Lawsuit before the Council of State: Turkish Ministry of Justice 'has effectively become a public prosecutor's office'

Lawyer Omar Faruk Eminoğlu has filed a challenge before the Turkish Council of State against the administrative decision establishing seven new units within the Ministry of Justice, demanding their annulment for violating the law.

The challenged units include: "Judicial Secretariats", "Natural Disasters and Accidents", "Investigation of Crimes with Unknown Perpetrators", "Public Order", "Digital Space Security and Combating Disinformation", "Organized, Drug and Economic Crimes", and "Terrorism Crimes, Their Financing and Money Laundering".

The petition noted that these units — which were announced on 23 April by Minister of Justice Akın Gürlek and created by the signature of Deputy Minister Can Tuncay — were not published in the Official Gazette, and that Eminoğlu only learned of them on 14 September through social media posts, so he filed his challenge within the legal deadline.

The petition relied on Articles 38 and 41 of Presidential Decree No. 1, affirming that the Ministry of Justice does not have the authority to create these units in the absence of an explicit text granting it these powers. It recalled that Article 157 of the Code of Criminal Procedure guarantees the confidentiality of preliminary investigations "even vis-à-vis the Ministry of Justice itself".

The petition stated that the Ministry, since the creation of these units, has been receiving files from prosecutor's offices and courts and updating their course, in a reference to the files on the deaths of Kaşif Kozinoğlu and Mehmet Arif Denizolgun. Eminoğlu concluded that "the Ministry of Justice has effectively become Turkey's public prosecutor's office".

Available information indicated that the challenge petition was referred to the Tenth Chamber of the Council of State.