Turkish Right to Information Blog

Archive for the ‘BEDK - Turkish Information Council’ Category

In a related case to Bergama No. 1, following the 4th Administrative Court of Ankara rejection of the applicants’ stay of execution request in May 2006, the 4th Administrative Court of İzmir issued a judgment (2005/1732 e, 2007/155 K) in favour of the applicants on 28.02.2007. The Court stated that

“the public authorities are obliged to provide every kind of information and documents to those who ask them in accordance with the principles of equality, impartiality and openness which are requisites of transparent and democratic administration in accordance with article 4 of the Right to Information Act.”

The Ministry of Finance received the judgment of the 4th Administrative Court on 24 April 2007. Subsequently, on 11 May 2007 the Ministry of Finance appealed with a stay of execution request. On 20 June 2007, the 10th Chamber of the Supreme Administrative Court rejected the stay of execution request of the Ministry of Finance. On 31 July 2007, the applicants applied to the Ministry of Finance with a request of the execution of the judgment of the 4th Administrative Court of İzmir. On 29 August 2007, the Ministry of Finance sent a letter to one of the applicants stating that the appeal case at the 10th Chamber of the Supreme Administrative Court had not yet been concluded. The Ministry argued that once the notification was received by the Ministry of Finance the necessary action would be taken.
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Three Turkish lawyers, members of the Izmir Bar Association, who are also environmental protection activists within the Aegean region were involved in the monitoring of the activities of the EUROGOLD Mining Company which has been operating a gold mine in Bergama. Following some media rumours that EUROGOLD would sell the mining facility and leave the area without shouldering any cleaning and reforestation burden, the lawyers tried to obtain information from the Ministry of Finance with a right to information request made in February 2005 and asked the Ministry whether EUROGOLD has carried out its legal and tax obligations in accordance with the relevant domestic regulations. The comprehensive right to information request involved 14 questions.
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Freedom of Information is not so free: “Freedom of Information is not so free
The number of individual citizens requesting information from public agencies as part of an information access law that promotes transparency and democracy has been increasing, but the number of rejections of these requests has also been rising, a report has shown. “

According to a report on queries made by individual citizens to public agencies in 2007 prepared by the Prime Ministry’s Council on Information Acquisition (BEDK), higher judicial organs have been the most resistant of all state institutions to comply with a law governing the right to information.

Those agencies reluctant to respond to requests for information in the first few years after the law’s enactment were much more responsive to queries in 2007. Another report released in May of this year compiled by Yaman Akdeniz, a senior lecturer in law at the University of Leeds, assessing the implementation of the Right to Information Act, agrees that agencies have been more responsive, but highlights that resistance still remains in place.

The most notable example, however, is undoubtedly the Constitutional Court, which received 3,389 requests and rejected 2,367 of them. None of the inquirers appealed the court’s rejection. Nearly 1 million requests were made to public agencies across the country last year and only about 7 percent were rejected. The Constitutional Court’s rejection rate last year stood at 69.8 percent.

The Supreme Court of Appeals rejected all 154 inquiries made to it last year and the Council of State rejected 115 out of 146 requests. The law went into force on April 24, 2004 as a necessary means to ensure a democratic and transparent administration. The BEDK was set up when several agencies refused to respond to queries from citizens.

Under the law, if an agency refuses to respond to a request for information, the inquirer has the right to appeal the agency’s refusal by turning to the BEDK, which decides whether an agency can provide the information sought or not.

Akdeniz’s report, released in May, incorporates data and research gathered between 2004 and 2008. It suggests that higher numbers of right to information requests in the latter years after the law went into force suggest broader awareness of the existence of the law and the right to information and access to official documents in Turkey. However, the right to information is not being completely complied with, Akdeniz’s report found.

At the time of the release of the report Akdeniz said: “Although the enactment of the Right to Information Act is a very important step towards openness, transparency and democratization, the report has identified several problems with the application of the law. As the report will show, despite the BEDK’s decisions and administrative court orders, resistance to give information remains and a high number of public authorities dispute the council’s decisions either by ignoring them or by appealing to administrative courts to challenge them. Therefore, there needs to be significant improvements to the current system to break down the culture of secrecy and resistance to provide information.”

Akdeniz, a freedom of information activist since 1998, is also the co-founder of the BilgiEdinmeHakki.org lobby group, which has monitored the implementation and application of this law since 2003. The full report can be acquired from their Web site.

The BEDK report

According to the BEDK report released last week, 395,557 queries were made to public agencies around the country in 2004 compared to a total of 998,442 applications demanding information in 2007. About 5 percent of the queries were denied an answer in 2004 and 7 percent in 2007.

The report found that the attitude of security-related institutions was changing positively on the right to information. For example, the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), which put up some resistance in the beginning, was one of the most responsive public agencies last year. No queries were made to the Military High Administrative Court and the Military Supreme Court of Appeals. The Constitutional Court received 3,389 queries while the General Staff received 8,405 requests for information. Only 89 requests were made to the National Security Council (MGK), a sharp fall from 128 queries in 2004 when the MGK had not yet been reformed to become a more civilian institution.

