Accelerated trial procedure at Turkish criminal procedure aw

Criminal procedure law can directly affect the rights and freedoms of individuals while providing the purpose of achieving material truth. Therefore, the regulations regarding the criminal procedure should be made in a way that takes into account the protection of individual rights and freedoms in a balanced way in order to reach the material truth. On the other hand, the general investigation and prosecution procedure includes detailed regulations in order to protect the rights of the persons participating in the criminal procedure, especially the suspect and the accused. In this case, the time elapsed until the conclusion of the trial with a final verdict also extends, and it becomes almost impossible for the Chief Public Prosecutor's Offices and the courts to cope with the workload. In our country, as in many countries, it is aimed to reduce the workload of the judiciary, which is growing like an avalanche, by postponing the opening of the public case of criminal disputes related to some crimes, reconciling the victim with the perpetrator, removing them from the criminal justice system with prepayment and similar institutions. However, these adopted methods were not sufficient to reduce the workload. With the Law No. 7188 and dated 17/10/2019, a new system called rapid trial procedure was introduced to the Turkish Criminal Procedure Law. With this procedure, the investigation phase regarding certain types of crimes, which are limited in the law, ends with a judgment that can be given by the competent court, provided that the suspect accepts the proposal made by the public prosecutor in the presence of his defense counsel. This procedure, which conflicts with the basic concepts and principles of our criminal procedure law at many points, needs to be examined meticulously. Because, by accepting the rapid trial procedure, the suspect renounces many of the rights granted to him in the general investigation and prosecution procedure; however, in return, the penalty he may receive as a result of the trial process is reduced by half. In our study; The place and purpose of the rapid trial procedure in our law, its legal nature, the conditions of application of the rapid trial procedure and the cases in which it cannot be applied, and the application and results of the rapid procedure have been examined by considering similar regulations in comparative law.