The Constitutional Court Rejected the Request for the Annulment of the Provision Stipulating that Electronic Notifications Shall be Deemed Served at the End of the Fifth Day Following the Date of Dispatch

The Constitutional Court (the “Court”) ruled that the phrase  “at the end of the fifth day following the date [on which it reaches the recipient’s electronic notification address]” in Article 7(a) of the Notification Law No. 7201 (“Notification Law”) falls within the scope of the legislator’s margin of discretion, that it would fall outside the scope of constitutional review and fall within the scope of review of expediency, and therefore, is not unconstitutional (the “Decision”).

Ankara 73^rd Labour Court, in the course of hearing a receivable claim arising from an employer – employee relationship, concluded that the phrase “at the end of the fifth day following the date” of Article 7(a) of the Notification Law, which states that “Notification by electronic means shall be deemed to have been made at the end of the fifth day following the date on which it reaches the recipient’s electronic address”, is contrary to Articles 2, 5, 10, 13, 36, 40, and 141 of the Constitution and has applied for the annulment of the rule in question.

The Constitutional Court, referring to its decision dated 19.9.2019 and numbered F.2018/144, D.2019/72, ruled by majority vote to reject the application, pointing out that the rule in question (i) cannot be said to be an inappropriate and unnecessary means, (ii) falls within the scope of the discretionary power of the legislator (iii) cannot be said to violate the principle of equality, (iv) there is no reason to depart from this decision, (v) the issues contained in the application decision would be falling within the scope of a review of expediency and outside the scope of constitutional review.

The dissenting Court Member evaluated that the challenged rule should be annulled for the following reasons:

• Where one party to the case is a person who does not use the electronic notification system and the other party is a person using the electronic notification system, an additional five-day period is granted to the recipient of the electronic notification even if they have already been informed of the notification content, whereas this period is not granted to the other party; it is clear that this uncertainty in the challenged rule creates an inequality between the parties, and that this inequality has no justifiable reason or a legitimate purpose; the challenged rule is contrary to Articles 2 and 10 of the Constitution.
• The challenged rule, which grants an additional 5 days to the recipient for each notification regardless of whether it was read or not, unnecessarily prolongs the proceedings by a significant amount of time; this extension becomes unreasonable, particularly in cases where both parties are recipients of electronic notifications; for these reasons, the challenged rule is contrary to Articles 36 and 40 of the Constitution.

The Decision was published in the Official Gazette numbered 33025 and dated 22 September 2025.

The full text of the Decision is accessible at this link. (Only available in Turkish)