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Mobbing under Turkish Law pursuant to the
Jurisprudence of the Court of Cassation and
Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098
*
Att. Suleyman Sevinc
Under Turkish Law, mobbing is a recent concept defined and
developed by the jurisprudence of the Court of Cassation. Emotional
abuse (
mobbing
) consists of all types of ill treatment, threats, violence,
humiliation, etc., conducted and repeated systematically by other
employees, or by the employer to an employee
1
. Besides being a vio-
lation of personal rights, mobbing may also mean a violation of liabil-
ities of the employer in accordance with the labor law.
An article entitled “Emotional Abuse in the Workplace According
to Turkish Labor Law” that examines mobbing was published in our
Newsletter of January, 2010. The present article will assess this notion
in accordance with the provisions of new Turkish Code of Obligations
No. 6098 (“TCO”) and the Court of Cassation’s recent jurisprudence.
Explicit Provision Adopted by the TCO
Abolished Code of Obligations No. 818 did not contain any spe-
cific provision regarding mobbing. However, in practice, claims
against mobbing were based on Art. 332 of the Code setting forth the
protection of the employee, and abolished Art. 77
2
of the Labor Code
(“Labor Code”) that set forth health and safety matters concerning
employees.
LABOR LAW
307
*
Article of January 2015
1
TINAZ, Pınar/BAYRAM Fuat/ERGİN Hediye
, Çalışma Psikolojisi ve Hukuki Boyutlarıyla
İşyerinde Psikolojik Taciz (Mobbing)’den naklen Süzek, İş Güvenliği Hukuku, Beta Yayınları,
İstanbul, 2008, p. 7.
2
The provision in question is abolished by Art. 37/ç of Law No. 6331 dated 20.6.2012 published
in the Official Gazette dated 30.6.2012 and numbered 28339. The article entered into force six
months after its publication in the Official Gazette.