I am a Turkish-qualified lawyer registered with the Kocaeli Bar, and I work cross-border with foreign nationals and their families who suddenly find themselves inside the Turkish criminal justice system. If you are reading this, you or someone close to you has probably received a summons, learned of an investigation, or been told there is a case in Turkey. That is a frightening place to be, especially from abroad and in a language you do not speak.
My aim on this page is simple: to walk you through the entire criminal process in Turkey — from the first knock on the door through to the Court of Cassation — so that you understand what is happening, what your rights are, and where a defence can actually change the outcome. I represent foreign suspects and defendants; I do not promise a result, because no honest lawyer can. What I can promise is that you will understand your position and that the case will be fought properly.
This is the general guide to criminal defence, and it sits within my wider work as one of the lawyers for foreigners in Turkey. If you or a relative has literally just been detained, read this later — go straight to my page on what to do if you or a relative has just been arrested or detained, because the first 24 hours have their own rules. This page is the map of the whole journey.
How a Criminal Case Against a Foreign National Actually Works
Turkish criminal procedure is governed by the Code of Criminal Procedure (Ceza Muhakemesi Kanunu, or CMK, Law No. 5271). It splits every case into two distinct phases, and knowing which phase you are in tells you almost everything about what comes next.
The first phase is the investigation (soruşturma). Under the CMK it runs from the moment the authorities learn of a suspicion of crime until an indictment is accepted by the court. It is led by a public prosecutor (Cumhuriyet savcısı) working with the judicial police. During this phase you are a suspect (şüpheli). The prosecutor gathers evidence both for and against you, takes statements, and decides whether there is enough to prosecute. This phase ends one of two ways: a decision that there is no ground for prosecution (kovuşturmaya yer olmadığına dair karar, often shortened to KYOK), or an indictment (iddianame) filed with the court.
Once a court accepts the indictment, the second phase begins: the prosecution or trial phase (kovuşturma). It runs from acceptance of the indictment until the judgment becomes final. From this point you are no longer a suspect but an accused (sanık). This is where hearings (duruşma) happen, witnesses are heard, expert reports are debated, and the court reaches a verdict. A great deal of defence work happens before this — at the investigation stage, most people underestimate how much can be won or lost before a case ever reaches trial.
If you are convicted, the story is not over. You can take the case to the Regional Court of Justice (Bölge Adliye Mahkemesi) by way of appeal (istinaf), and in many cases onward to the Court of Cassation (Yargıtay) by way of a further appeal on points of law (temyiz). I explain those courts and their deadlines below.
The Offences That Most Often Involve Foreigners
The Turkish Penal Code (Türk Ceza Kanunu, or TCK, Law No. 5237) applies to anyone who commits an offence on Turkish territory, regardless of nationality. Article 8 makes this explicit — the territoriality principle means your passport does not exempt you, and a crime is treated as committed in Turkey if the act or its result occurs here (that catches, for example, online fraud aimed at a victim in Turkey). These are the charges I see most often against foreign clients:
- Intentional injury / assault (kasten yaralama, Art. 86). A bar fight or a scuffle. The basic form carries a prison sentence; where the injury can be treated with simple medical intervention (basit tıbbî müdahale) it is lighter and, in that lesser form, prosecuted only on complaint (şikâyet). Using a weapon or hitting a family member aggravates it and removes the complaint requirement.
- Threat (tehdit, Art. 106). Threatening someone's life or physical integrity. Penalties rise sharply where a weapon or an organisation's intimidating force is involved.
- Insult / defamation (hakaret, Art. 125). Extremely common, including online. Note that as of recent reform (Law No. 7531) certain forms of this offence — notably insult by written, audio or visual message (Art. 125/2) and public insult (Art. 125/4) — have been moved into the advance-payment (ön ödeme) route; face-to-face insult and insult of a public official can still fall under victim-offender mediation, and the scope is contested (an AYM decision of 27 March 2025), so it must be checked case by case.
- Drug offences (Arts. 188–191). This is the sharpest fork in Turkish criminal law. Personal use or possession for use (Art. 191) is treated as something closer to a health problem: for a first offence the prosecutor defers the case for five years and puts you under a supervision-and-treatment regime (denetimli serbestlik), and a clean completion means no conviction and no criminal record. Trafficking or supply (Art. 188) is a different universe, carrying heavy minimum prison terms (ten years and upward) and, in practice, pre-trial detention. The line between the two is drawn by quantity, packaging, scales, and similar evidence — which is exactly where a defence lives or dies.
