Three Hundred Eighty-Four Days: Türkiye and the Anatomy of a Slow Corridor

Executive Summary

Türkiye is a full member of the Hague Abduction Convention whose problem is not doctrine but time: in the HCCH's 2021 global study, the applications it received took 384 days on average to conclude — among the longest of any receiving State, and the report singles Türkiye out (with Brazil and Morocco) as cases that "took much longer to conclude." Two European Court of Human Rights cases about the same country capture what is healthy and what is broken in a slow corridor. In Eskinazi and Chelouche v. Turkey (2005) the Court got the doctrine right — a state ordering a Hague return need not audit the requesting country's judicial system absent a "flagrant denial of justice"; the Convention runs on mutual trust between legal systems. In Özmen v. Turkey (2012) the Court condemned the clock — a return order left unenforced violates Article 8, because delay itself can cause irreparable harm. Right doctrine, broken clock: that is the anatomy of a slow corridor, and it generalizes far beyond one country. This is educational, not legal advice.

Introduction

Every system in this series has a number. Israel's is 83 days [article #10]; Germany's courts, 97 [#9]; the global average, 207. Türkiye's number — measured across the applications with usable timing data in the 2021 global study — is 384 days, among the longest average durations recorded in the entire study. The HCCH's own report singles out Türkiye, alongside Brazil and Morocco, as the receiving States whose applications "took much longer to conclude".

Numbers like that usually get a country written off with an adjective. Türkiye deserves better analysis than an adjective — because its record contains, side by side, one of the most interesting correct decisions in the Convention's history and one of the clearest condemnations of delay ever issued by the European Court of Human Rights. Together they show exactly what is healthy and what is broken in a slow corridor.

Legal Background: what a slow corridor is (and isn't)

Türkiye is not a treaty-free corridor like those in article #20 — it is a Convention member, with a Central Authority, courts that apply the return remedy, and (as Özmen shows) supervision by the European Court of Human Rights. As always in this series: a Hague return decides only the forum — which country's courts will resolve custody — not who ultimately wins custody. Return ≠ custody. A "slow corridor," then, is not a country that refuses the Convention; it is one that accepts the Convention's principles but delivers them late — at the Central Authority, in the courts, or at enforcement. Because the Convention's whole design assumes speed (Article 11's six-week aspiration), lateness is not a peripheral failing; it changes outcomes, which is why the European Court treats delay as a rights question in its own right.

The case Türkiye got right

In December 2003, a mother travelled from Israel to Turkey with her young daughter — then three years old — for what was agreed as a short family visit. She then decided they would stay, over the father's objection. It is the field's standard opening [articles #13, #17]: no drama, a visit that quietly becomes a retention.

Both legal systems engaged. Israel was the family's home forum: the Tel Aviv Rabbinical Court held jurisdiction over the couple's divorce and the related question of custody (proceedings that were still pending, and at one point adjourned, before the European Court ruled). In Istanbul, the Sarıyer Family Affairs Court first granted the mother interim custody, then set that aside as the Hague return question came live — consistent with Article 16 of the Convention, which bars the destination country from ruling on custody merits while a return application is pending. The Turkish courts examined the Hague application and ordered the child returned to Israel; appeals upheld the order.

The mother then took Turkey to the European Court of Human Rights, with an argument that made the case internationally significant: returning the child, she said, would deliver the family's future to Israel's religious courts, whose procedures, she argued, could not guarantee the fair-trial standards of the European Convention. Strasbourg was being asked to hold that a Hague return could violate human rights because of the character of the destination's court system.

In Eskinazi and Chelouche v. Turkey (decision of December 2005), the Court, by a majority, declared the application inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded. Its reasoning is a quiet cornerstone of the treaty: a state ordering a Hague return is not required to conduct a full audit of the requesting state's judicial system; it must intervene only where the person faces a "flagrant denial of justice" in the destination — and, absent that, the Convention runs on mutual trust between legal systems. Israel's courts, rabbinical jurisdiction included, were entitled to decide the child's future, and Turkey's courts were right to send the question home. The Strasbourg stay that had held the return was lifted, clearing the way for it. For Israeli readers the point lands doubly: the treaty protected the jurisdiction of Israel's own family-law order, in its distinctive religious-civil structure, against relitigation abroad. Trust is the Convention's currency — and here Türkiye paid it correctly.

The case Türkiye got wrong

Seven years later the same court reached the opposite verdict about the same country — about time. In Özmen v. Turkey (2012), a return order in favour of a parent living abroad sat unenforced while proceedings and enforcement attempts stretched on. Strasbourg found a violation of Article 8 and restated the principle that has run through its abduction case law since Ignaccolo-Zenide v. Romania: matters relating to the return of an abducted child, including the enforcement of final decisions, "require urgent handling as the passage of time can have irremediable consequences for relations between the child and the parent with whom the child does not live" (§ 96).

