Correction (19 October 2026): An earlier version of this article described events that we could not verify. It has been rewritten from verifiable sources, which are linked in the text.

The idea is easy to picture. A consumer uploads an invoice and a complaint about a faulty phone; software compares the file with earlier decisions and proposes a settlement figure; both sides click "accept" and the matter is closed. As of 19 October 2026, however, we have found no Turkish programme in which software mediates or decides consumer disputes.

What does exist is more modest: an AI voice line for complaints about slow court files, a consumer dispute system that already runs largely through e-Devlet, and a body of law that, as written, leaves no room for a machine to act as mediator or decision-maker. This article sets out what is in place, where AI could help, and where the legal limits lie.

What actually started on 1 September 2026: Alo Adalet 135

On 29 August 2026, Justice Minister Akın Gürlek announced that a service called Alo Adalet 135 would start on 1 September 2026 as a pilot in the Ankara Batı, İzmir and Kayseri courthouses, according to reports by DHA and Hukuki Haber. The service went live that day, according to Yeni Ankara. Its purpose is narrow. A person who is a party to an open file can use it to lodge an application about delay: court cases pending for more than five years before first-instance courts, regional courts of appeal or regional administrative courts, and investigation files older than three years.

The AI element is the front end. After identity and contact details are verified, an AI-supported voice assistant takes the caller through the application; if it cannot complete the process, or if the caller asks, the call is transferred to a human representative. Applications go to the Judicial Services Effectiveness Office (Yargı Hizmetlerinin Etkinliği Bürosu) and, where necessary, are assessed by the relevant court or chief public prosecutor's office using criteria set by the Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK). In court cases the applicant is informed by SMS; in investigations, because of confidentiality, the applicant is told only that the application has been received (DHA).

Two points matter for this article. First, Alo Adalet 135 is an intake and routing tool: it does not assess the merits of anything, let alone propose settlements. Second, it has nothing to do with consumer arbitration committees, which are run by a different ministry altogether. The idea was not new in September: in February 2026 the minister had described an AI-supported "Alo Adalet" line with Istanbul as the pilot region (Bengütürk); the version announced in August began elsewhere. We have not found an official evaluation of how the line has performed since launch.

The bar's response: a statement, not a lawsuit

The organised bar has engaged with the ministry's AI plans, but through public statements. In April 2026, the minister spoke of an AI-supported "citizen platform" that would give people sample petitions and procedural guidance for disputes such as rent and maintenance claims (Türkiye; Hukuki Haber). On 25 April 2026, 78 bar associations issued a joint statement arguing that AI-based legal help offered to citizens without a lawyer would interfere with the essence of the right of defence, that legal opinions and representation belong to lawyers under the Attorneys Act, and that justice is not merely a mathematical result of data processing (Cumhuriyet).

The Union of Turkish Bar Associations (TBB) responded separately, as reported by BirGün on 26 April 2026. Its main line was that the state's primary duty is to widen citizens' access to lawyers. It accepted that lawyers will use technological developments, including AI, but said such tools should support human-rights safeguards rather than replace them. It named high court fees, long proceedings and unpredictable rulings as structural barriers, called for stronger legal aid and publicly supported legal insurance, and warned that without real access to a lawyer, technological fixes could become temporary tools that cover up structural problems. Ministry sources then said the planned platforms would offer guidance only and would not be an alternative to the legal profession (Türkiye). We have found no record of the TBB bringing a court challenge against any AI project of the ministry.

How consumer disputes are actually resolved in Türkiye

Consumer arbitration committees under Law No. 6502

Consumer arbitration committees (tüketici hakem heyetleri) are set up by the Ministry of Trade, not the Ministry of Justice, under Article 66 of the Consumer Protection Law No. 6502. Each committee is chaired by the provincial trade director (or, in districts, the district governor or an official they appoint) and has five members including the chair: besides the chair, one member designated by the municipality, one by the local bar, one by the relevant chamber of commerce and industry or of tradesmen and craftsmen, and one chosen by consumer organisations. Under Article 67, rapporteurs prepare the files and submit a report on the dispute.

