Turkish Right to Information Blog

Archive for the ‘FOI News’ 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 Press Release: 08.05.2008

A report prepared by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz entitled Freedom of Information in Turkey: A Critical Assessment of the Implementation and Application of the Right to Information Act 2003 is made available by BilgiEdinmeHakki.Org, a Turkish pressure group on 08 May, 2008.

The report incorporates data and research gathered between 2004-2008, and provides a detailed analysis of the implementation and application of the Right to Information Act in Turkey. High numbers of right to information applications between 2004-2006 (1,886,962 in total) suggest wider awareness of the existence of the law and the availability of a right to information and access to official documents in Turkey.

The report includes an assessment of the work of the Turkish Right to Information Review Council (BEDK) between June 2004 and March 2008 as well as the assessment of the implementation of the law by central and local government agencies. The report further assesses whether the enactment of a freedom of information law in Turkey helped to achieve an open and transparent regulatory process and whether the new law promotes openness and good practice within government institutions in terms of provision of information.

The report highlights both positive and negative observations with regards to the application and implementation of the Right to Information Act and provides a set of recommendations for improvement of the application of the Right to Information Act in Turkey.

The author of the report, Dr. Yaman Akdeniz, stated that “Although the enactment of the Right to Information Act is a very important step towards openness, transparency, and democratisation in Turkey, the report has identified several problems with the application of the law. As the report will show despite Right to Information Review Council decisions and administrative court orders, there is still resistance to give information, and a high number of public authorities are disputing Council decisions, either by ignoring them, or by appealing to administrative courts to challenge such decisions. Therefore, there needs to be significant improvements to the current system to break down the culture of secrecy and resistance to provide information.”

The report is available at http://www.bilgiedinmehakki.org/doc/Turkey_FOI_2008_Report.pdf
For further information see the Turkish Right to Information Blog: http://foia.bilgiedinmehakki.info
Dr. Yaman Akdeniz can be contacted at akdeniz@bilgiedinmehakki.org

Dr. Yaman Akdeniz is a senior lecturer in law at the School of Law, University of Leeds, United Kingdom. Dr. Akdeniz has been following the enactment of the Turkish Right to Information Act 2003 which came into force on 24 April, 2004 since its inception. He has been a freedom of information activist since 1998 and is also the co-founder of the BilgiEdinmeHakki.Org pressure group which monitors the implementation and application of the Turkish law since 2003.

BilgiEdinmeHakki.Org (www.bilgiedinmehakki.org) has been set up as a pressure group on 09 October, 2003, the day the Turkish Government enacted the Right to Information Act 2003 (No: 4982) to ensure that the Act is effectively used by the Turkish citizens and a greater degree of openness and transparency is established in Turkey as part of its democratization. Bilgi Edinme Hakki stands for Right to Information in Turkish, and the name of the organisation is based upon the Turkish Act.

IFEX

Freedom of information (FOI) laws, which give access to public information, are considered one of the most important pieces of legislation to reduce and eventually beat corruption - the “primary obstacle to development,” says UNESCO.

Despite some problems with poorly crafted laws, laws that aren’t implemented, and new laws promoting secrecy in the global war on terror, upwards of 70 countries around the world have comprehensive freedom of information acts, and another 30 have FOI laws in the works, says ARTICLE 19. And the movement to adopt them is growing: witness Jordan’s step last year to become the first country in the Middle East to have a right to information law, or Liberian citizens marching to Parliament this month to present a draft FOI law nearly four years in the making.

“But the media can only play their part in empowering people, if their consumers have the necessary literacy skills to analyse and question the information they receive,” says UNESCO.

Visit these links:
- IFEX World Press Freedom Day page
- UNESCO World Press Freedom Day 2008 page
- AMARC
- ARTICLE 19, “Freedom of Information: A Comparative Legal Survey”
- Privacy International’s Freedom of Information page