Alternative Dispute Resolution on Consumer Conflicts in the Eu and Turkey

Consumer conflicts arise every day and how to handle this issue is a major part of ensuring consumer redress mechanisms. Because of the workload of courts and the length of cases, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) on consumer conflicts began to occur in the 1970s. The European Union (EU) has always been a supporter of ADR and regulated a specifically Directive with its principles to bring a minimum harmonization duty for member states to ensure a single market. However, because of the general nature of the articles, there have been lots of different approaches and methods in the member states. And, it has become imprecise to understand if it is a good role or effective because of the ambiguous provisions and a variety of approaches. Turkish Law on Consumer Protection entered into force in 2014 to assure harmonization duty of EU acquis, and it regulated the sui generis procedure of Consumer Arbitration Committees (CAC) and then compulsory mediation on consumer conflicts with an added article in 2020. This article argues that CAC is harmonized with the EU acquis and ADR systems in Turkey bring more effective consumer redress mechanism due to cultural and economic reasons for now even if it is not perfect and has to be improved.