As noted earlier, Turkey is primarily a civil law jurisdiction. As such, court decisions have limited precedential effect. However, precedent is followed in some cases: - lower courts, for example, are bound by the Constitutional Courts, and the civil and criminal courts are bound by some decisions of the Court of Cassation. For more information, see Introduction to Turkish Law (2020).

The court system hierarchy is organized as follows:

Constitutional Court – Reviews constitutionality of laws and degrees.

Court of Cassation – Reviews decisions made by the lower courts and courts of appeals.

Courts of Appeals: Reviews appeals from decisions made by the lower courts.

Courts of first instance: Handle a wide range of civil and criminal cases. These courts are distributed across various provinces and are the initial point of contact for legal disputes.

For a complete listing of official Reporters and other sources of Turkish Case law, see Brill's Foreign Law Guide. For freely available online sources of decisions from Turkish courts, see below.