TERMINATION OF EMPLOYMENT CONTRACT ON PERFORMANCE IN TURKEY

Performance evaluations are frequently used in business to determine job performance or efficiency of employees. For the success of an organisation, each employee’s individual contribution matters for reaching the organisational goals, therefore keeping track of each employee’s quality and performance have a vital importance. For decades now, economists have looked at the questions of wages and performance and identified promotions, bonuses and termination of employment based on performance evaluations as important motivational factors affecting employee performance.

On the other hand, from the lawmakers’ and lawyers’ point of view, performance evaluations are of high importance given that they are frequently used by organisations as a basis of their decision to promote their employees where performances are found satisfactory or to lay them off where they do not reach a satisfactory level. Therefore, performance evaluations concern the economic rights of employees, which must ideally be protected fairly.

In Turkey too, performance evaluations are used by the organisations for the determination of promotion of employees and the termination of their employment. The issue of termination based on poor performance was quite debatable until recently the Turkish Court of Appeals established the rules in this respect. Before delving into the details of the Court of Appeals’ recent decision, it would be better to take a look at the applicable provisions of Turkish Labor Code. With regard to the termination of employment contracts based on performance, Article 18 of the Labor Code provides certain protections and sets forth grounds for fair dismissals.

Oct-Dec 2016 issue

Moroglu Arseven