If you are a foreign national facing a criminal allegation in Turkey, the first hours matter more than anything that comes later. Statements given at a police station, often through whoever happens to be available to translate, are read out in court months afterwards and are very difficult to walk back. The Criminal Procedure Code No. 5271 gives you the right to a defence lawyer and to a qualified interpreter from the outset. Those rights protect you only if they are used before you sign anything.
Where Foreign Suspects Lose Their Case
- Signing a statement you did not fully understand. A friend, a colleague or a hotel employee translating is not an interpreter appointed under the Code. What reaches the file is a Turkish text, and that is the version the court reads.
- Assuming a minor allegation stays minor. Under the Law on Foreigners and International Protection No. 6458, certain criminal outcomes can trigger a deportation decision and an entry ban through an entirely separate administrative process.
- Not knowing the case exists. An investigation can open and judicial control measures can be imposed while you are abroad. Many people discover the problem at passport control.
- Treating a travel ban as paperwork. A ban on leaving Turkey is a judicial control measure under the Code and can be challenged, but not by waiting for it to expire.
The Consequence That Is Not in the Verdict
For a foreign national the sentence is often not the most serious outcome. A conviction, and in some circumstances the existence of proceedings alone, can affect your residence permit, a pending citizenship application and your ability to re-enter the country. These decisions are taken by different authorities on different timetables, and they are not explained to you in the criminal courtroom.
The Cases We Are Asked to Handle
Allegations involving foreign nationals cluster around a familiar set: traffic offences and accidents causing injury, debt and cheque-related complaints, disputes that escalate into assault allegations, accusations arising from online transactions and cryptocurrency, alleged breaches of immigration rules, and complaints filed between business partners after a commercial relationship collapses.
Being Represented Without Being in Turkey
You do not always have to be in the country. A lawyer instructed under a power of attorney can examine the investigation file, make submissions, apply to lift judicial control measures and attend hearings. Where a warrant or a travel ban already exists, dealing with it from outside Turkey is usually safer than arriving and finding out at the airport.
What We Do
We attend police statements and prosecutor interviews, examine the investigation file, apply for release and for judicial control measures to be lifted, defend at trial and on appeal, act for complainants as well as for accused persons, and handle the immigration consequences that follow a criminal file, including challenges to deportation decisions and entry bans.
If a Statement Has Already Been Taken
Call before the statement if you can. If one has already been given, send us the file reference and we will tell you what stage the matter is at and what can still be done about it.
Contact our office or call +90 533 301 52 23.