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Legal Alerts
09/06/2022

Turkey Raises the Threshold for Consumer Courts

Legal Alerts
International Commercial and Trade
General

Recent Development

In Turkey, consumer complaints against sellers and manufacturers may be brought in Turkish consumer courts only if the amount in dispute is above a certain threshold. These thresholds are re-set shortly before the beginning of each calendar year. Consumer complaints below the jurisdictional thresholds may only be brought in a consumer arbitral tribunal. Through the “Communiqué on Raising the Monetary Limits Set Forth in Article 68 of Law No. 6502 on the Protection of Consumers and Article 6 of the Consumer Arbitral Tribunals Regulation”, Turkey set the threshold for 2017, raising it by 14.47%.

Consumer complaints below the threshold of TRY 6,860 (approximately USD 1,832) must be submitted to consumer arbitral tribunals, whereas those above this threshold must be submitted to consumer courts.

Conclusion

If a consumer fails to submit his/her complaint to the appropriate consumer arbitral tribunal or consumer court, his/her application will be subject to rejection at the preliminary examination phase. This would also allow defendant companies to raise a valid objection.