SECOND SECTION
CASE OF GÜRMEN v. TÜRKİYE
(Application no. 34365/22)
 
 
 
 
 
 
JUDGMENT
 
STRASBOURG
17 March 2026
This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision. In the case of Gürmen v. Türkiye,
The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting as a Committee composed of:
 Péter Paczolay, President,
 Oddný Mjöll Arnardóttir,
 Hugh Mercer, judges,
and Dorothee von Arnim, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 34365/22) against the Republic of Türkiye lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 1 July 2022 by a Turkish national, Ms Esragül Gürmen (“the applicant”), who was born in 1980, lives in Uşak and was represented by Mr T. Atay, a lawyer practising in Uşak;
the decision to give notice of the complaint under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention concerning the rejection of the applicant’s administrative action for being lodged out of time without sufficient reasoning to the Turkish Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Mr Abdullah Aydın, Head of the Department of Human Rights of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Türkiye, and to declare the remainder of the application inadmissible;
the parties’ observations;
Having deliberated in private on 17 February 2026,
Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
1. The application concerns the rejection of an administrative action brought by the applicant on the grounds that it had been lodged out of time and the applicant’s complaint that her right of access to a court under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention had been violated as a consequence. 2. The applicant, a civil servant employed as a teacher by the Ministry of National Education (“the administration”), was dismissed from her post pursuant to Legislative Decree no. 672, promulgated on 1 September 2016. 3. On 7 July 2020 the State of Emergency Commission (see, for background information on the Commission, Köksal v. Turkey (dec.), no. 70478/16, § 16, 6 June 2017) adopted a decision to reinstate the applicant in her previous post. After the reinstatement, the administration decided of its own motion to pay, as a lump sum, the salary which the applicant had not received during her period of unemployment. The relevant amount was deposited into her bank account on 27 August 2020. 4. On 26 October 2020 the applicant requested a detailed breakdown of the payment, which the administration provided on the same day. Also on that date, after receiving the breakdown containing twenty indicative components for the calculation of each of the forty-nine months’ salary payments, she lodged a petition, seeking payment of the interest accrued on the unpaid salary, the salary increases she would have received on account of her seniority and grade advancement during the relevant period, and compensation for additional tasks she would have performed had she remained in her post. The administration rejected those requests on the same day, although that written decision was not officially communicated to the applicant by means capable of verification, and the exact date on which the applicant was notified remains a matter of dispute. While the Government maintained that the decision had been served on the applicant in person on 26 October 2020, the applicant submitted that she had been handed the decision on 24 December 2020. 5. On 24 December 2020 the applicant brought an action in the Uşak Administrative Court against the administration’s decision to reject her claims. 6. During the proceedings, the administration maintained that the rejection decision had been delivered to the applicant by hand, as per her request, on the same day it had been adopted. It submitted a copy of the applicant’s original petition bearing a stamp indicating that it had been registered with the administration on that date. 7. On 1 February 2021 the Uşak Administrative Court rejected the action, holding that the applicant had failed to bring it within the sixty‑day time-limit. That court found it established that the period had commenced on 27 August 2020, when the applicant had received the salary payment in her bank account. The running of the time-limit had, however, been suspended on 26 October 2020 – that is, one day before the expiry of the time-limit – when the applicant had lodged her petition making additional claims. Since the administration’s rejection decision was considered to have been issued and served on the applicant on the same date, the time-limit had resumed immediately, expiring on 27 October 2020, whereas the applicant had brought the action on 24 December 2020. 8. The applicant appealed to the İzmir Regional Administrative Court, arguing, among other things, that the rejection decision had never been formally served and that no evidence to the contrary had been produced. She further submitted that, in any event, the relevant time-limit should have started running on 26 October 2020, when she had become aware of the specific omissions in the administration’s payment. 9. On 15 April 2021 the İzmir Regional Administrative Court rejected the applicant’s appeal on points of fact and law, upholding the first-instance court’s judgment in every respect. 10. On 23 June 2021 the applicant applied to the Constitutional Court, complaining, among other things, that her right of access to a court had been violated. 11. On 16 March 2022 the Constitutional Court found that, when the proceedings were taken as a whole, it was clear that there had been no violation of the right in question. It accordingly declared the applicant’s complaints inadmissible. 12. In accordance with section 7 of the Law on Administrative Procedure (Law no. 2577), as in force at the material time, the time-limit for bringing an action before the administrative courts is sixty days, unless otherwise provided in specific laws. The time-limit runs from the day following the date of written notification in administrative disputes. In accordance with section 11, before bringing an action, the person concerned may request to have the administrative act in question amended, or to have a new act implemented. That application will suspend the relevant time-limit; if the request is refused or deemed to have been refused, the time-limit will resume. Under section 32 of the Law on Notifications (Law no. 7201), if the notification is not made in accordance with the prescribed procedure, it will nevertheless be deemed valid if the addressee has become aware of it, and the date declared by the addressee will be considered the date of notification (see for that provision also Hıdır Durmaz v. Turkey, no. 55913/00, § 25, 5 December 2006).

Outcome for Article 6: violation