Debt collection in Turkey for a foreign company runs through the enforcement office (İcra Dairesi) under the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law (İcra ve İflas Kanunu): a creditor can start enforcement proceedings for a money claim without first obtaining a judgment, the debtor has a short period to pay or object, and an objection moves the dispute to the enforcement court or the commercial court. This article explains which route fits which claim, how the payment order and the objection work, where mandatory mediation and the commercial court come in, how provisional attachment and asset tracing protect the claim, how bank accounts, receivables, real estate and shares are attached and realised, how foreign judgments and arbitral awards are enforced, and what a creditor abroad needs for representation, interest, costs and repatriation.
- Any money claim can be pursued through the enforcement office without a judgment; a document is needed only to defeat an objection quickly.
- Bills of exchange, promissory notes and cheques follow a separate, faster track with a five-day objection period.
- Commercial money claims go to mandatory mediation before the commercial court, including the action to annul an objection.
- Foreign judgments need an enforcement judgment from a Turkish court; foreign arbitral awards are enforced under the New York Convention.
- A foreign creditor may be asked to post security for costs unless a treaty or reciprocity exempts it.
Which route fits the claim: enforcement without a judgment, bills of exchange, or a judgment
The Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law provides three main tracks for money claims. Enforcement without a judgment (ilamsız icra) through the general attachment route is open for any money claim, whether or not the creditor holds a contract, an invoice or any document at all; the creditor files a request with the enforcement office, the office serves a payment order on the debtor, and what happens next depends on whether the debtor objects. Enforcement on bills of exchange (kambiyo senetlerine özgü haciz yolu) is open only to the holder of a bill of exchange, a promissory note or a cheque that meets the formal requirements of the Turkish Commercial Code (Türk Ticaret Kanunu); it is faster and an objection does not by itself stop the proceedings. Enforcement on a judgment (ilamlı icra) is open to a creditor holding a Turkish court judgment, a Turkish arbitral award, or a Turkish enforcement judgment rendered on a foreign judgment or award, and the debtor cannot reopen the merits before the enforcement office.
The common misunderstanding among foreign creditors is that a court case must come first. It need not: the general route is available for an unpaid invoice, a loan or a contract balance with no document at all, and in our practice it is the standard opening move against a Turkish debtor, because it forces the debtor to take a position within days and starts the formal record. What the documents decide is not whether proceedings can start, but how the creditor answers an objection: a creditor holding a document whose signature the debtor does not deny, a notarised instrument or an official document can ask the enforcement court to lift the objection in a summary procedure, while a creditor with only invoices and correspondence has to go to the commercial court. The track is therefore chosen with the documents on the table, and where the parties are still negotiating we structure the settlement so that the debtor signs an instrument that qualifies for the summary procedure if the instalments stop.
Two points are specific to foreign creditors. First, the Private International Law and Procedure Law (Milletlerarası Özel Hukuk ve Usul Hukuku Hakkında Kanun, MÖHUK) allows the court or the enforcement office to require a foreign natural or legal person that files a lawsuit or starts enforcement proceedings in Turkey to post security for the costs of the proceedings and the other side's potential loss; the security is set by the court, in practice as a percentage of the claim, and the creditor is exempt where a treaty applies, including the Hague Convention on Civil Procedure for its member states, or where reciprocity is shown, which the Court of Cassation has accepted on the basis of official confirmation that Turkish nationals post no security in the creditor's country. Second, a foreign company proves its existence and the authority of its signatories with apostilled registry extracts and signature documents, translated by a sworn translator and certified by a Turkish notary; the enforcement office and the courts ask for these with the first filing. Our practice page on enforcement and bankruptcy law in Turkey sets out the framework these tracks share.
Enforcement without a judgment: the payment order, the objection and what follows
The creditor's request states the debtor, the principal, the interest claimed and its start date, and the basis of the claim. The enforcement office issues a payment order, served on the debtor at its registered address; for companies registered in Turkey, service goes to the registered electronic notification address (UETS) where one exists, which shortens the service stage considerably. From service the debtor has seven days to pay or to file an objection with the enforcement office. A timely objection stops the proceedings; it need not be reasoned, and a debtor that wants to deny its signature on a document must say so expressly, because an unspecified objection is treated as a denial of the debt but not of the signature. If no objection is filed in time, the payment order becomes final and the creditor may request attachment. The attachment request must be made within one year of service of the payment order, with time spent on an objection excluded.
