Turkey is a first-to-file country with a busy register, and the foreign company that arrives without a Turkish registration usually meets its own brand on the way in. In my files the pattern repeats: a distributor who registered the principal's mark in his own name during the good years; a local company that filed a phonetic twin in the same class a month after the foreign brand's first trade fair; a franchise that could not open because the word mark was descriptive in Turkish and nobody had checked. Law 6769, the Industrial Property Law of 2017, gives the foreign owner the tools to prevent and undo all three, but on conditions that are procedural and strict: the filing must be made through a registered Turkish trademark attorney, the opposition window is two months, an earlier mark older than five years must prove use to be relied on, and since January 2024 an unused mark can be cancelled by the Office itself. This page sets out the law as it stands in 2026, the official fees for the year, the search and filing steps, the opposition and use rules, the Madrid alternative, and enforcement.
Sources, checked 9 September 2026. Industrial Property Law No. 6769 (Official Gazette 29944, 10 January 2017), Articles 4 to 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 16 to 23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 156, 160 and 192 and Provisional Article 4; the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office's trademark fee schedule for 2026; Customs Law No. 4458, Article 57; WIPO Information Notice No. 18/1998 on the entry into force of the Madrid Protocol for Turkey.
Registration is the right, and the earlier filing wins
Article 7(1) states the rule that decides most disputes: trademark protection under the law is obtained by registration, and Article 7(2) gives the registered owner the exclusive right to stop unauthorised use. Use without registration is not nothing, but it is a shield rather than a sword. Under Article 6(3) the owner of an unregistered mark or another sign used in trade before the filing or priority date may oppose a later application; under Article 6(4) and 6(5) a mark that is well known in the Paris Convention sense, or that has reached a level of recognition in Turkey such that a later filing would take unfair advantage of or damage it, may be opposed even for different goods; and under Article 6(9) an application made in bad faith is refused on opposition. Article 6(2) meets the distributor case directly: an application by a commercial agent or representative for the principal's mark, without consent and without a justified reason, is refused on the principal's opposition. Every one of these grounds is a relative ground: the Office does not raise them itself, the earlier owner must oppose in time and prove the facts, and the cost of not having filed is the cost of that fight.
Article 12 gives a foreign applicant six months from its first filing in a Paris Convention or WTO state to file in Turkey with priority, and the claim must be made with the application and its fee. For a company planning a Turkish launch the sequence is therefore fixed: search, file in Turkey within the priority window or at least before the first distributor agreement is signed, and only then let the brand appear at a fair. The distributor and agency structures that create the risk, and the subsidiary that avoids it, are compared on the liaison office, branch and subsidiary page.
Who may file: the mandatory attorney for anyone based abroad
Article 160(1) allows natural and legal persons, and the trademark or patent attorneys they authorise from the Office's register, to act before the Office. Article 160(3) then removes the first option for foreigners: persons whose domicile is outside Turkey may be represented only by a trademark or patent attorney, and acts performed by the principal without an attorney are deemed not to have been performed. A foreign company cannot file, oppose, respond or renew in its own name, and an e-mail from head office to the Office is a legal nullity. Under Article 160(4), once an attorney is appointed every act goes through the attorney and service on the attorney is service on the principal; under Article 160(6) the Office serves documents electronically to the mailbox it assigns, and service is deemed complete when the mailbox is first opened or, at the latest, on the tenth day after the document is placed in it. The two-month deadlines below run from that deemed date, which is why the attorney's mailbox discipline matters more than the client's. A Turkish subsidiary, once formed under the rules on the company set-up page, may hold the mark and act itself, but most groups keep the mark with the parent and file through counsel.
Search before you file
The Office refuses an application of its own motion under Article 5, and the ground a foreign applicant meets most often is Article 5(1)(ç): a sign identical or indistinguishably similar to a registered or earlier-filed mark for the same or the same kind of goods or services. Article 5(3) provides the only way round it, a notarised letter of consent from the earlier owner filed with the Office. The other absolute grounds are the familiar ones: no distinctive character, descriptive signs, shapes dictated by the nature or function of the goods, deceptive signs, state emblems, religious values, public order and registered geographical indications, with Article 5(2) saving a descriptive or non-distinctive sign that has acquired distinctiveness through use before filing. What a foreign applicant underestimates is the Turkish-language check: a word that is fanciful in English may be a generic or laudatory term in Turkish, and Article 11(1)(f) requires a Latin-alphabet equivalent for any mark in another script, which then falls to be examined as a word.
