The demands that reach a company's customer service, sales and finance teams in Turkey come from three legal worlds, and I see them treated as one. A consumer's complaint about a defective product, a request from a former customer to delete their data, and a distributor's rejection of an invoice each start a different clock, before a different body, with a different consequence for silence. Under the Consumer Protection Law the consumer chooses the remedy and the seller must comply with the choice, the claim lives for two years, and the consumer can go to the arbitration committee without asking the company anything. Under the Data Protection Law the company has thirty days to conclude a request and must answer in writing with reasons, or face a complaint to the Board. Under the Commercial Code a merchant who receives an invoice or a confirmation and stays silent for eight days has accepted its content, and a merchant buyer who does not notify a defect within two or eight days has lost it. This page sets out the three regimes from the statutes and turns them into an answering procedure a company can run.
Sources, checked 11 September 2026. Consumer Protection Law No. 6502, Articles 8, 11 to 16, 58, 66, 68, 70 and 73; Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698, Articles 11, 13, 14 and 18; Turkish Commercial Code No. 6102, Articles 5/A, 18, 21 and 23; Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098, Articles 223, 227 and 231; the Ministry of Trade's announcement of the 2026 arbitration committee threshold.
Consumers: the buyer chooses, the seller complies
Article 8 of the Consumer Protection Law defines a defective good as one that, on delivery, does not match the agreed sample or model or lacks the qualities it should objectively have, including goods that do not carry the features stated on the packaging, label, manual, website or advertising, that fail the purpose of comparable goods or that reduce the benefit the consumer reasonably expects; late delivery and faulty installation by or under the seller count as non-conforming performance. Article 11 gives the consumer four elective rights, rescission with return of the goods, a price reduction in proportion to the defect, free repair unless it involves excessive cost, and replacement with a non-defective equivalent where possible, and provides that the seller must comply with the right the consumer chose. Repair and replacement may also be demanded from the producer or importer, jointly and severally with the seller, unless the producer or importer proves the defect arose after it placed the goods on the market; where repair or replacement would cause the seller disproportionate difficulty, the consumer falls back on rescission or reduction. Article 12 sets a two-year limitation from delivery, five years for housing and holiday property, at least one year for second-hand goods, and no limitation at all where the defect was concealed by gross fault or fraud. Services follow the same pattern under Articles 13 to 16: a service is defective where it does not start on time or lacks the agreed or objective qualities, the consumer may choose re-performance, free repair of the result, a reduction or rescission, the provider must comply, refunds are made at once, and the claim is time-barred two years after performance. Unlike a business buyer, the consumer has no statutory duty to inspect the goods or to notify the defect within a fixed period; the only clock is the two-year limitation.
After-sales service and the arbitration committee
Article 58 obliges producers and importers to provide maintenance and repair for the useful life the Ministry sets for each product, to hold an after-sales service adequacy certificate for the goods listed in the regulation, to keep their authorised service stations registered in the Ministry's system, and to respect the maximum repair period the regulation prescribes; an importer that ceases trading remains bound for the useful life. Article 66 creates consumer arbitration committees under the provincial and district trade authorities; Article 68 makes application to them mandatory for disputes below a monetary threshold that is indexed every year from a statutory base of thirty thousand Turkish lira, and bars applications above it; for 2026 the Ministry announced the threshold at 186,000 Turkish lira. The consumer applies where they live or where the transaction was made. Under Article 70 the committee's decisions bind the parties, no attorney's fee is awarded, service is electronic, and either party may object to the consumer court within two weeks of service, an objection that does not stop enforcement unless the judge orders it. Article 73 gives the consumer courts jurisdiction over consumer disputes above the threshold and exempts consumers from court fees. The company therefore has no statutory deadline to answer a consumer's letter, but it has every reason to answer within days, because the consumer's next step needs no notice, costs nothing, and produces a binding decision on the file the company failed to build.
| Demand | Rule | Clock | Where it goes next |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consumer defect in goods | Consumer chooses among four remedies; seller complies | Two years from delivery, five for housing | Arbitration committee below the threshold, consumer court above |
| Consumer defect in services | Consumer chooses among four remedies; refunds at once | Two years from performance | Arbitration committee or consumer court |
| Data subject request | Conclude within thirty days, free, answer in writing with reasons | Thirty days from receipt | Board complaint within thirty days of the answer, at most sixty from the request |
| Invoice received from a merchant | Silence for eight days is acceptance of its content | Eight days from receipt | Commercial court after mandatory mediation |
| Confirmation letter from a merchant | Silence for eight days is acceptance that it matches the contract | Eight days from receipt | Commercial court after mandatory mediation |
| Defect in goods bought from a merchant | Obvious defects two days from delivery, hidden defects eight days from inspection | Two years for the action | Commercial court after mandatory mediation |
| Notice putting a merchant in default or terminating | Notary, registered letter, telegram or registered e-mail | As the contract provides | Commercial court |
Data subjects: thirty days and a written answer
Article 11 of the Data Protection Law lists what a person may ask a data controller: whether their data are processed, information about the processing, its purpose and whether the use matches it, the third parties in Turkey or abroad to whom the data were transferred, correction of incomplete or wrong data, erasure or destruction where the statutory conditions are met, notification of corrections and erasures to recipients, objection to a result produced solely by automated analysis, and compensation for unlawful processing. Article 13 requires the request to be made in writing or by another method the Board determines, and requires the controller to conclude it as soon as possible and at the latest within thirty days, free of charge, or against the Board's tariff where the operation costs money; the controller accepts the request or rejects it with reasons and notifies the answer in writing or electronically, and refunds any fee where the request arose from its own error. Article 14 lets the person complain to the Board where the request was rejected, the answer was insufficient or none came in time, within thirty days of learning of the answer and in any case within sixty days of the request, and bars a complaint before the request route has been used; the right to compensation under the general rules is reserved. Article 18 sets administrative fines for breaches of the information, security, registry and Board-order duties, imposed on the controller and indexed every year. The thirty days run from receipt, whatever the company's internal routing, which is why the request must be recognised on the day it arrives, in whichever inbox it lands. The wider compliance picture for a foreign-owned company is on the data protection law page.
