I. Introduction
As is known, pursuant to Article 18 of the Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698 dated 24 March 2016 (“Law”), titled “Misdemeanours”, the Personal Data Protection Board (“Board”) may impose administrative fines on data controllers and data processors in cases where the obligation to inform is not fulfilled, the obligations regarding data security are not complied with, the decisions rendered pursuant to Article 15 of the Law are not implemented, the obligation to register with and notify the Data Controllers Registry is violated, and the standard contracts—which must be among the appropriate safeguards required for the transfer of personal data abroad in certain circumstances—are not notified in accordance with the conditions set forth in the Law.
With the amendment to Article 18 of the Law, which entered into force as of 1 June 2024, it has been stipulated that lawsuits may be filed before administrative courts against administrative fines imposed by the Board.[1] Prior to the said amendment, since there was no specific provision in the Law regarding the judicial remedy against administrative fines, objections to the Board’s administrative fines were filed within 15 days before the Magistrates’ Courts of Criminal Jurisdiction (Sulh Ceza Hakimlikleri) pursuant to Articles 3/1(a) and 27 of the Misdemeanours Law No. 5326 dated 30.03.2005 (“Misdemeanours Law”), which is the general procedural law on administrative sanctions.[2] If no application was filed within this period, the fine would become final; whereas in cases of objection, finalization would only occur once the judicial proceedings concluded.
As will be explained in detail below, pursuant to the provisions of the Misdemeanours Law, which serves as the general procedural law on administrative sanctions, the General Communiqué on Collection (Series: B No. 18) regarding the enforcement of the Misdemeanours Law, and the established jurisprudence of the Council of State (Danıştay), administrative fines must, as a rule, become final (i.e., no legal remedy is sought within the prescribed period against the administrative fine, or, in cases where a legal remedy is sought, all stages of the proceedings are completed) in order for them to be pursued and collected. Accordingly, the collection of administrative fines imposed by the Board was also subject to the condition that such fines become final. However, with the aforementioned amendment to the Law, administrative fines imposed by the Board have been brought under the jurisdiction of administrative courts, and, as is known, under the administrative judicial procedure, the filing of a lawsuit does not, as a rule, suspend the execution of the challenged administrative act. In this respect, under the administrative judicial procedure regime, it is not necessary for administrative fines, which constitute individual administrative acts of the Board,[3] to become final in order for them to be collected.
This article puts forth that, following the amendment to the Law, there exists a conflict between the Misdemeanours Law and the Administrative Procedure Law No. 2577 dated 6 January 1982 (“APL”) regarding whether administrative fines imposed by the Board must become final in order to be collected. It can be considered that the most permanent solution to resolve the uncertainty arising from this conflict is a change in the law. Nevertheless, in order to clarify the practice in the shorter term, it is also possible for the matter to be elucidated through the jurisprudence of the Council of State or secondary regulations to be issued by the executive. In any event, the collection of a monetary fine, which constitutes an interference with the right to property, must be carried out in conformity with the principle of legal certainty.
II. The Conflict Between the Misdemeanours Law Regime and the Administrative Procedure Law Regime
Pursuant to Article 3 of the Misdemeanours Law, titled “Quality as General Law”;
(1) The provisions of this Law on: a) Legal remedies against administrative sanction decisions shall apply unless otherwise provided in other laws, b) Other general provisions shall apply to all acts requiring an administrative monetary fine or confiscation of property.
Accordingly, unless the law regulating the relevant misdemeanour contains a specific provision regarding legal remedies, Articles 27 to 31 of the Misdemeanours Law, which set out the legal remedy procedure against administrative sanctions, shall apply to objections filed against administrative monetary fines imposed for the commission of the relevant misdemeanour, and such objections shall be resolved by the Magistrates’ Courts of Criminal Jurisdiction in accordance with the procedural rules set forth in the said articles. Where the law regulating the relevant misdemeanour contains a specific provision regarding legal remedies, however, the dispute shall be resolved according to the procedural rules specified in that provision. It is further stipulated that other general provisions of the Misdemeanours Law not concerning legal remedies shall apply to all administrative monetary fines regulated under various laws.
Since the amendment to the Law explicitly provides that applications against administrative monetary fines imposed by the Board shall be filed with the administrative judiciary, the provisions of the Misdemeanours Law concerning legal remedies are no longer applicable. However, this amendment pertains solely to the determination of which court has jurisdiction. The provisions of the Misdemeanours Law other than the said provisions shall remain applicable with respect to administrative monetary fines imposed by the Board. It must be emphasized that the applicability of the Misdemeanours Law does not stem from it being a special law, but from its nature as the general law governing administrative monetary fines.
