Full Remedy Action and the Liability of the Administration

What we do in this area

The administration is liable to pay for damage arising from its own actions and acts (Article 125 of the Constitution). This liability is asserted before the administrative courts through the full remedy action (tam yargı) (Article 2 of the Administrative Procedure Code, İYUK). The office conducts full remedy actions for damage arising from a public service operating defectively, late or not at all, for losses caused by the enforcement of an unlawful act, and for bodily and material damage suffered by users of a public service and by third parties. Preparing the mandatory application before litigation, documenting the heads of damage, the petition, the court-appointed expert examination and increasing the claim value are all parts of this work.

This page is a subtopic of the administrative law section; the action aimed at setting the act aside is covered on the action for annulment of an administrative act page. Disputes arising from the administration's private law contracts fall within the jurisdiction of the civil courts. Actions for de facto expropriation without process arising from physical interference are heard by the civil courts, and compensation claims for legal interference (hukuki el atma) within Additional Article 1 of Law No. 2942 are also heard by civil courts; annulment of the underlying administrative act remains an administrative-court matter; both are covered on the expropriation page and fall outside the scope of this page.

Common types of file

How the process works

For damage arising from an administrative act, Article 12 İYUK offers three options: filing a full remedy action directly, filing the annulment and full remedy actions together, or first filing an action for annulment and then, once that action has been decided, filing the full remedy action within the filing period running from notification of the judgment. The choice is made by weighing the support an annulment judgment would give to the compensation action against the loss of time.

For damage arising from an administrative action, a prior administrative application is generally mandatory, subject to the exception in Article 13/2 for cases first brought before courts lacking jurisdiction: a written application is made to the administration within one year of learning of the action and in any event within five years of the date of the action (Art. 13 İYUK). If the administration refuses the application in whole or in part, or does not reply within the statutory waiting period, the filing period starts to run. In an action filed without this application, the court orders the petition to be referred to the competent administration (Art. 15/1-e İYUK).

The heads of damage (treatment costs, loss of earnings, repair costs, moral damages) are set out and documented separately in the petition. During the proceedings the amount of damage is usually determined by a court-appointed expert examination; the amount stated in the petition may be increased once, until the final judgment, upon payment of the fee (Art. 16/4 İYUK). For liability the court looks for a service fault attributable to the administration or a case of strict liability, damage that has actually occurred, and a causal link between the two. The injured party's own fault, the act of a third party and force majeure are argued as grounds for reducing or excluding compensation.

Time limits and points to watch

In full remedy actions the filing period before the administrative courts is sixty days (Art. 7 İYUK); for damage arising from an action, the period starts when the prior application is refused or left unanswered (Art. 13 İYUK). The one year period runs from learning of the action; in the practice of the Council of State (Danıştay), for bodily injury the date on which the damage and its administrative cause were learned is assessed in the circumstances of the case; a later medical report does not automatically restart the period. Interest is expressly requested in the petition; in the practice of the Council of State, interest as a rule runs from the date of the application to the administration or, where there is no application, from the date of the action. In full remedy actions a hearing is held at the request of one of the parties where the value of the claim exceeds the amount set in the law (Art. 17 İYUK). In actions whose value exceeds the monetary threshold set in the law, the judgment may be taken to istinaf within thirty days of notification; where the threshold is not exceeded, the administrative court's judgment is final (Art. 45 İYUK).

The same time limits and prior application rules apply to claims for moral damages. Compensation actions arising from faults committed by public officials in the exercise of their powers are brought only against the administration, subject to recourse against the official (Article 129 of the Constitution); a direct action against the official before the civil courts arises only in cases of personal fault severed from the duty.

How we work

The office opens the file with the question of whether the source of the damage is an act or an action; this distinction determines the prior application requirement and the time limit. The heads of damage are tabulated with their documents, the prior application is written with the same scope as the petition, and the administration's reply or silence is put on the calendar. After the expert report, the claim value is increased within the time limit; objections to incomplete or contradictory parts of the report and a request for a supplementary examination are submitted separately. Our working method is described on the how we work page.