- Fraud (dolandırıcılık, Arts. 157–158). Basic fraud sits at the Criminal Court of First Instance; the qualified forms in Article 158 (by bank/credit instruments, by information systems, by posing as an official) are aggravated, tried at the Heavy Penal Court, and carry much longer sentences.
- Forgery of documents (belgede sahtecilik), theft (hırsızlık, Art. 141 onward), and sexual offences. Forgery and theft frequently travel alongside fraud charges. Sexual offences are treated with great severity and are excluded from mediation and most diversion routes.
Your Rights as a Foreign Suspect or Defendant
These rights exist whether or not anyone reminds you of them. In practice, the difference between rights on paper and rights in the room is a lawyer who insists on them.
Defence counsel (müdafi). Under Articles 149–156 of the CMK, you may benefit from the assistance of one or more defence lawyers at every stage of both the investigation and the prosecution. The lawyer's presence during your statement (ifade) or judicial interrogation (sorgu) cannot be prevented or restricted. Where you cannot afford or arrange a lawyer, the bar association appoints one (a CMK müdafi). In certain situations defence counsel is mandatory (zorunlu müdafilik): if you are a child, cannot defend yourself owing to disability, or — critically — are being investigated or tried for a serious offence. On that last category, CMK Art. 150/3 (as amended by Law No. 5560, in force 19 December 2006) provides that a lawyer must be assigned, whether you ask for one or not, "for investigations and prosecutions concerning offences requiring a lower limit of more than five years' imprisonment" (alt sınırı beş yıldan fazla hapis cezasını gerektiren suçlardan dolayı yapılan soruşturma ve kovuşturmada). The lower limit must be strictly more than five years; an offence whose lower limit is exactly five years falls outside this rule (as the Court of Cassation confirmed in Yargıtay 2. Ceza Dairesi, E. 2014/14002). A statement taken without counsel where counsel was required has no evidential value.
The right to an interpreter (Article 202). If you cannot follow the proceedings in Turkish well enough to express yourself, the court appoints an interpreter to translate the essential points of the accusation and defence, and the cost is borne by the State — it is not added to your bill even if you are convicted. The test is not your nationality but whether you can genuinely follow the language. My honest experience is that court interpreters vary in quality, so I make a point of confirming that what is said in the room is actually reaching my client.
The right to silence. You cannot be compelled to make a statement against yourself. You may decline to answer questions about the accusation while still giving your identity details. This right applies from the moment you are taken into custody, and exercising it is often the single wisest thing an unprepared suspect can do.
Consular notification. Under Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, you have the right to have your country's consulate notified of your detention and to communicate with it. A consulate cannot act as your lawyer, but it can help arrange representation and provide practical support. This is a genuinely important right for foreigners and one I always check has been honoured.
The Courts That Will Hear Your Case
Turkey has a tiered court structure, and which court you are in signals how serious the State considers your case.
- Criminal Judgeship of Peace (Sulh Ceza Hâkimliği). This is not a trial court. It is an investigation-stage judgeship that decides on protective measures — arrest, pre-trial detention, judicial control, search and seizure — and hears objections to them. You will encounter it early, not at trial.
- Criminal Court of First Instance (Asliye Ceza Mahkemesi). The workhorse court, hearing the majority of offences — assault, threat, insult, basic fraud, personal-use drug matters, forgery and the like. A single judge presides.
- Aggravated / Heavy Penal Court (Ağır Ceza Mahkemesi). Hears the most serious offences, generally those carrying ten years or more, including drug trafficking, qualified fraud and the gravest crimes. It sits as a panel of three judges.
- Regional Court of Justice (Bölge Adliye Mahkemesi), the istinaf court. The first appeal. It re-examines both the facts and the law, and can re-hear evidence — it is a genuine second look at the case, not merely a legal review.
- Court of Cassation (Yargıtay), the temyiz court. The final appeal, confined to points of law. It checks whether the law was correctly applied rather than re-trying the facts.
