The regulation regarding the decision that no need exist for an investigation (SYOK) is included in Article 158.f.6 of the Turkish Criminal Procedure Code (CPC). The regulation was added to Article 158 of the CPP titled “Notice and Complaint”” as per Paragraph 6 of Decree Law No. 694 dated August 15, 2017 and accepted in its entirety by Article 140 of Law No. 7078 dated February 1, 2018.

The decision that no need exists for an investigation gives the public prosecutor the power to decide that no need is found for investigation with the exceptions of opening an investigation or making a decision that no need exists for prosecution due to the conditions of investigation not being met.

Once a perpetrator commits a crime, a punitive relationship occurs between the perpetrator and the state. For this reason, the prosecution is under obligation to investigate a crime as soon as the crime is uncovered. The regulation gives prosecutors the authority to decide that no need exists for an investigation in the presence of certain conditions regarding the notice or complaint being made and has rearranged the conditions in Turkish law regarding the obligation to investigate. As a result of this situation, the provision included in Art.158 f.6 of the CPC defines the initial suspicion that gives rise to the obligation to investigate, together with Article 160 of the CPC, which stipulates that the prosecutor is obliged to investigate in the presence of a situation that implies a crime has been committed.

The conditions in Art.158 f.6 of the CPC for making the decision to not investigate are shown as having the clear understanding that the act subject to the notice and complaint does not constitute a crime or that the notice and complaint are abstract and general in nature. Therefore, SYOK may be issued in cases where: a) the act constituting the subject of the notice or complaint is clearly understood to not constitute a crime with no need for research or b) the notice or complaint regarding a crime that has been committed is abstract and general in nature.

The primary condition for finding a field of application for both situations where SYOK may be applied involves the presence of a notice or complaint made in accordance with Art. 158 of the CPC. Prosecutor cannot make this decision in cases where the prosecutor learns about the act on their own.

The first situation in which the public prosecutor can decide that no need exists for investigation is when the act that is subject to the notice or complaint is clearly understood to not constitute a crime without any investigation. In order for this situation to find a field of application, the act that constitutes the subject of the notice or complaint and the circumstances surrounding the incident should first be clearly known to the extent that any further investigation is clearly unnecessary and that no need clearly exists for any separate investigation to garner further information about the act. In this case, arriving at the SYOK may emerge from two different possibilities: Firstly, the Law does not regulate the act constituting the subject of the notice or complaint. Secondly, the act can be clearly understood to not constitute the typicality of the alleged crime based on the content of the notice or complaint. In order for this possibility to find a field of application, the condition of “being clearly understood” is a valid condition in terms of both the material nature of the act and its legal recommendation; this requires the prosecutor to have a definite opinion on both matters, one that leaves no room for doubt.

The second and final situation in which the public prosecutor can acceptably decide that no need exists for an investigation is when the nature of the notice or complaint that is made is abstract and general. In criminal procedure, the subject of a notice and complaint is the act. For this reason, a notice or complaint having an abstract and general nature means that the act that is the subject of the supposed crime notice is too abstract and too general. The act that forms the subject of a judgment may naturally not be as concrete at every stage of the judgment process. In any case, however, a concrete basis must be present in order to allow for a criminal investigation.

In criminal law, having an abstract and general charge of an act means that the charge does not have content that allows it to be distinguished from other similar acts and impositions, such as perpetrator, place, time, subject, and means. For this reason, the expression that a notice or complaint should be abstract and general in nature as justification for no need to exist for an investigation needs to be understand as lacking specific information such as the perpetrator, place, time, or subject that would remove the actual hypothetical claim that constitutes the subject of a notice or complaint.

In Article 158 f.6 of the CPP, which involves a situation where the person against whom a notice or complaint has been made will not gain the status of suspect, lawmakers accept that public prosecutors will directly issue an SYOK without any investigation when either of the two situations examined above are present. 

A SYOK issued to a person who has received a notice or a complaint may be appealed in accordance with Article 173 of the CPP, entitled “Objection to the Prosecutor’s decision”. The right to object to the SYOK belongs to the person or persons who made the notice or complaint over which the SYOK was issued. The right to appeal must be exercised within a period of 15 days from the reporting of the decision. The authority to examine the objection belongs to the criminal judge of the Magistrates Court in the jurisdiction where the public prosecutor in the High Criminal Court who made the decision in question is located.