Article 68 makes the committee route compulsory for disputes below a monetary threshold and closes it for disputes above that threshold. The figure is uprated every year. For applications made in 2026 it is 186,000 Turkish lira, under a Ministry of Trade communiqué published in the Official Gazette of 23 December 2025 (No. 33116), in force since 1 January 2026.

Committee decisions are binding on the parties and are enforced under the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law's rules on the execution of judgments (Article 70). Either party may object to the consumer court within two weeks of notification; the objection does not stop enforcement unless the judge orders a stay. According to the Ministry of Trade's information page, applications can be made in person, through a lawyer, by post or electronically, and electronic applications must go through TÜBİS, the consumer information system accessible via e-Devlet. Oral applications are not accepted. Applications are to be decided within six months, a period that can be extended by up to three months.

The system already handles large volumes online. The ministry reported on 21 January 2026 that the committees received 907,515 applications in 2025 and decided 849,143, with a total value of about 12.4 billion lira, and that 72% of applications were made via e-Devlet.

Mandatory mediation before the consumer courts

Disputes above the threshold go to the consumer courts, but not directly. Article 73/A of Law No. 6502, added by Law No. 7251 in 2020, makes an application to a mediator a precondition for suing in the consumer courts. The rule does not apply to disputes within the committees' remit, to objections against committee decisions, to the actions referred to in Article 73(6) and Article 74, or to consumer disputes concerning rights in rem over immovable property. Where the parties cannot be reached or do not attend, or where mediation ends with or without agreement, the mediation fee payable by the consumer is met from the Ministry of Justice budget, capped in those cases at two hours' fee under the tariff; if the consumer later wins the lawsuit brought after mediation, the fee is recovered from the defendant.

The procedure itself is governed by the Mediation in Civil Disputes Law No. 6325. Under Article 18/A, a claimant who sues without having applied to mediation sees the case dismissed on procedural grounds.

Why a "robot mediator" does not fit current law

Law No. 6325 is written around a person. Article 2 defines a mediator as a natural person entered in the registry kept by the Ministry of Justice, and defines mediation as a process conducted with an impartial and independent third person with specialised training, who may also propose a solution where the parties cannot produce one. Article 9 requires the mediator to perform the task with care, impartially and in person, and to observe equality between the parties. Article 20 requires registration, Turkish citizenship, a law degree with at least five years' professional seniority, mediation training and (save for very senior lawyers) a written examination. Under Article 18, any settlement document is signed by the parties and the mediator, and with an enforceability annotation it has the status of a court judgment.

The committees are also composed of designated human members. And for the courts that review their decisions, the Constitution provides that judicial power is exercised by independent and impartial courts (Article 9) and that judges decide according to the Constitution, the law and their conscientious conviction (Article 138) (Constitution).

The consequence is straightforward: under current Turkish law, software cannot be the mediator or the committee. It can only be a tool used by the human mediator, rapporteur or committee member. Anything more would require legislation, not a pilot.

Where AI could fit: a hypothetical spectrum

The following is a hypothetical analysis, not a description of any existing Turkish system. It is useful to think in four steps of increasing autonomy:

  1. Intake and guidance. Helping a consumer describe the complaint, check whether it is below the year's threshold, identify the right committee and list the documents to attach. British Columbia's Civil Resolution Tribunal offers an online "Solution Explorer" of this kind. The risk here is drift from information into individual legal advice, which is exactly the line the bar associations drew in April.
  2. Rapporteur support. Summarising a file, flagging a missing invoice or warranty document, and retrieving comparable committee decisions for the rapporteur, who checks and signs the report. This sits closest to Article 67 and is where most of the time savings would plausibly lie.
  3. Settlement proposals put to the parties. Software that proposes a figure directly to consumer and trader. Under Law No. 6325 the proposal must come from the human mediator; a mediator who simply forwards a machine's figure would struggle to show that the task was performed in person and impartially.
  4. Automated binding decisions. Incompatible with the committee structure in Article 66 and with the binding effect given to committee decisions under Article 70 as the law stands.

The legal risks, even at the "assistant" end

Reproducing past patterns. A system that learns from earlier decisions learns their inconsistencies too. If some committees have historically decided similar disputes differently, a model may treat the more frequent outcome as the correct one.

Fabricated authority. Large language models can produce plausible but non-existent provisions or decisions. If a consumer accepted a settlement on the strength of a fabricated rule, there would be an obvious question about the validity of that consent, and about who answers for the error.

