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Low reported severity Investigation Opened

Ankara lawyer faces prosecutor and bar investigations after an AI tool added Court of Cassation decisions with wrong numbers to a petition, Kısa Dalga reports

Kısa Dalga reported on 17 June 2026 that a lawyer in Ankara faced investigations by the prosecutor's office and the Ankara Bar after a petition the lawyer signed in a civil case at a court in the Kızılcahamam district cited Court of Cassation (Yargıtay) decisions with wrong case and decision numbers. According to the lawyer, three lawyers prepared the petition and used AI only to support it with case law; the AI tool inserted existing Court of Cassation decisions but wrote their reference numbers wrongly. Opposing counsel raised the citations at the hearing, and the same day the court wrote to the bar and the prosecutor; the lawyer says the court stated the decisions could not be found as cited in the national judicial system (UYAP) and that the numbers gave the impression of having been written at random. The lawyer says the prosecutor did not specify the alleged offence, that the error was unintentional, and that the lawyer became a joke among colleagues. A lawyers' rights group called the investigations pressure on the defence. The AI tool is not named, the hearing date is not given and no outcome of either investigation has been reported.

AI system
Unidentified AI research tool
Occurred
Event date unknown
Reported
17 June 2026
Event location
Türkiye
What the AI did
Communicated with the person
Reported harm
Professional HarmLegal HarmReputational Harm
Whose AI use
Their own AI use
Setting
Justice · Work
Evidence
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account
4 claims: 4 reported. 4 open questions
People reported harmed
1 person

AI system as recorded: An unnamed AI tool that the lawyer's team used to add case law to a petition and that, according to the lawyer, inserted Court of Cassation decisions with wrong reference numbers

Reported harm

According to the lawyer's account to Kısa Dalga, an AI tool inserted Court of Cassation decisions with wrong reference numbers into a petition the lawyer signed; the court referred the lawyer to the prosecutor and the Ankara Bar the same day, and the lawyer reports becoming a joke among colleagues.

Outcome

Pending

Prosecutor's and bar investigations opened on the court's referral; no outcome reported as of 2026-10-24.

What remains unknown

  • Which AI tool was used and what it produced.
  • The hearing and referral dates.
  • The outcome of the prosecutor's and bar investigations.
  • Whether the cited decisions exist with different numbers, as the lawyer says; the court's own wording was not read.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: supported. The lawyer told Kısa Dalga that the team used AI to add case law to the petition and that the AI tool inserted existing Court of Cassation decisions with wrong case and decision numbers; according to the lawyer the court found the decisions could not be located as cited and referred the lawyer to the prosecutor and the bar the same day. The tool is not named and its output was not published.

4 claims: 4 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported A petition signed by the lawyer in a civil case at a court in the Kızılcahamam district of Ankara cited Court of Cassation decisions whose case and decision numbers were wrong; the lawyer says the team used AI to support the petition with case law and the AI tool inserted existing decisions with wrong reference numbers.

Causal attribution. The lawyer attributes the wrong numbers to the AI tool; the tool is not named and no output was published.

  • kisadalga.net(opens in new tab) supports · Turkish
    'Yalnızca dilekçeyi içtihatlarla desteklemek amacıyla yapay zekadan yararlandık'; 'Yapay zeka, mevcut Yargıtay kararlarını ekledi, ancak bu kararlara ait künyeleri yanlış yazdı'
  • t24.com.tr(opens in new tab) supports · Turkish
    'Yapay zekâ, mevcut Yargıtay kararlarını ekledi ancak bu kararlara ait künyeleri yanlış yazdı'
Reported Opposing counsel raised the citations at the hearing and the court wrote to the Ankara Bar and the prosecutor the same day; according to the lawyer, the court said the decisions could not be found as cited in UYAP and the numbers gave the impression of having been written at random, and asked for action under the Turkish Penal Code.

Causal attribution. The court's wording is known only as the lawyer and the outlets relay it; the court document was not read.

  • kisadalga.net(opens in new tab) supports · Turkish
    'Ancak aynı gün mahkeme hem Ankara Barosu'; 'UYAP üzerinden yapılan incelemede belirtilen şekliyle bulunamadığını, numaraların gelişigüzel yazılmış izlenimi verdiği belirtilerek ilgili avukat hakkında Türk Ceza Kanunu kapsamında işlem yapılmasının'
  • t24.com.tr(opens in new tab) supports · Turkish
    'Duruşmada karşı taraf avukatının durumu fark etmesi üzerine mahkeme, aynı gün Ankara Barosu'
Reported The lawyer reports facing investigations by both the prosecutor's office and the bar for the first time in the lawyer's career, and says that the prosecutor did not specify the alleged offence, that the error was unintentional, and that the lawyer became a joke among colleagues.

Causal attribution. The lawyer's account of the consequences.

  • kisadalga.net(opens in new tab) supports · Turkish
    'Meslektaşlarım arasında da şaka konusu oldum'; 'ilk kez hem savcılık hem de baro aşamasında bir soruşturmayla karşı karşıya kaldım'; 'İfade tutanağında isnat edilen suçun ne olduğu belirtilmedi'
  • t24.com.tr(opens in new tab) supports · Turkish
    'Meslektaşlarım arasında şaka konusu oldum'
Reported A coordinator of a lawyers' rights group said the investigations amount to pressure on the defence and that no intent or fault can be attributed to the lawyer.

Causal attribution. Advocacy position, recorded as context.

Sources

2 sources inspected, from 1 underlying account. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in Turkish on 2026-10-24 (full article, by Gülseven Özkan, with the lawyer's interview). Translation by the research agent, an AI. Applies to s1.

Read in Turkish on 2026-10-24 through a Wayback capture (live page returned 403). T24 states it relays Kısa Dalga's report, so it shares the same independence group. Translation by the research agent, an AI. Applies to s2.

Event countries: Türkiye. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: Türkiye.

The petition was filed in a civil case at a court in the Kızılcahamam district of Ankara, and the referrals went to the Ankara Bar and the prosecutor; where the lawyer lives is not stated.

Reviewed for publication 2026-10-24: Published as a concrete adverse consequence of AI-generated legal citations: the lawyer's account to Kısa Dalga describes the AI tool inserting Court of Cassation decisions with wrong numbers and the court's same-day referral to the prosecutor and the bar. It adds a criminal-law referral of the lawyer, beyond a court or bar sanction.

People described

A lawyer in Ankara who signed a defence petition in a civil case

People reported harmed in this case

1 person

1 AI participant · 0 other people harmed

One person: the lawyer who signed the petition and is under investigation. The two other lawyers on the team are not reported as investigated.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Tags

#lawyer-investigation#ai-citations#court-of-cassation#bar-investigation#prosecutor-referral

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Ankara lawyer faces prosecutor and bar investigations after an AI tool added Court of Cassation decisions with wrong numbers to a petition, Kısa Dalga reports. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2026-ankara-lawyer-faces-prosecutor-and-bar-investigations-after-ai-tool-added-wrong-court-of-cassation-citations-to-petition

BibTeX

@misc{2026_ankara_lawyer_faces_prosecutor_and_bar_investigations_after_ai_tool_added_wrong_court_of_cassation_citations_to_petition,
  title = {Ankara lawyer faces prosecutor and bar investigations after an AI tool added Court of Cassation decisions with wrong numbers to a petition, Kısa Dalga reports},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2026-ankara-lawyer-faces-prosecutor-and-bar-investigations-after-ai-tool-added-wrong-court-of-cassation-citations-to-petition}
}

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