Romantic Relationships in the Workplace: a Critical Approach To the Turkish Courts’ Case Law on the Employee’s Right To Respect for Private Life

Abstract

The nature of an employment contract carries the risk that an employee’s personal rights, including their private life, may become open to the employer’s intervention. As the employee’s private life is an area which is open to employer intervention, the need to draw the boundaries of employer intervention in the context of balancing the interests of the employee and the employer, as well as the need to protect the privacy of the employee’s private life within the boundaries of the workplace, keeps this issue on the agenda of Turkish labour law doctrine and the judiciary today. To demonstrate the current developments in Turkish labour law - which will reveal the current approach towards the fundamental rights of employees, especially romantic relationships in the workplace- in this article, after briefly explaining the principles of the individual application system to the Constitutional Court in Turkish law and the concept of the right to respect for private life, the topic is discussed in light of the individual application jurisprudence of the Turkish Constitutional Court and the judgments of the Court of Cassation and Courts of Appeal.