Business customers: eight days, two days, and the channel
Between merchants the Commercial Code turns silence into consent. Under Article 21(2) a person who receives an invoice and does not object to its content within eight days of receipt is deemed to have accepted it; under Article 21(3) the same applies to a writing confirming the content of a contract made orally, by telephone or by any communication tool. Under Article 23(1)(c), in sales between merchants, a defect that is obvious on delivery must be notified within two days, and a defect that is not must be found by an inspection within eight days of delivery and notified within that period; otherwise the general rule of Article 223 of the Code of Obligations applies, under which the buyer inspects as soon as the ordinary course of business allows, notifies within an appropriate period, and notifies a hidden defect immediately on discovery, failing which the goods are deemed accepted. Article 227 gives the merchant buyer the same four elective rights as the consumer, with the seller able to forestall them by immediate replacement and full compensation, and Article 231 time-bars the action two years from delivery unless the seller acted with gross fault. Under Article 18(3) notices between merchants that put the other party in default, terminate or rescind travel by notary, registered letter, telegram or registered electronic mail, and an objection to an invoice or a confirmation should travel the same way so that the eight days can be proven. Under Article 5/A, a commercial claim for a sum of money goes to mediation before a court will hear it. How the customer's own late payment is treated is set out on the late payment page, and the penalty clauses that customers invoke on the penalty clauses page.
What the answer should contain
A consumer's complaint is answered by identifying the remedy the consumer chose, stating whether the company accepts it and, if it proposes another, saying why the chosen one is disproportionate under Article 11(3) or 15(2), fixing the date and place of repair or replacement, and keeping the correspondence, the delivery record and the service report for the arbitration committee file. A data subject's request is answered within thirty days, in writing, either by doing what was asked and saying so, or by refusing with the statutory reason, and the answer is logged with the date of receipt and the date of dispatch. A business customer's objection to an invoice is answered within eight days by a counter-objection through a provable channel, and a business customer's defect notice is answered by demanding the inspection report and dates, since Article 23 decides most of those disputes on timing before anyone looks at the goods. In all three cases the answer states the company's position without admitting liability, is signed by a person with authority, and goes through the channel the law will later accept as proof. Whose signature binds the company on such letters is on the signing authority page, and the terms the customer is bound by on the standard terms page.
Building the procedure
A company that trades with all three kinds of customer needs one intake and three tracks. Every demand is logged on the day of receipt with its legal category. Consumer complaints go to a person who knows the four remedies and the two-year rule and can commit the company within a week. Data requests go to the person responsible for data protection with a thirty-day deadline counted from receipt, and the registered address for such requests is published where the law requires. Invoices and confirmations from merchants are reviewed within a week so that an objection can leave within eight days, and defect notices are matched against delivery dates so that the two-day and eight-day rules are applied in the company's favour when it is the buyer and honoured when it is the seller. Notices to merchants leave by registered electronic mail or notary. The procedure is a legal document as much as an operational one, because it is the evidence that the company answered in time.
When the demand becomes a dispute
A consumer dispute below the threshold is decided by the arbitration committee on the documents, and the company's file is what it sent in time; above the threshold, the consumer court. A data complaint is decided by the Board, which may order the company to comply and fine it, with the fine open to challenge before the administrative courts. A commercial dispute goes to mediation and then to the commercial court, where the eight-day and two-day rules are applied first. Recovery of the company's own claims against a business customer is set out on the debt collection page, and the legal function these pages belong to on the outsourced legal counsel page.
Whose side we are on, and how we are paid
The customer service team answers the consumer with an apology and no position, and the arbitration committee reads the apology as an admission. The marketing team receives a deletion request and forwards it three weeks later. The finance team files the distributor's disputed invoice and answers it after a month. None of them is paid to tell you, before the demand arrives, that the consumer chooses the remedy, that the thirty days started when the e-mail landed, or that the invoice you did not object to is now accepted.
We take no commission or referral fee from customers, distributors, service stations or intermediaries, in any form, on any file. The fee you pay us is our only income from your matter, and it does not depend on how many demands arrive or how they end. Because our position does not move with the outcome, telling a company that its standard reply is an admission, or that its data request procedure misses the statutory deadline, costs us nothing to say.
One boundary, stated plainly. We are lawyers, not licensed investment advisers and not a customer service outsourcer. We do not answer your customers for you. What we protect is the Turkish legal position: the right remedy offered, the right deadline met, the right channel used, and a file that reads well before an arbitration committee, the Board or a commercial court.
Before the next demand arrives
Send us your current complaint, data request and invoice procedures, your standard replies and the last three demands you found hard to answer. We will tell you where the procedures miss a statutory deadline or concede a point, what the replies should say, and who should sign them. Our corporate work is described on the corporate law page.
What this page does not settle
Distance and off-premises contracts and the right of withdrawal, electronic commerce and platform obligations, advertising and unfair commercial practice rules, sector regulation for banks, insurers, telecoms and travel, warranty certificates and the after-sales service regulation's product list and repair periods, cross-border data transfers, and the conduct of litigation are separate subjects. The arbitration committee threshold and the data protection fines are re-indexed every year.