Indeed, pursuant to Article 17/4 of the Misdemeanours Law (which does not concern legal remedies):
Finalized decisions regarding administrative monetary fines to be recorded as revenue in the General Budget[4] shall be transmitted to the collection offices designated by the Ministry of Finance for collection in accordance with the provisions of the Law No. 6183 on the Procedure for the Collection of Public Receivables, dated 21/7/1953.
In the established jurisprudence of the Council of State,[5] this provision is interpreted to mean that administrative monetary fines must be finalized in order to be collected, and therefore administrative monetary fines may only be demanded by way of a payment order under the Law on the Procedure for the Collection of Public Receivables once they have become final. The concept of finalization of administrative monetary fines is defined in Article 7/1 of the General Communiqué on Collection (Series: B No. 18) as follows:
“Finalization for administrative monetary fines means that no legal remedy has been sought against the decision on administrative sanction, or, in cases where a legal remedy has been sought, that the stages of the proceedings have been completed.”
Therefore, pursuant to Article 17/4 of the Misdemeanors Law, which stipulates its applicability to all administrative monetary fines, in order for administrative monetary fines imposed by the Board to be collected through the issuance of a payment order, either no application must be filed with the administrative judiciary within the prescribed period, or, if such an application has been filed, the legal remedies specific to administrative jurisdiction must have been exhausted.
While this is the case under the Misdemeanors Law regime, the amendment to the Law has provided that appeals against administrative monetary fines imposed by the Board shall be brought before the administrative judiciary, thereby rendering the APL applicable once recourse is taken against the Board’s decision imposing an administrative monetary fine. As is known, under the administrative judicial procedure regime, administrative acts benefit from the presumption of legality. As a consequence of this, the filing of a lawsuit in the administrative judiciary does not, as a rule, suspend the execution of administrative acts.[6] Indeed, according to Article 27/1 of the APL: “The filing of a lawsuit before the Council of State or administrative courts shall not suspend the execution of the administrative act subject to the lawsuit.” Accordingly, under the administrative judicial procedure, it may be interpreted that the filing of a lawsuit before the administrative court against administrative monetary fines imposed by the Board does not suspend their collection, and that if suspension is sought, a stay of execution order must be obtained from the administrative court. The practical implication of this interpretation is that, despite the filing of a lawsuit before the administrative court against the Board’s decision imposing an administrative monetary fine, a payment order may nevertheless be issued by the administration for the purpose of collection without awaiting the finalization of the fine, on the grounds that the fine was not paid when due and that no stay of execution order had been granted in the pending lawsuit.[7]
The conflict at hand[8] essentially stems from the incompatibility between Article 17/4 of the Misdemeanours Law and Article 27 of the APL.
III. Resolution of the Conflict
Conflicts between statutory provisions that regulate the same subject matter differently must first be resolved according to the principles of generality–specificity and priority–posteriority. If a resolution cannot be achieved in this way, a legal gap will be deemed to exist, and such gap must be filled in compliance with the principle of legal certainty, either through legislative amendment, judicial precedent, or regulatory acts of the executive. The principle of legal certainty requires that the meaning derived from the statutory provisions forming the basis of the interference, together with the related judicial precedents and secondary regulations issued by the executive, be foreseeable.[9]
In the context of the present issue, Article 27 of the APL lays down the general rule as to whether finalization is required for the execution of all administrative acts; by contrast, Article 17/4 of the Misdemeanours Law specifically prescribes the requirement of finalization for the collection of administrative monetary fines among administrative acts. Moreover, Article 27 of the APL predates Article 17/4 of the Misdemeanours Law.[10] In this case, according to the view accepted in the doctrine[11], the Misdemeanours Law, being subsequent in time and of a special character with respect to the subject matter, should prevail. Consequently, the Board’s decisions imposing administrative monetary fines should not be collected before they have become final.
On the other hand, it may be argued that, in comparison with the Misdemeanours Law, which governs all types of administrative monetary fines, the Law—by regulating only the administrative monetary fines imposed by the Board—assumes the character of a special law. The Law provides that appeals against the Board’s administrative monetary fines may be brought before the administrative courts and, in this way, accepts that in the event of a dispute arising from such fines, the provisions of the APL shall apply. In that case, the initiation of proceedings does not suspend collection; if suspension is sought, an application for a stay of execution must be made.