Article 11 sets the application: the form with the applicant's identity, a specimen of the mark, the list of goods and services, proof of the fee, the technical specification for a collective or certification mark, and any priority fee. One application covers one mark, goods and services are classified under the Nice Agreement and may span several classes, and Article 11(4) states that goods in the same class are not presumed similar nor goods in different classes dissimilar. The Office's online database is public and searchable by word and class; I run it, and a phonetic and Turkish-meaning check, before every filing, because a refusal under Article 5(1)(ç) costs the application fee and six months.
The procedure and the clock
| Step | Rule | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Filing through a registered attorney | Articles 11 and 160(3) | Priority may be claimed within six months of the first foreign filing, Article 12 |
| Formal and absolute-grounds examination | Articles 15 and 16(1) | Refusal in whole or in part for the affected goods |
| Publication in the Official Trademark Bulletin | Article 16(2) | Third parties may file written observations on absolute grounds, Article 17 |
| Opposition by an earlier right holder | Article 18(1) | Two months from publication; fee 1,150 lira in 2026 |
| Applicant's reply and proof-of-use request | Article 19(1) and 19(2) | If the opponent's mark had been registered at least five years at the filing or priority date, the applicant may require proof of genuine use in Turkey in the preceding five years; unproven use means the opposition fails, partial use narrows it |
| Appeal against an Office decision | Article 20(2) | Two months from notification, written and reasoned, with the fee paid in the same period; grounds cannot be changed or added later |
| Mediation | Article 19(4) | The Office may invite the parties to settle under the Mediation Law |
| Registration | Article 22(1) | On payment of the registration fee within the period set; otherwise the application lapses |
| Term and renewal | Article 23 | Ten years from the filing date; renewal in the six months before expiry, or in the six months after expiry with a surcharge |
Two features of this table are Turkish rather than European. The proof-of-use rule in Article 19(2) is available to the applicant in every opposition based on a mark older than five years, and it turns many oppositions by dormant registrations into losses for the opponent; a foreign owner that relies on an old Turkish registration must keep invoices, catalogues and customs records in Turkey ready for it. And the appeal in Article 20 goes to the Office's Re-examination and Evaluation Board, not to a court; the court stage comes only after the Board, before the specialised intellectual and industrial property courts that Article 156 creates.
The 2026 official fees
| Item | Official fee in lira, 2026 |
|---|---|
| Application, one class | 2,820 |
| Second class | 2,820 |
| Third and each further class | 3,150 |
| Registration certificate fee | 7,010 |
| Opposition to a published application | 1,150 |
| Priority claim recordal | 3,420 |
| Renewal, up to two classes | 8,730, plus 750 for each further class |
| Renewal after expiry, up to two classes | 15,420 |
| Recordal of an assignment | 5,960 |
| Recordal or renewal of a licence | 9,870 |
| Cancellation request | 35,320, plus a deposit of the same amount |
| Well-known mark determination request | 35,320 |
| Transmission of a Madrid application to WIPO | 3,850 |
These are the Office's fees, published on its schedule for the year and revised annually; attorney fees and the notarisation and translation of powers of attorney and consents are separate. A single-class application that proceeds to registration without opposition therefore costs 9,830 lira in official fees, and a three-class one 15,800 lira, before professional costs.
Use it or lose it: the five-year rule and administrative cancellation
Article 9(1) requires the owner to put the mark to genuine use in Turkey for the registered goods or services within five years of registration, and not to suspend use for five continuous years, failing which the mark is cancelled unless there is a justified reason. Article 9(2) counts use in a form that differs without altering distinctive character, and use on goods or packaging solely for export; Article 9(3) counts use by a licensee. A foreign owner that registers defensively in classes it will never trade in is building marks that anyone may remove after year five.
