Turkish Right to Information Blog

Archive for April 7th, 2008

I regularly obtain detailed statistics through the Turkish FOI Council (BEDK) on the behalf of my organization BilgiEdinmeHakki.Org. The below information was obtained in September 2007 following a right to information request I lodged on 28 August, 2007.

The detailed statistics obtained from the Council in September 2007 reveal the following:

➢ Total No. appeal applications to the Council between 24/05/2004 – 28/08/2007: 3,413
➢ Total Number of Council decisions: 3,205
➢ Total number of decision books: 81
➢ Number of decision books published: 28
➢ Number of unpublished decision books: 53
➢ Number of decisions published: 641 (20%)
➢ Number of unpublished decisions: 2564 (80%)
➢ Number of decisions cleared for publication but not yet published: 332
➢ Number of decision books cleared for publication but not yet published: 10
➢ Number of applications proceeded: 3,264
➢ Number of applications non-processed: 149
➢ Total Number of successful appeals: 1,210
➢ Total Number of partially successful appeals: 501
➢ Total number of rejected appeals: 1120
➢ Total number of appeals in which further review was necessary: 20
➢ Total number of appeal applications to be discussed by the Council: 208

As can be seen above, only 20% of the 3205 decisions of the Council were publicly made available as of September 2007 and no further decisions were published since March 2007.

Currently available decisions of the Turkish Council can be obtained (in Turkish I am afraid) through the BilgiEdinmeHakki.Org pages.

Right to Information 

Everyone has a right to obtain information under Article 4 of the Right to Information Act 2003.

All natural and legal persons could apply to the public institutions for exercising their right to information. However, the Act also includes some limitations on this general right to information. Foreigners domiciled in Turkey and the foreign legal entities operating in Turkey can only exercise this right on the condition that the information that they require is related to them or the field of their activities; and on the basis of the principle of reciprocity.

Obligation to Provide Information

All public institutions are required to provide the information requested under article 5. They also have a legal obligation to respond to the applicants.

The public institutions are required to take administrative and technical measures to deal with requests under the 2003 Act.

They have a legal obligation to provide access to information and documents (subject to the exceptions set out in this law) and to review and decide on the applications for access to information promptly, effectively and correctly.

Information is defined as “every kind of data that is within the scope of this law and are included in the records of the institutions” by article 3(c) of the 2003 Act. Article 3(d) defines “documents” as “any written, printed or copied file, document, book, journal, brochure, etude, letter, software, instruction, sketch, plan, film, photograph, tape and video cassette, map of the institutions and the information, news and other data that are recorded and saved in electronic format that are within the scope of this law.”

Article 3(3) also provides a definition for “access” to information and documents. The law requires access to “information” and the public institutions need to provide copies of any documents that are available. This could be photo-copies or documents in electronic format.

However, in cases were it is not possible to provide a copy of the document requested, an applicant may be permitted to examine the original information or the document or see the contents of such documents, or any form of data, and should be allowed to take notes.