Evaluation of the Turkish Constitutional Court’s Decisions Regarding Transsexuals’ Individual Applications Following the Rejection of Their Name Change Requests

Özet

A person’s name distinguishes them from others and makes them unique. Due to its importance, the principle of the invariance of the name has been accepted as a rule in the Turkish Civil Code No. 4721 (TCC). However, a person can request the change of a name that they do not identify with from the court, only on the basis of valid reasons, pursuant to TCC art. 27. One of these valid reasons, which is frequently encountered in judicial decisions, is that the person is known by another name in their social life. Despite the fact that they are based on such a valid reason, which is generally accepted in the decisions included in this study, some name change requests of transsexuals were rejected by local courts as the issue was associated with gender reassignment, and the applicant then made individual applications to the Constitutional Court. Regarding these applications, the Constitutional Court decided that the right to respect for private life had been violated. The aim of this study is to examine the name change in light of these two recent decisions of the Constitutional Court.