At this point, it is useful to refer to a case that brought Article 17/4 of the Misdemeanours Law and Article 27 of the APL into conflict and that parallels the subject under discussion. Similar to Article 18/3 of the Law, Article 18/3 dated 2 July 2012 of the Law no. 5307 on the Liquefied Petroleum Gases (LPG) Market and the Law on the Amendment of the Electricity Market Law dated 2 March 2005 (“LPG Law”), also confers jurisdiction on the administrative courts for appeals against administrative sanction decisions rendered under that statute. Furthermore, this provision, just like Article 18/3 of the Law, constitutes a subsequent and special law in comparison with Article 17/4 of the Misdemeanours Law.
In the case reflected in the decision of the Plenary Session of the Chambers for Administrative Cases of the Council of State dated 16 May 2018 and numbered 2016/1367 E., 2018/2415 K., the first-instance administrative court, in a lawsuit seeking the annulment of a payment order issued for the collection of an administrative monetary fine imposed under the LPG Law, held that, since no stay of execution order had been granted in the administrative lawsuit filed against the said fine and the fine had not been annulled, and given that administrative acts benefit from the presumption of legality, there was no unlawfulness in the payment order issued with respect to an administrative monetary fine that had not yet become final as of the date of the payment order.
The appellate court, the 13th Chamber of the Council of State[12], and subsequently the Plenary Session of the Chambers for Administrative Cases of the Council of State, which reviewed the appeal filed against the insistence decision of the first-instance administrative court, concluded otherwise. They determined that at the time the payment order was issued, the lawsuit against the administrative fine was still pending at the appellate review stage and thus held that the payment order issued for a non-final administrative fine was unlawful.[13]
The significance of this case for our subject lies in the fact that, with respect to whether administrative monetary fines for which the administrative judiciary has been designated as the legal remedy must become final before they can be collected, two different interpretations—one based on Article 27 of the APL and the other on Article 17/4 of the Misdemeanours Law—have both been adopted in practice. This demonstrates that the conflict between these two statutory provisions has also been reflected in practice in other contexts. The Council of State has not yet developed specific jurisprudence on whether fines imposed by the Board after the amendment to the Law must become final before being collected.
On the other hand, it is observed that, unlike the Law and the LPG Law, in statutory provisions of a special character regarding certain other regulated fields, the legislature, while stipulating that appeals against administrative monetary fines may be brought before the administrative courts, has also explicitly provided that the initiation of proceedings shall not suspend the collection of the fine, thereby departing from the regime of the Misdemeanours Law with respect to those fines. Article 25/2 of the Environmental Law No. 2872 dated 9 August 1983 and Article 55/2 of the Law on the Protection of Competition No. 4054 dated 7 December 1994 may be cited as examples. By contrast, when amending the Law, the legislature remained silent on the question of whether the administrative monetary fines to be imposed by the Board must become final prior to their collection.
Finally, it should be noted that Article 7/3 of the General Communiqué on Collection (Series: B No. 18) provides as follows:
…in order for administrative monetary fines to be pursued under the Law No. 6183 on the Procedure for the Collection of Public Receivables dated 21/7/1953, such fines must become final. However, the provisions of laws enacted subsequent to the Law No. 5326 shall be reserved.
Nevertheless, since the amendment to the Law did not introduce a clear provision on finalization, this communiqué provision is likewise of no assistance in resolving the conflict between the Misdemeanours Law regime and the regime established by the Law and its referral to the APL.
IV. Conclusion
The collection of administrative fines constitutes an interference with the fundamental right to property. One of the requirements for such interference is the principle of legality, which also encompasses the principle of certainty. As explained above, the regimes of the Misdemeanours Law and of the Law (together with its referral to the APL) are incompatible as to whether the Board’s administrative fines must become final before they can be collected, and this inconsistency has not been resolved through judicial precedent or secondary regulations.
This uncertainty poses problems in terms of the principles of legal security and certainty. Therefore, as in certain other regulated areas, the solution must be achieved in accordance with the principle of certainty, through legislative amendment, secondary regulation by the executive, or jurisprudence of the Council of State. In the current situation, however, when challenging monetary fines imposed by the Board before the administrative judiciary, it is advisable to request not only the annulment of the fine but also the granting of a stay of execution.
