An Assessment of the Constitutional Court's Decision in the Annulment Action Concerning the Personal Data Protection Law

5 February 2018Murat Volkan DülgerCommentary

Introduction

This work was written in Turkish. The summary on this page is a translation; the citation gives the original title in parentheses.

Law No. 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data (KVKK), the principal legislation in the field of personal data protection, entered into force on 7 April 2016. Legislative work on the subject had been undertaken before, but for many years, mainly for political and administrative reasons, it did not reach a successful conclusion. The Law was finally enacted within the framework of harmonisation with the EU, drawing largely on Directive 95/46/EC, but it has been criticised in several respects. The main points of criticism are that, at the time the Law was enacted, the European Parliament had already approved a regulation replacing the Directive, and that the Law was both drafted on the basis of the old Directive and failed to conform fully to it. Even so, the absence of any basic legislation on the protection of personal data had been a serious deficiency.

For this reason, although I too criticise the Law in several respects, I regard its publication as a positive development, because it is the clearest and most concrete step taken with regard to personal data and the first and fundamental stage in the formation of personal data protection law. Indeed, in the period that followed, various regulations were issued on matters not explained in detail in the Law, in an effort to make the subject better understood. In this study, the annulment application made to the Constitutional Court by certain members of the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye (TBMM), who claimed that various provisions of the KVKK were unlawful and sought their annulment, and the decision given on that application by the Constitutional Court on 28 September 2017, 2016/125 E., 2017/143 K. …