Foundation and Jurisdiction of Family Courts

It has been a short time since the Family Courts have taken their places in our Country's Justice system. The Turkish Republic?s Constitution gives the responsibility of protecting the family to these courts and therefore they are supposed to perform the function of making the necessary legal actions to fulfill this responsibility. But, due to the newness and inexperience of these courts, they are still undergoing the process of development. When we consider the objectives, the structure and the current jurisdiction rules of these courts, it is apparent that they have been equipped with the regulations which will enable them to attain the expected goals. Especially, the regulations about the expert officers which will be a part of the court are designated in the foundation law of the court. This will display a siginificant importance about the solutions of the inner family discrepancies which are getting gradually more complicated and degenerated. Likewise, the method of encouraging the way of ?Reconciliation? in solving the trials is prescribed in the 7th article of the law of foundation and jurisdiction of the Family Courts. Therefore, this will cause the jurisdiction process to prolong unnecessarily and it will be unavoidable to force both parties to reconcile even in unsoluble discrepancies which is not a fovourable situation. Thus, it is far from being a permanent and efficient solution. However, considering the circumstances of our country, it is not so easy to implement these regulations. 223 Because of the following reasons it is unexpected to see the desired benefits of these Family Courts in the near future; The Judiciaries which are encountering shortage of necessary number of staff are also in dire need of qualified officers; The heavy burden of the ?ASLİYE? courts, which also undertook the duties of Family Courts in the 3rd, 4th and 5th regions;The difficulties faced by these regions to utilize those aforementioned experts; The status of these experts are not clearly stated. Besides these, most of the expectations will be met when the Family Courts take effect with total efficiency. However, as we stated before, the infrastructure of these courts must be set upon strong grounds. Especially the shortage of qualified personnel must be overcome (such as judges or scribes etc) and they must be founded independently at least in the 3rd region Judiciaries. As stated above, all of these improvements will take a certain amount of time.