One country, two verdicts: the doctrine sound, the clock broken. That is the anatomy of a slow corridor — and the 2021 data dissects it precisely:

• The delay lives in identifiable stages. The Central Authority stage — from receipt to the case reaching a judge — averaged 130 days in Türkiye, against a global norm of 80 (Poland manages 24 [article #12]); the in-court stage averaged 278 days, against a global 152 [Annex 8]. (These stage figures are measured on their own sub-samples and are not simply additive to the 384-day overall average, which is computed on a different set of applications; the point is not the arithmetic but that each stage runs long.) Neither stage is mysterious; each is a queue with an owner.
• Litigation underperforms agreement. Of Türkiye's 61 incoming return applications in 2021, voluntary returns (11) edged out judicial returns (10), with only 4 judicial refusals — but 13 still pending at the study's cut-off and 16 in "other" endings (plus 1 rejected and 6 withdrawn) [Annex 4]. As in Mexico [#11], where courts are slow, settlement is not the soft option; it is the fast one.
• Volume is falling, not rising. Incoming return applications dropped from 82 (2015) to 61 (2021) [flows dataset] — the caseload is manageable; the pace is a choice. Türkiye responded to the HCCH study and participates in the international judicial-network conversation — engagement is real. The queues remain.

What This Shows About the Limits of the Hague Convention Alone

The deepest lesson of pairing Eskinazi with Özmen is that the Convention can be honoured in principle and defeated in practice by the calendar. A treaty that assumes six weeks but delivers 384 days is not being violated so much as slowly emptied — and in this field, slow is a merits outcome: the passage of time is what makes the settled-child dynamics of articles #1 and #5 come alive, so that a case can be lost to the clock without any court ever refusing return. Mutual trust — the principle Eskinazi protects — is the treaty's engine, and it binds the trusted side too: a system that receives that trust owes the six-week diligence in return. Trust and speed are the two halves of one bargain.

What Parents and Professionals Should Understand

For a parent facing a slow corridor, the practical playbook — a prompt to act with a lawyer, not legal advice — is to push the voluntary/mediation track from day one, because in a slow system it is empirically the fastest exit [Annex 4; article #16]; to file urgency motions that cite Özmen § 96, since courts in Council-of-Europe states are bound by that jurisprudence; to document every idle month, because the European Court is the functioning backstop for enforcement failure in those states [articles #3, #12]; and to calibrate expectations honestly — at 384 days, the settled-child risks of articles #1 and #5 are live from the outset. For policymakers, the reform lesson is to stop blaming countries and start naming stages: "Türkiye is slow" fixes nothing, but "the Central-Authority stage averages 130 days" is a work order — and queues shrink when they are named, which is why SafeReturn's country pages publish stage-level timing wherever the data exists.

Limitations

The timing figures come from the HCCH's 2021 study and rest on the applications with usable data (the 384-day overall figure on 14 applications; the stage figures on 30 and 13 respectively), so they are indicative of a pattern rather than a precise census, and the 2021 numbers were affected by the pandemic. The two ECtHR cases are summarized from the public decision and the Court's own case-law materials. This is educational and not a substitute for advice from a qualified lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction.

Conclusion

Türkiye's story is not the story of a country that rejects the Convention — it is the story of a country that believes in it and delivers it late. Eskinazi shows a court that understood the treaty's soul; Özmen shows the same system letting a child wait until waiting became the verdict. Right doctrine does not console a child who has spent 384 days in limbo. Every reform conversation that starts with doctrine should start with dockets instead.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do Hague Convention cases take so long in some countries? The Convention aspires to a six-week resolution, but delay accumulates at identifiable stages — the Central Authority moving a case to court, the courts hearing it, and enforcement of the final order. In Türkiye's 2021 data those stages ran well above the global norms, producing a 384-day average.

**What did Özmen v. Turkey decide?** The European Court of Human Rights found that leaving a child-return order unenforced violated Article 8. It restated (§ 96) that return proceedings, including enforcement, require urgent handling because the passage of time can cause irreparable harm to the child–parent relationship.

**What did Eskinazi and Chelouche v. Turkey decide?** The Court declared the application inadmissible: a state ordering a Hague return need not audit the requesting country's courts unless the person faces a "flagrant denial of justice." The Convention runs on mutual trust between legal systems — here, trust in Israel's courts, including its rabbinical jurisdiction.

Does a slow corridor mean my case is hopeless? No — but speed matters, so act early. Voluntary agreement and mediation are often the fastest route in a slow system, urgency motions can invoke Özmen, and in Council-of-Europe states the European Court supervises enforcement failures. A lawyer in the destination country should advise on strategy.