Opacity. A vendor may treat a model as a trade secret, while the parties and the reviewing court need to know why a proposal or report says what it says.

Equality of arms. Law No. 6325 gives the parties equal rights throughout the process (Article 3) and obliges the mediator to observe equality (Article 9). Traders are repeat players who could learn how to frame submissions for a system; most consumers appear once.

Data protection. Under Article 11(1)(g) of the Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698, a person may object to an outcome against them that arises from the analysis of their data exclusively by automated systems. Any design that lets software determine a result without meaningful human involvement would collide with this right.

The EU benchmark: AI in dispute resolution is high-risk

Türkiye is not bound by the EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689), but it is the most detailed reference point available. Point 8(a) of Annex III lists as high-risk AI systems intended to assist a judicial authority in researching and interpreting facts and the law and in applying the law to a concrete set of facts, "or to be used in a similar way in alternative dispute resolution". Recital 61 explains that this covers alternative dispute resolution bodies whose outcomes produce legal effects for the parties, excludes purely ancillary administrative activities such as anonymising documents, and states that AI tools can support judges' decision-making power but "should not replace it".

Not every tool used in this field is high-risk. Under Article 6(3), an Annex III system escapes the classification if it performs a narrow procedural task, improves the result of a completed human activity, detects decision patterns without replacing human assessment, or performs a preparatory task, unless it profiles natural persons. For systems that are high-risk, Article 14 requires that they can be effectively overseen by natural persons, that overseers stay aware of the tendency to over-rely on outputs (automation bias), and that they can decide not to use the system or to disregard its output.

On timing, the European Commission states that, following the AI Omnibus (political agreement on 7 May 2026, in force since 27 July 2026), the rules for Annex III high-risk systems apply from 2 December 2027.

Against our spectrum, intake guidance and some rapporteur support could fall within Article 6(3), while a system proposing outcomes in an ADR process with legal effects would sit squarely in Annex III.

What other systems show

British Columbia. The Civil Resolution Tribunal describes itself as Canada's first online tribunal. It handles, among other things, small claims up to 5,000 Canadian dollars. Parties start with the online Solution Explorer, move through negotiation and facilitation, and, if the dispute is not resolved, a tribunal member decides; decisions can be enforced like court orders. The process is digital; the decision-maker is human.

The EU. The European Commission's Online Dispute Resolution platform for consumer disputes was discontinued on 20 July 2025 under Regulation (EU) 2024/3228; consumers are now pointed to lists of national dispute resolution bodies.

Estonia. Estonia is often cited as having a "robot judge" for small claims. In February 2022 its Ministry of Justice stated that there has been no such project or ambition and that it does not develop an AI judge to replace human judges. Its focus is on automating procedural steps, including the order-for-payment procedure, with machine learning used for transcribing hearings and anonymising decisions.

The common thread is that the working examples of online justice digitise the process and keep a human in the deciding seat.

Burhan Doğuş Ayparlar's View

In our view, the Turkish consumer dispute system does not need a "robot mediator" to become faster; it is already largely digital, with most applications arriving through e-Devlet. The pressure point is volume against a six-month decision period. That is where carefully designed assistance could help: completeness checks at intake, structured summaries for rapporteurs, and retrieval of comparable decisions, with the human rapporteur and committee remaining responsible for every word of the outcome.

Anything beyond that, whether software that proposes figures to the parties or software that decides, would run into Law No. 6325's requirement of a natural-person mediator acting in person, the composition and binding effect of committees under Law No. 6502, and the KVKK right to object to exclusively automated outcomes. If policymakers ever wanted to go further, the route would be primary legislation with published rules, not an administrative pilot. A sensible design brief would borrow from the EU approach regardless of membership: disclosure that AI is in use, logs that a reviewing court can inspect, a right to a human review, published evaluations, and an explicit duty on the human decision-maker to be able to disregard the machine.

Can justice be coded? Parts of the process can, and some already are. Under current Turkish law, the judgment itself cannot be handed to a machine, and we think that is the right place for the line.

Sources

This article is general information on the law as of 19 October 2026 and is not legal advice. Monetary limits and procedures change; check the current text of the legislation before relying on any figure.