Turkey's Constitutional Court Upholds ByLock Convictions Over ECHR Rulings

The Constitutional Court of Turkey rejected the individual application of Derya B., a convicted ByLock user linked to the FETÖ network. The court affirmed the lower‑court sentence of six years, ten months and fifteen days, holding that the conviction did not violate the constitutional principle of legality (Article 38). It stressed that the trial courts had applied the predictability principle correctly.

The decision directly contradicts European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence, which since 2023 has ruled that convictions based solely on ByLock usage breach the right to a fair trial. The case originated in Ilgın, was transferred to the Antalya prosecutor’s office, and culminated in the 2026 Constitutional Court ruling.