The High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (the "Council") have issued a bundle of decrees on 25 November 2021, forming several specialised criminal and commercial courts in a variety of subjects.
One of those is specialised finance courts branched under the Turkish commercial courts of first instance. Under the relevant decree, the Council recognizes the increased volume and complexity of finance disputes coming before the Turkish courts and thus, the dynamic need for a specialised court in this area to provide consistency in court judgments and increase the effectiveness and the efficiency of the commercial courts.
The new finance courts will handle disputes involving banks, financial leasing houses, e-money institutions and other finance institutions as well as matters involving lending, securitisation and other banking, financial leasing, financing, factoring and savings services. The finance courts' specialisation shall also include capital markets disputes and disputes involving payment and securities settlement systems and payment services.
The disputes that will be eligible for the review of the specialised courts are those that primarily relate to financial disputes or require particular expertise of the market. There is no lower limit on the amounts in dispute to be referred to the Turkish finance courts (save for the general limitations applicable to all claims before the commercial courts) unlike some other models that showed success in other jurisdictions.
The finance courts will begin their operations on 15 December 2021 in relation to cases commenced after this date. In this regard, any banking and finance disputes commenced before this date will not be referred to the specialised courts but remain with the general commercial court that is already appointed to the relevant case.
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