Until January 2024 cancellation for non-use was a court action. Article 192(1)(a) brought Article 26 into force seven years after the law's publication, and Provisional Article 4 left the power with the courts until then, so since 10 January 2024 the Office itself decides cancellation on the request of any interested person under Article 26(2). The grounds in Article 26(1) are non-use under Article 9, the mark becoming a generic name through the owner's conduct or inaction, the mark becoming deceptive as to nature, quality or origin through use, and use of a certification or collective mark contrary to its regulations. Article 26(4) rescues a mark that was put back into genuine use between the end of the five years and the request, except use begun in the three months before the request in anticipation of it; Article 26(5) allows partial cancellation by goods; Article 26(7) gives the owner one month from notification to answer. The 2026 fee is 35,320 lira with a deposit of the same amount. The same five years appear as a defence: under Article 25(7) and 29(2) the defendant in an invalidity or infringement action may require the claimant to prove use of a mark older than five years, and under Article 25(6) an owner who knowingly tolerated a later registered mark for five consecutive years may no longer seek its invalidity, unless the later registration was made in bad faith.
Madrid or a national filing
Turkey has been a party to the Madrid Protocol since 1 January 1999, and Article 14(1) provides that an international application designating Turkey has the same effects as an application filed directly with the Office, with the international date as the Turkish date. For a company with a home registration and several target countries the Madrid designation is cheaper and centrally managed, and the Office examines it under the same Articles 5 and 6, publishes it and admits the same oppositions. The practical differences are three. A provisional refusal or an opposition in Turkey must be answered through a registered Turkish attorney under Article 160(3), so the saving is in the filing, not in the dispute. A mark in a non-Latin script needs the transliteration Article 11(1)(f) requires. And a national filing can be drafted for the Turkish register from the start, with a goods list that avoids the earlier marks the search found, which an international application built on a home specification cannot always do.
Enforcement: civil, criminal and customs
Article 29 defines infringement by reference to the rights in Article 7 and adds the use of the mark without authorisation, its imitation, and the sale, import, export or stocking of goods bearing an infringing mark. The civil route runs before the specialised intellectual and industrial property courts of Article 156, and the criminal route in Article 30(1) punishes producing or selling goods or services under a mark that copies or is confusingly similar to another's registered mark with one to three years' imprisonment and a judicial fine of up to twenty thousand days. At the border, Article 57 of the Customs Law lets the right holder or its representative apply to the customs administration to detain or suspend clearance of goods that infringe an industrial property right, and allows customs to hold suspected goods of its own motion for three working days so that an application can be lodged; the customs union rules that govern most of that traffic are on the customs union page. A licence granted to a Turkish company is recorded against the mark, and the royalties it pays abroad carry the withholding described on the withholding tax page, at twenty per cent under domestic law and ten under the American, British and German treaties.
Whose side we are on, and how we are paid
The filing agent is paid per application whether or not the search would have shown the mark could not register. The distributor who offers to "handle the registration locally" is paid by owning the mark. The head office adviser drafts for the home register, not for the Turkish one. None of them is paid to tell you that the class list is defensive and will be cancelled in year six, or that the opposition deadline has run because nobody read the Bulletin.
We take no commission or referral fee from filing agents, translation offices or distributors, 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 classes you file or how many oppositions you bring. Because our position does not move with the volume, telling you that one class is enough, or that a letter of consent will settle the conflict faster than an opposition, costs us nothing to say.
One boundary, stated plainly. We are lawyers, not licensed investment advisers and not brand consultants. We do not tell you whether the Turkish market is worth entering or what to call the product. What we protect is the Turkish legal position: the search and the classes, the filing through a registered attorney in time, the oppositions and proof of use, the renewals, the licences and their recordal, and the civil, criminal and customs measures when the mark is copied.
Before you enter the market
Send us the marks and logos you use, the home registrations with their dates, the goods and services you actually trade in, the names of any Turkish distributor or agent past or present, and the date of the first planned Turkish sale or fair. We will tell you what the register shows, what can be filed and in which classes, whether priority is still available, whether an existing Turkish filing by someone else can be opposed or cancelled, and what the year's official fees will be. Our corporate work is described on the corporate law page, and the general framework for a foreign entrant on the foreign investment guide.
What this page does not settle
Designs, patents and utility models, geographical indications, domain names and social media handles, unfair competition claims under the Commercial Code, copyright, and the collective and certification mark regulations are separate subjects. The corporate tax exemption for industrial property income in Article 5/B of the Corporate Tax Law covers patents and utility models and not trademarks, and sits with the rates on the corporate tax page. Fees are revised each January and Office practice on classification and similarity changes; the figures above are those in force on the date checked.