After an objection the creditor has two ways forward. The first is the application to lift the objection (itirazın kaldırılması) before the enforcement court (İcra Mahkemesi), available within six months where the creditor holds a document the law treats as sufficient: a private document bearing a signature the debtor has acknowledged or does not deny, a notarised document, or an official document; the enforcement court decides on the documents in a summary procedure without a full trial, and a debtor whose objection is lifted may be ordered to pay enforcement denial compensation on top of the debt. The second is the action to annul the objection (itirazın iptali davası) before the competent general court, within one year of the objection, in which the court examines the debt in full, and a debtor that loses is ordered, at the creditor's request, to pay enforcement denial compensation calculated as a statutory percentage of the claim; the same compensation runs against a creditor whose claim is found to be made in bad faith. In our practice the choice follows the documents and the debtor's likely defence: the summary route is fast but fails if the document is contested on grounds the enforcement court cannot examine; the annulment action is slower but resolves everything.
Bills of exchange, promissory notes and cheques follow their own track. The payment order on these instruments gives the debtor ten days to pay and five days to object, and the objection is filed with the enforcement court, not with the enforcement office; the proceedings continue unless the court orders otherwise, so attachment can follow once the payment period has passed. The debtor's defences are limited to those visible on the instrument or supported by documents of a defined kind, which is why a properly drawn promissory note from a Turkish debtor is worth more than a signed contract. Practice may vary by authority and year.
Mandatory mediation and the commercial court
Where the dispute reaches the commercial court, mediation comes first. The Turkish Commercial Code makes mediation a condition for bringing a commercial lawsuit whose subject is the payment of a sum of money or compensation, and a claim filed without a mediator's final report is dismissed on procedural grounds without examination of the merits. The Court of Cassation has held that the action to annul an objection to enforcement, when the underlying claim is commercial, falls within this requirement, so a creditor that has started enforcement and met an objection still goes to mediation before suing. The application is made to the mediation office at the courthouse of the competent court; the mediator is assigned from the registry; the process is meant to close within weeks, with a short extension available; and the final report records either an agreement, which is enforceable, or the absence of one, which opens the door to the court. Claims that are outside the commercial definition, and the summary application to lift an objection before the enforcement court, are not subject to mandatory mediation.
The commercial court examines a money claim mainly on documents. The petition sets out the contract or relationship, the deliveries or services, the invoices, the default and the calculation of the claim, and attaches the evidence; foreign-language documents are filed with sworn Turkish translations, and documents issued abroad carry an apostille or consular legalisation. The court usually appoints an expert to review the accounts, and between merchants the exchange of invoices, delivery notes, account statements and objections to invoices within the statutory period carries evidential weight that the court applies strictly; a foreign seller that never answered the debtor's notice of defects is in a weaker position than its contract suggests. Interim measures are available on application: a provisional attachment on the claim, described below, or a precautionary injunction preventing the transfer of a specific asset, each against security set by the court. Our note on commercial litigation in Turkey describes the court procedure, appeals and timelines in more detail.
Jurisdiction and governing-law clauses in the contract are respected within limits. A clause choosing a foreign court does not prevent the creditor from starting enforcement without a judgment against a Turkish debtor's assets, but once the debtor objects the effect of the clause on the court action is examined case by case, and the creditor should expect the debtor to rely on it; an arbitration clause removes the merits from the Turkish courts altogether, so a creditor holding one pursues the award route described below. Limitation runs in the background of every claim: the general period under the Code of Obligations (Türk Borçlar Kanunu) is ten years, a five-year period applies to certain categories including periodic payments and a number of contracts for work and services, and claims on bills of exchange and cheques prescribe within shorter periods counted from maturity or from the end of the presentation period. Filing an enforcement request, suing, partial payment and written acknowledgment of the debt interrupt limitation; a reminder letter does not.