The General Staff responded to 6,100 out of the 8,405 queries it received, partially responded to 91, refused to respond to 1,654 and redirected 549 to other public agencies. Only four inquirers appealed rejected queries last year. In comparison, of the 2,017 requests made in 2004 to the General Staff, only 278 inquiries received a response, 365 received a partial response, 139 were rejected and 638 were unanswered, with the involved agency citing classified or sensitive information as the reason.

In 2007 MİT replied to 2,388 queries out of the 3,398 it received. It gave a partial response to 85 and refused to give any information at all to 837 queries. It redirected 88 queries to other public agencies. In 2004 MİT replied to 4,260 out of 6,185 questions and rejected 1,797.

In 2007 Parliament received 1,865 queries, 18.5 percent less than the year before. Nearly 70 percent of these queries received a full response while 17 percent were rejected. Parliament redirected 228 queries that should have been addressed to other institutions to the relevant public agencies.

BilgiEdinmeHakki.Org obtained the following detailed statistics from the Council in March 2008:

• Total No. appeal applications to the Council between 24/05/2004 - 19/02/2008: 4,042
• Total Number of Council decisions: 3,539
• Total number of decision books: 93
• Number of decision books published: 38
• Number of unpublished decision books: 55
• Number of decisions published: 757 (21%)
• Number of unpublished decisions: 2,782 (79%)
• No of decisions cleared for publication but not yet published: 0
• Number of decision books cleared for publication but not yet published: 0
• Number of applications proceeded: 3,893
• Number of applications non-processed: 149
• Total Number of successful appeals: 1,453
• Total Number of partially successful appeals: 601
• Total number of rejected appeals: 1,391
• Total number of appeals in which further review was necessary: 24
• Total number of appeal applications to be discussed by the Council: 95

As can be seen above, majority of the Council decisions (2,782 (79%)) remain unpublished, an there is no “clear” indication in terms of when these decisions will be published by the Turkish Council (BEDK).

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.

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 March 2007 following a right to information request I lodged on 26 February, 2007.

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

➢    Total No. appeal applications to the Council between 24/05/2004 – 26/02/2007: 2,676
➢    Total Number of Council decisions: 2,475
➢    Total number of decision books: 69
➢    Number of decision books published: 28
➢    Number of unpublished decision books: 41
➢    Number of decisions published: 641 (25%)
➢    Number of unpublished decisions: 1,834 (75%)
➢    Number of applications proceeded: 2,321
➢    Number of applications non-processed: 355
➢    Total Number of successful appeals: 977
➢    Total Number of partially successful appeals: 419
➢    Total number of rejected appeals: 888
➢    Total number of appeals in which further review was necessary: 10
➢    Total number of appeal applications to be discussed by the Council: 213

I have received further statistics through the Council in August 2007, and more recently in March 2008. I will publish these on these pages within the next few weeks together with some analysis. However, as can be seen above, only 25% of the 2475 decisions of the Council were publicly made available as of February 2007 and these 641 decisions were published following pressure from BilgiEdinmeHakki.Org through a number of right to information requests.

Until March 2007, while a total of 2475 decisions were laid down by the Council, only 71 of these were made public between 2004-2006! Following yet another request made in February 2007 by BilgiEdinmeHakki.Org the Council decided to change its policy in terms of the publications of its decisions. It was revealed that the Council would start publishing all its decisions from 09 March, 2007, the day the Council’s decision was sent to BilgiEdinmeHakki.Org.

Following the enactment of the Right to Information Act in Turkey, a Right to Information Assessment (Review) Council (Bilgi Edinme Degerlendirme Kurulu) was established to deal with appeals on rejected right to information requests. The Council’s activities are regulated by article 14 of the Right to Information Act 2003. Furthermore, the Prime Ministry prepared and put into force the regulation concerning the procedure and the basis for the activities and tasks of the Council almost two years after the Council started to convene, and this was published in the Official Gazette on 07 June, 2006. In addition to dealing with appeals, and resolving the disputes between the applicants and the public institutions, the Council also has the responsibility to prepare an annual statistical report on the application of the Right to Information Act in Turkey. The Council can also recommend amendments to the existing law if necessary.

The Council is composed of 9 members, and the Council members serve for four years. The names of the members of the Council were announced by the Prime Ministry on 27 May, 2004. The Council of Ministers appointed two members amongst the four candidates nominated by the General Board of the Court of Appeals and the Council of State from their members; three members, each amongst the scholars of criminal, constitutional and administrative law who bear the title of Professor or Associate Professors; one member among the two candidates that have the qualifications to be elected as chief of Bar and are nominated by the Turkish Bar Association, two members amongst those who have been serving as general director; and a member among judges in service of the Ministry of Justice as recommended by the Minister.

It is required under article 14 that the Council convenes at least once a month or anytime upon the call of the President when there is need. The Council can set up commissions and working groups and in addition may invite representatives from the ministries, non-governmental organisations and other institutions to participate in the meetings as it finds appropriate.