The Regulation on the Consumer Arbitration Committees (“Regulation”) has been published in the Official Gazette dated 21/09/2022 and numbered 31960.
The Regulation regulates the procedures and principles regarding the establishment and functioning of consumer arbitration committees and covers the activities and processes of consumer arbitration committees within this scope.
With the Regulation, the Regulation on Consumer Arbitration Committees published in the Official Gazette dated 27/11/2014 and numbered 29188 has been repealed.
The provisions introduced by the Regulation are as follows;
- Application to the consumer arbitration committees has been made mandatory for disputes under 30 thousand Turkish liras, and the distinction regarding whether the location of the dispute is metropolitan or not has been eliminated,
- It is regulated that the jurisdiction of the consumer arbitration committees shall be determined by the Ministry of Trade,
- It is regulated that the appointment of members to the consumer arbitration committees in cities where more than one bar association is established shall be made based on equal and rotating representation of the bar associations; and the procedures and principles regarding the appointment shall be determined by the Union of Turkish Bar Associations.
- It is stated that applications to the consumer arbitration committee can be made in person or through a lawyer; by hand, by mail or electronically through the Consumer Information System via the e-Government gateway.
- Following the finalization of the decision rendered by the consumer arbitration committee regarding a dispute; a new application with the same subject, reason, and parties as the finalized decision cannot be made.
- It is regulated that each party may request the completion of the decision on the issues that have not been decided regarding the requests in the initial application within fifteen days from the notification of the final decision.
- In case that it is ruled that there is no decision to be made due to the dispute being irrelevant, the notification and expert witness fees will be paid to the relevant tax office by the party who declares waiver or acceptance within one month from the notification of the decision.
You can access the full Turkish text of the regulation from the link below.
