Both administrative and judicial system courts in principle may only decide on matters requested from them. According to this principle, known as the principle of the binding effect of a petition and as a general principle of law, administrative jurisdictions can only make a judgment regarding the matter whose annulment the petition requests. However, administrative courts in practice make exceptions to this rule for zoning plans in particular. Accordingly, if the plan in a lawsuit filed against a zoning plan changes while the lawsuit is still ongoing and the new plan contains the same illegalities that are the subject of the first lawsuit, then the court that hears the case will also assess the legality of the new plan in its proceedings. The Council of State decides whether the zoning plan that is the subject of the lawsuit will change while the lawsuit is ongoing. An expert examination of the new plan should also be made, and whether the reason a lawsuit was filed in the first case occurs in the same way in the new plan should be investigated. The lack of any examination in this direction should be considered a reason for annulment.

Administrative jurisdictions examine whether the sole purpose of establishing a new zoning plan is to eliminate the subject in the current case or whether the first and second plans have the same content. After this examination, if the court detects the illegality from the first plan to still exist in the second plan in the same way, then the court will make an exception to the principle of the binding effect of a petition and also declare the illegality of the second plan.

In this case, the second plan can be said to not have been annulled; rather, the court has confined itself to evaluating the legality of the second plan, with the principle of the binding effect of petitions not preventing an evaluation of the legality of other acts related to the administrative act in dispute. This situation also does not constitute an exception to the principle of the binding effect of petitions. However, the administrative jurisdictions’ evaluation of the regulatory and individual acts that form the basis of the act under dispute and their inclusion in the ongoing proceedings of a zoning plan that emerged after the plan in dispute and that is not based on it are quite different from each other. In other words, the inclusion of the second plan in the case is not because it involves the subject that is the basis of the dispute. Therefore, while the evaluation of the acts that form the basis of the act under dispute is not an exception to the principle of the binding effect of a petition, the purpose of this judicial practice that has been specifically developed for zoning plans is to determine whether the second plan is actually a new plan or a continuation of the first plan. In this way, it forms an exception to the principle of the binding effect of a petition.

A contrario interpretation of this practice for when the content of the second plan is different from that of the first plan (i.e., the issues affecting the plaintiff’s interest in the first plan are resolved in the second plan) involves the purpose of change being accepted and thus leaving the case with no valid subject. In this case, the courts should give a decision of “no need to provide judgment” regarding the first plan. In addition, the second action should be accepted as no continuation of the first plan should other illegalities apart from those alleged in the petition occur, or should an illegality that violates some interest of the plaintiff other than that the first lawsuit. 

Despite administrative courts including the second plan in the proceedings, if they are going to give an annulment decision, they are to confine themselves to declaring an annulment of the act that is the subject of the lawsuit regarding the operative provisions of judgment. Of course, although the annulment of the second plan is not clearly stated in the judgment, it is clearly understood from the trial and the reasoning of the decision that the second action is also unlawful. This is because the courts have included the second plan into their evaluations based on the second plan essentially being a continuation of the first plan, the contents of the plan being the same in terms of the subject matter of the case, and its inability to accept the abolishment of the first plan. In case of unlawfulness, the courts will also decide to annul this second plan.

However, in such a case, difficulties are quite likely to occur regarding how the defendant administrations are to implement the annulment decision. This is because the defendant administrations will claim the annulled plan to have already been repealed, a new zoning plan to have already been found, and no annulment judgment to exist regarding this second zoning plan. For this reason, having the courts declare explicitly the illegality of the second plan by mentioning it in the operative provisions of the judgment is important for the applicability of the court decision.