Background
The plaintiff-tenant filed suit before the Istanbul Anatolian 1st Commercial Court of First Instance (İstanbul Anadolu 1. Asliye Ticaret Mahkemesi) seeking: (1) a declaratory judgment that the leased premises were delivered with serious technical defects incompatible with a restaurant operation; (2) a declaration that the plaintiff had validly terminated the lease for cause due to the landlord’s gross fault and breach; (3) a declaration that no rent obligation arose — or alternatively that rent could not be demanded until the defects were remedied — because of the defective delivery; and (4) interim injunctive relief suspending the landlord’s pending and threatened enforcement proceedings and eviction actions. The plaintiff further alleged that the landlord had concealed known defects and that an unauthorized entry on 4 September 2025 had raised concerns about spoliation of evidence.
The first-instance court dismissed the action on procedural grounds without reaching the merits, holding that the plaintiff had failed to satisfy the mandatory pre-litigation mediation condition required by Article 5/A of the Turkish Commercial Code (as amended by Law No. 7445), read together with Articles 114(II) and 115 of the Code of Civil Procedure (HMK). Both parties filed appeals (istinaf) against that dismissal, each on different grounds.
The plaintiff argued on appeal that the action was primarily a declaratory and termination claim — not a simple money claim — and therefore fell outside the scope of mandatory commercial mediation; that a mediation process had in fact been conducted in a parallel case (Istanbul 3rd Commercial Court, file 2025/644 E.) involving the same parties and the same lease, which the lower court had ignored; and that dismissing without investigating that prior mediation record violated the right to be heard (HMK Art. 27). The defendant-landlord, while also appealing, contended that the real defect was lack of subject-matter jurisdiction (the dispute being a rental matter cognizable only by the Peace Court — Sulh Hukuk Mahkemesi), that the action was barred by lis pendens (derdestlik) owing to the two pending parallel cases, that the plaintiff lacked standing (the lease was signed by a company, not the individual who filed suit), and that the lower court had violated HMK Art. 27 by ruling on the papers without serving the complaint on the defendant.
The Court’s Holding
The 36th Civil Chamber of the Istanbul Regional Court of Appeal accepted both parties’ appeals on the single, dispositive ground of subject-matter jurisdiction. Under Article 4(1)(a) of HMK (in force since 1 October 2011), all disputes arising from rental relationships over immovable property — including claims for rent arrears — fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Peace Court (Sulh Hukuk Mahkemesi), regardless of the monetary value of the claim. Subject-matter jurisdiction is a matter of public order and must be examined by the court of its own motion at every stage of the proceedings.
The appellate chamber held that because the underlying dispute was unequivocally rooted in a real-property lease, the Commercial Court had no subject-matter jurisdiction over any of the plaintiff’s claims. The first-instance court’s error was to dismiss on the mediation-condition ground without first — and necessarily — addressing jurisdiction. A court that lacks jurisdiction has no authority to examine any other procedural precondition. The dismissal order was therefore set aside (kaldırıldı) pursuant to HMK Art. 353(1)(a)(3), and the file was ordered returned to the Commercial Court so that it could be transferred to the competent Peace Court under HMK Art. 20.
The chamber did not rule on the merits of any of the other arguments advanced by either party — including standing, lis pendens, the validity of the contractual venue clause designating Çağlayan courts, or the sufficiency of the prior mediation — as all of those matters are for the Peace Court to address in the first instance.
Key Takeaways
- Subject-matter jurisdiction is the first and paramount procedural gate: a court lacking jurisdiction may not assess any other dava şartı (procedural precondition), including mandatory mediation, lis pendens, or standing.
- Under HMK Art. 4(1)(a), the Peace Court (Sulh Hukuk Mahkemesi) has exclusive jurisdiction over all disputes arising from immovable-property leases — including declaratory claims, lease-termination claims, and rent-suspension claims — without regard to the amount in controversy or the commercial status of the parties.
- Framing a lease dispute primarily as a declaratory or termination action rather than a money claim does not transfer jurisdiction to a Commercial Court; the nature of the underlying legal relationship — tenancy over immovable property — is determinative.
- A first-instance ruling that dismisses on a secondary procedural ground while skipping the threshold jurisdiction inquiry is itself a reversible procedural error on appeal, even where the ultimate dismissal may be correct in outcome.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces a well-settled but frequently litigated point of Turkish civil procedure: subject-matter jurisdiction is an absolute, non-waivable prerequisite that trumps every other procedural defense. Practitioners who file commercial-lease disputes in Commercial Courts — whether attempting to invoke mandatory mediation rules or to benefit from commercial-court procedures — risk dismissal and delay when the tenancy involves immovable property, which belongs exclusively to the Peace Court regardless of the parties’ merchant status or any contractual venue agreement.
The case also illustrates the cascading inefficiency that results when a case is filed in the wrong court: parallel proceedings had already been dismissed on jurisdiction and venue grounds in at least two other courts, and the plaintiff’s claims remain unresolved on the merits after multiple rounds of litigation. For tenants alleging defective delivery of leased premises and seeking to resist enforcement actions, securing the correct forum at the outset is critical to timely relief.