The grounds for divorce based on the principle of de facto separation are regulated in the fourth paragraph of Article 166 of the Turkish Civil Code. The provision in question was annulled by the Constitutional Court on 22 February 2024 on the grounds that it made divorce significantly more difficult, forced spouses who did not want to stay married to stay married for an unreasonable period of time and that this situation violated the principle of proportionality in terms of the sub-principle of proportionality. The Constitutional Court decided that the annulment provision shall enter into force nine months after the publication of the decision in the Official Gazette, thus allowing the legislator to make a new regulation during the period until the annulment of the provision in question. Therefore, it has become necessary to make a new regulation regarding divorce based on de facto separation in Turkish law. Accordingly, the three-year period in the said provision was rearranged as one year with the amendment made by the legislator on November 14, 2024 with Article 13 of the Law No. 7532 on Amendments to the Notary Law and Certain Laws. In this study, first of all, general explanations regarding the divorce system in Turkish law and the grounds for divorce based on the principle of de facto separation are included and the annulment decision of the Constitutional Court is analyzed. Then, the compliance of the provision established by the legislative body regarding the grounds for divorce based on the principle of de facto separation with the criteria it should have in terms of the law as it should be is discussed, taking into account the criticisms in the doctrine and the problems in practice.

Keywords: Grounds for divorce, de facto separation principle, Constitutional Court, annulment decision, principle of proportionality.