Deadlines matter enormously here. Under CMK Art. 273, the time limit to lodge an appeal (istinaf) against a first-instance judgment is two weeks. The reform that starts this clock from service of the reasoned decision (gerekçeli karar) rather than from pronouncement in court applies to decisions given after 1 June 2024, and it abolished the old two-step "holding petition" practice; a period set in weeks ends on the corresponding day of the final week. Objections to interim decisions such as detention generally run to two weeks. Some low-value judgments — small judicial fines, for example — are final and cannot be appealed at all. Because these thresholds are periodically re-legislated, treat any specific figure here as something to verify at the time of action.
Building the Defence
A criminal defence is not a speech at the end; it is a campaign that starts the day I am instructed. The work falls into a few strands.
Evidence and expert reports. Much of what determines a Turkish criminal case is documentary and technical — forensic medical reports (Adli Tıp), telecommunications records (HTS), CCTV, digital data, and expert (bilirkişi) opinions. Testing how that evidence was gathered, whether the chain holds, and whether an independent expert would reach the same conclusion is often where cases turn. Evidence obtained unlawfully cannot found a conviction, and that argument has to be made properly and on the record.
Strategy on detention and liberty. Where pre-trial detention (tutuklama) is sought, I argue for release or for the lighter alternative of judicial control (adli kontrol, Articles 109–115) — measures such as a reporting obligation, a travel ban, or bail-type security (güvence/kefalet), which let a client remain at liberty while the case proceeds. This matters especially for foreigners, who are too readily assumed to be flight risks; the answer is concrete evidence of ties to Turkey — residence, family, property, employment — and a reasoned proposal to the court. Detention is meant to be exceptional, not a default, and the Constitutional Court has repeatedly held that an offence merely appearing on the "catalogue" list (see below) does not by itself justify locking someone up; the flight or evidence-tampering risk must be shown with concrete facts. Pre-trial detention also has hard ceilings under CMK Art. 102: for cases outside the Heavy Penal Court's jurisdiction the maximum is one year, extendable by six months (18 months in total); for Heavy Penal Court cases it is two years, with extensions capped so that the total in ordinary cases is treated as five years (the statute sets a higher extension ceiling for state-security and terrorism-related offences). These are exactly the kinds of figures to re-check at the time.
Diversion and sentence outcomes. Turkish law offers several routes that can end a case without a conviction or without prison, and knowing which applies to which offence is central:
- Victim-offender mediation (uzlaştırma, Art. 253). Available for complaint-dependent offences and a defined list including basic assault, threat and basic fraud. A successful settlement ends the case with no conviction and a clean record.
- Advance payment (ön ödeme, TCK Art. 75). For lighter offences punishable by fine or short imprisonment and outside the mediation list; paying a set sum to the Treasury closes the matter. Insult was recently moved into this route.
- Simplified and expedited procedures. The expedited (seri muhakeme) procedure lets the prosecutor propose a reduced sanction — a half-reduction from the base penalty — for a defined list of offences, which you may accept only with a lawyer present; the simplified trial (basit yargılama) procedure streamlines certain lighter cases at court.
- Deferral of the announcement of the verdict (HAGB) and suspension of sentence (erteleme). These have historically been the two big "no prison / clean sheet" outcomes for shorter sentences (broadly, two years or less). HAGB (hükmün açıklanmasının geri bırakılması) in particular has had a turbulent recent history in the courts, which I explain in the currency note below — do not assume it is available without checking its status at the time.
If You've Just Been Detained
I will keep this short because it has its own page. If you or a relative has been taken into custody, the clock is running: there are strict rules on how long you can be held before you must be brought before a judge, and what happens in those first hours shapes the whole case. Please go straight to my dedicated guide on what to do if you or a relative has just been arrested or detained.
Deportation and Entry-Ban Consequences
For a foreign national, a criminal case rarely ends with the criminal case. A conviction — and sometimes merely an investigation — can trigger deportation (sınır dışı) and an entry ban or travel restriction (tahdit) handled by the immigration authorities as a separate administrative process. This is important enough that it needs its own treatment, so I deal with it fully on my page about travel bans and entry restrictions (tahdit). The key point is to manage the criminal case and the immigration consequence together, not in isolation.
How I Represent You From Abroad
You do not need to be in Turkey for me to act. For a criminal defence I can be instructed and appear through a power of attorney (vekâletname) — and helpfully, Turkish law does not require a notarised power of attorney merely for a defence lawyer to represent a suspect or accused, though for the wider handling of a matter I will usually arrange one. Where a notarised, apostilled power of attorney is needed, it can be executed at a Turkish consulate abroad or before a notary in your own country with an apostille under the Hague Convention, then translated.
