would not be acceptable to extend such an exceptional proceeding over the appeal phase. In addition, the respective procedural restriction was challenged before the European Court of Human Rights and the court decided that the said restriction does not cause a violation of the right to a fair trial. There were also various Constitutional Court decisions of Turkey stating that the restriction of amending the pleading after the decision of overturn does not violate any judicial rights.

Based on the above-mentioned grounds, the General Assembly passed a decision of the Joint of Chambers on 6 May 2016 (published in the Official Gazette dated 23 March 2017) resolving that the Joint Chambers’ Decision of 1948 remains valid and therefore it is not legally possible to apply to amend the pleading after the decision of overturn.