Reliability of witness statement in criminal procedure law

Even though, the witness statement, as a type of evidence in criminal procedure law is generally considered to be controversial due to the possibility of false or mistaken testimonies, it is used commonly because in many cases witness statements are the sole or the decisive evidence. In the face of impossibility of giving up this type of evidence in criminal procedure, increasing its credibility appears as the only solution. Thus, this doctoral thesis aims to find legal solutions to increase the reliability of witness statement. In recent years, there have been attempts in many countries to reform the regulations concerning witness statement to obtain the statement in a more reliable way. In Turkish criminal procedure law literature, there are few studies which discuss the ways to increase the reliability of this type of evidence. The thesis that you are reading aims to remedy this issue. Although it is imperative to increase the reliability of witness statement, increasing its reliability against all costs is not acceptable, for it may lead to the violation of certain principles of the criminal procedure law. Hence, in the first chapter of the study, the principles of proof and types of evidence which are related to witness statement are examined to better determine the place of witness statement in criminal procedure law. It is not possible to think about the ways to increase the reliability of witness testimony without understanding what makes it unreliable in the first place. For this reason, the second part of the study is dedicated to the exploration of the research on witness testimony in the field of forensic psychology and the current studies in this field are summarized. In the third part of the study, the regulations in the criminal procedure law in terms of the rights and obligations of the witness are examined in the context of the reliability of the statement. In the last part, the regulations regarding the criminal procedure during the process from the summoning of the witness to the evaluation of his/her statement are examined within the context of the reliability of the statement. In the third and fourth parts of the study, the shortcomings, if any, of these provisions in our legislation in terms of evaluating the reliability of the witness statement are determined and solutions are proposed.