I keep foreign clients informed in clear English, with plain-language reporting on what each document says and what each hearing means. Where a case can proceed in your absence I will tell you honestly whether that helps or harms you: minor cases carrying only fines can sometimes be dealt with without your attendance, but staying away from a serious case can lead to an arrest warrant and, in defined circumstances, a fugitive (kaçak) status with its own consequences — including a possible arrest warrant in your absence. Deciding whether to return is a strategic question, and I will give you a straight answer rather than a convenient one.
There is also a constitutional backstop worth knowing about. If domestic remedies are exhausted and a fundamental fair-trial right has been breached — an unreasonably long pre-trial detention, or an unfair trial — an individual application to the Constitutional Court (Anayasa Mahkemesi bireysel başvuru) is open to foreign nationals just as it is to citizens. Under Law No. 6216, Article 47(5), the application "must be lodged within thirty days from the date of exhaustion of legal remedies, or if no remedy is provided, within thirty days from the date on which the violation is disclosed." It is a real safeguard, not a theoretical one, and it sits behind the whole process alongside the European Convention guarantees on liberty and fair trial.
What It Costs and How Long It Takes
I will be honest rather than reassuring here, because you deserve accuracy. Fees depend on the court, the seriousness of the charge, and the complexity of the file — a matter at the Heavy Penal Court is a far larger undertaking than a single insult complaint. There is a published annual minimum tariff set by the Union of Turkish Bar Associations (Türkiye Barolar Birliği), and serious cases are quoted above it according to the work involved. I give a clear fee basis at the outset.
Timescales are equally variable. A straightforward first-instance case may run around a year; add an appeal to the Regional Court of Justice and a further appeal to the Court of Cassation and it can extend well beyond that. Diversion routes such as mediation or advance payment, where available, can end a matter in weeks. I would rather set a realistic expectation than a comforting one.
A Note on Currency (2024–2026 Reforms)
Turkish criminal law has been amended repeatedly through a series of judicial reform packages (yargı paketleri), and some points are actively in flux. A few matter for anyone reading this:
- HAGB (deferral of the verdict). The Constitutional Court annulled the HAGB provision by its decision of 1 June 2023 (No. 2022/120 E., 2023/107 K., published in Official Gazette No. 32266 on 1 August 2023), striking down CMK Art. 231 paragraphs 5–14 with effect from 1 August 2024 and no retroactive effect. The 8th Judicial Package — Law No. 7499, published in Official Gazette No. 32487 on 12 March 2024, with HAGB changes effective 1 June 2024 — then reinstated a reworked version, notably removing the defendant's consent requirement in Art. 231/6. The Constitutional Court has since annulled that reworked version too, by its decision of 10 July 2025, striking CMK Art. 231(5)–(14) once more with effect from 30 September 2026 and no retroactive effect. In practice this means reworked HAGB remains available until 30 September 2026 and then falls away unless Parliament re-legislates it. Whether HAGB is available in your case must be checked at the time — do not rely on older guidance.
- Pre-trial detention, catalogue offences and appeal thresholds. The maximum detention periods, the "catalogue offences" (katalog suçlar) under Article 100 for which detention grounds are presumed, and the istinaf/temyiz thresholds have all been touched by recent packages.
- The reform packages themselves. The 11th Judicial Package (Law No. 7571) was published in Official Gazette No. 33118 on 25 December 2025. A 12th package was before Parliament in mid-2026 (cleared the Justice Commission on 25 June 2026) but had not been enacted as of early July 2026; it may move quickly, which is another reason to confirm the current text.
Because Parliament continues to legislate in this area, please treat the specific figures and lists on this page as a reliable snapshot rather than a permanent statement, and verify the current position at the time of action — which is exactly what I do for every client before advising.
Contact / Next Steps
If there is an investigation or a case in Turkey involving you or someone you care about, the earliest, most useful step is to get the file assessed properly — what the charge really is, which court it belongs to, what the evidence looks like, and which routes are realistically open. I will tell you honestly where a defence can help and where it cannot. To start, contact me with a short summary of the situation and any documents you have received, and we will take it from there.
