Turkish court judgment (mahkeme kararı / ilam) translation

How a Turkish judgment is built

Türkiye has separate first-instance courts for civil claims (asliye hukuk), small civil matters (sulh hukuk), commercial disputes (asliye ticaret), employment (iş mahkemesi), consumers (tüketici mahkemesi), enforcement (icra hukuk), family matters and crime (sulh ceza judgeships, asliye ceza and ağır ceza courts), with administrative and tax courts on the public-law side. Appeals go first to a regional court (bölge adliye mahkemesi, the istinaf stage) and then to the Court of Cassation (Yargıtay) or, for public law, the Council of State (Danıştay). The enforceable copy of a final judgment is the ilam.

Every judgment follows the same skeleton: a header with the court, the file and decision numbers (Esas and Karar), the judge and clerk, the parties and their lawyers; the claim and the defence; the reasoning (gerekçe); the operative verdict (hüküm); a note on whether appeal is open; and, once the time for appeal has passed, the finality note (kesinleşme şerhi). Copies taken from the UYAP judicial network through e-Devlet carry an electronic-signature statement and a verification code instead of a wet stamp. We translate the whole of this, keeping statutory citations in their Turkish form (TMK m. 166/1, for example) with the law's name given once, preserving paragraph numbering, and rendering the e-signature statement so the reader can verify the copy on the UYAP document-checking service.

Why UK bodies ask for it

• Civil courts and solicitors. There is no treaty for the mutual enforcement of judgments between the UK and Türkiye, so a Turkish money judgment is enforced in England by bringing a fresh claim on it, and the translated judgment with its finality note is the foundation of that claim. Turkish judgments are also exhibited as evidence in UK litigation. See translations for civil courts and tribunals.
• Home Office. Naturalisation and settlement applications require past convictions to be disclosed, and caseworkers ask for the judgment to see the offence and the sentence. Protection claims rely on prosecution and conviction documents as evidence of what happened.
• Family court and probate, where a Turkish decision on a marriage, a child or an estate has to be read in England. Divorce judgments have their own page.

For a UK judgment going the other way, see recognition and enforcement of UK judgments in Türkiye.

What the translation must contain

In the civil courts, paragraph 23.2 of Practice Direction 32, quoted below, requires the party relying on a foreign-language document to file it with the court and the translator to sign and certify that the translation is accurate. Our translation is delivered with a signed certificate of accuracy, dated and giving our company details, which the court and the Home Office have accepted. Should a judge direct that the translation be verified by affidavit, that is sworn in the UK by the party and our certificate is exhibited to it.

Criminal terminology has to be rendered so that a caseworker is neither alarmed nor misled. Hükmün açıklanmasının geri bırakılması (HAGB) is a deferral of the announcement of the verdict on probation, a device with no English equivalent, and we translate it literally with a note; erteleme is a suspended sentence, adli para cezası a judicial fine, beraat an acquittal. The Turkish terms stay in brackets. Our explainer how we render Turkish legal terms in English sets out the full list.

Apostille and e-Apostil

Court decisions have been obtainable with a Turkish e-Apostil through e-Devlet since 2019, so an apostilled copy can be produced from the UK in minutes. The Home Office does not ask for one; solicitors enforcing a judgment usually do. Where a judgment predates UYAP, the paper apostille comes from the judicial commission at the courthouse.

Price and turnaround

Reasoned civil and commercial judgments run to 5 to 15 pages of 1,000 characters, £50.00 to £150.00; a criminal sentencing judgment is shorter, 3 to 6 pages; a Court of Cassation decision 2 to 4. Certification is in the price and we charge no UK VAT. Standard delivery is 3 to 5 working days as a certified PDF; the economy option suits a long judgment with a distant hearing date, and the fast option halves the time for 60 per cent more. A signed hard copy comes from Ankara by courier for £30. We have no UK office and do not collect.