Collective labour rights and the Turkish constitutional court

Abstract

ABSTRACT In many parts of the world, labour has increasingly turned to legal means to defend and advance its interests in the face of formidable challenges. Constitutional protection of labour rights has gained a new impetus as these rights have come to be seen as an essential ingredient of human rights. Within this context, the paper aims to feed into the research on the constitutional protection of collective labour rights exploring the jurisprudence of the Turkish Constitutional Court (TCC) as an example of the treatment of these rights as human rights. I contend that the type of constitutional review that grants litigants direct access to the court bolsters the review of labour rights as human rights. Being such a legal remedy, the Turkish individual application system, which necessitates a close collaboration between the TCC and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), provides labour with new windows of opportunities compared with the constitutionalty review of laws procedure. Although the TCC’s collective labour rights case law in individual applications includes some unsatisfactory judgments from labour’s viewpoint, it has largely contributed to the constitutional protection of collective labour rights in Turkey.