[1] The amendment was introduced by Article 35 of the Law No. 7499 Amending the Code of Criminal Procedure and Certain Laws, published in the Official Gazette dated 12 March 2024, No. 32487; Personal Data Protection Authority, “Amendments to the Personal Data Protection Law” Personal Data Protection Authority Bulletin, 2024, https://kvkk.gov.tr/SharedFolderServer/CMSFiles/4eba766b-7425-4cd4-97f5-cb09c4cf4ef9.pdf accessed 5 August 2025. Pursuant to Provisional Article 3/2 of the Law, applications pending before the Magistrates’ Courts of Criminal Jurisdiction as of 1 June 2024 shall continue to be heard by those courts. Accordingly, the new legal remedy shall apply only to applications filed after that date, whereas the cases already initiated shall be adjudicated by the Magistrates’ Courts of Criminal Jurisdiction.
[2] Berk Yalçın, Kişisel Verilerin Korunması Hukukunda Düzenlenen İdari Yaptırımlar, Master’s Thesis, 2023, (“Yalçın”), pp. 100-101, 108-110; Court of Jurisdictional Disputes Civil Chamber, Case No. 2022/647, Decision No. 2023/59, dated 23.01.2023; Ankara Regional Administrative Court, 10th Administrative Chamber, Case No. 2024/9642, Decision No. 2024/9319, dated 31.12.2024; Plenary Session of Constitutional Court, 2020/7518, dated 12.10.2023.
[3] Yalçın, 85.
[4] Pursuant to Article 8/1(a) of the General Communiqué on Collection (Series: B No. 18) and Schedule (III) annexed to the Public Financial Management and Control Law, administrative monetary fines imposed by the Personal Data Protection Authority shall be recorded as revenue in the general budget.
[5] Council of State, 4th Chamber, Case No. 2023/10529, Decision No. 2024/3509, dated 29.05.2024; Plenary Session of the Chambers for Administrative Cases of the Council of State, Case No. 2016/1367, Decision No. 2018/2415, dated 16.05.2018; Council of State, 13th Chamber, Case No. 2015/960, Decision No. 2015/2876, dated 03.09.2015.
[6] Fatih Torun, İdari Yargıda Yürütmenin Durdurulması, PhD Thesis, 2020, pp. 25-27.
[7] In the case before the Council of State, 13th Chamber, the first-instance administrative court, with the reasoning to that effect, rejected the request for annulment of the payment order issued for the collection of an administrative monetary fine imposed under the Law no. 5307 on the Liquefied Petroleum Gases (LPG) Market and the Law on the Amendment of the Electricity Market Law dated 2 March 2005. This dispute was subsequently brought before the Plenary Session of the Chambers for Administrative Cases of the Council of State and will be addressed further below. See Council of State, 13th Chamber, Case No. 2015/960, Decision No. 2015/2876, dated 03.09.2025.
[8] For the concept of the conflict of legal rules and methods of resolution, see Kemal Gözler, Yorum İlkeleri, Kamu Hukukçuları Platformu (Public Law Practitioners Platform) and Union of Turkish Bar Associations, “Yorum İlkeleri”, 2012, (“Gözler”) p. 64 et. seq. https://www.anayasa.gen.tr/yorum-ilkeleri.pdf accessed 8 August 2025; Sururi Aktaş, “Pozitif Hukukta Boşluk Kavramı”, Erzincan University Law Faculty Journal, 2010, p. 22 et. seq.
[9] Constitutional Court, Second Section, 2013/4395, dated 10.06.2015, para. 109; Haşim Özpolat, “Anayasa Mahkemesi’nin Bireysel Başvuru Kararlarında Maddi Anlamda Kanun Kriteri”, Journal of the Turkish Justice Academy, 2018, p. 614-615; Plenary Session of Constitutional Court, Case No. 2018/31,
Decision No. 2020/38, dated 16.07.2020, para. 21.
[10] While the provisions of Article 27 of the APL, stipulating that the filing of a lawsuit in administrative jurisdiction does not, as a rule, suspend the execution of the administrative act, date back to 10 June 1994, Article 17/4 of the Misdemeanors Law is dated 6 December 2006.
[11] Gözler, 69; Adnan Güriz, Hukuk Başlangıcı, 15th Edition, Siyasal Bookstore, 2013, p. 158 et. seq.
[12] See above, footnote 7.
[13] Plenary Session of the Chambers for Administrative Cases of the Council of State, Case No. 2016/1367, Decision No. 2018/2415, dated 16.05.2018.