Provisional attachment and asset tracing
Provisional attachment (ihtiyati haciz) is the measure that turns a paper claim into a secured one. The creditor applies to the competent court for an order freezing the debtor's assets up to the amount of a money claim that is due and not secured by a pledge; the application is decided without hearing the debtor, on the creditor's documents and against security fixed by the court. Once the order is granted, the creditor must ask the enforcement office to execute it within ten days, and after the attachment has been carried out must start enforcement proceedings or sue within seven days of service of the attachment record, failing which the attachment lapses. The debtor can object to the order on limited grounds and can lift the attachment by depositing security. In our practice the application is filed with the enforcement request and executed before the payment order is served, so that accounts and receivables are frozen before the debtor reads the first notice.
Asset tracing in Turkey is run through the enforcement file rather than by private investigation. On the creditor's request the enforcement office runs electronic queries through the judiciary's UYAP system against the land registry (TAKBİS) for real estate, the vehicle registry, the social security records showing where the debtor's employees and the debtor itself are registered, and the tax and address registries; the results are visible to the creditor's lawyer in the file. Bank balances are not queried: the office sends attachment notices electronically to the banks the creditor names, and each bank replies within the statutory period stating whether the debtor holds funds and freezing them up to the claim. The commercial registry (MERSİS and the Trade Registry Gazette) shows the debtor's shareholders, managers, capital and any merger or address change, which is where a creditor usually first sees that the business has moved to a new company.
The debtor's own declaration of assets completes the picture. A debtor against whom the payment order has become final must declare its assets to the enforcement office within a short period; failure carries coercive sanctions on the creditor's application and a false declaration carries criminal liability. Where assets have been transferred to a related party before or during the proceedings, the law allows the creditor to challenge the transfer by an action for annulment of the disposition, within a limited period after the transfer, so that the asset is treated as still belonging to the debtor for the creditor's enforcement; the certificate of insolvency issued at the end of a fruitless attachment is the document that opens that action and also keeps the claim alive for later enforcement when the debtor recovers.
Attachment and realisation: bank accounts, receivables, real estate and shares
The attachment of bank accounts is the first and most liquid step. The enforcement office serves an attachment notice on each bank; funds up to the claim are frozen and transferred to the enforcement office's account, from which they are paid to the creditor's lawyer after deduction of fees. A bank that fails to reply within the statutory period, or replies incorrectly, becomes liable to the creditor for the amount in question through the three-stage notice procedure that the law provides for third parties holding the debtor's assets. The same procedure attaches receivables owed to the debtor by its own customers: the notice is served on the customer, who must pay the enforcement office instead of the debtor or deny the debt within the period, and a denial that turns out to be false exposes the customer to liability. For a trading debtor, receivables are often the asset that pays, and identifying its customers is part of the pre-filing work.
Real estate is attached by an annotation at the land registry on the enforcement office's instruction, which prevents a sale free of the claim; realisation is by public auction conducted through the enforcement office, with the property valued by court experts, the sale announced electronically, and the price paid into the file for distribution among the attaching creditors by rank. Mortgages and earlier attachments rank ahead, so the land registry extract is read before an auction is requested. Vehicles, machinery and inventory are attached and sold at auction in the same way, and shares in a Turkish company are attached with a note in the share ledger and, for limited companies, at the trade registry, and realised by sale or through the dividends.
Distribution follows a plan drawn up by the enforcement office that respects the ranks of the creditors who attached in time, so a late creditor may receive a share rather than the whole; the plan can be challenged before the enforcement court. Where the debtor enters concordat or bankruptcy, individual enforcement stops and the creditor files its claim in the collective procedure; a Turkish debtor in difficulty often applies for concordat to obtain that stay, and the creditor's position then depends on the attachment it secured before it. Practice may vary by authority and year.
Foreign judgments and arbitral awards
A foreign court judgment has no effect in Turkey until a Turkish court grants an enforcement judgment (tenfiz) under MÖHUK. The application is made to the civil court of first instance, or the commercial court for commercial matters, at the debtor's domicile or, failing one, where the debtor's assets are; it is filed with the original judgment or a copy certified by the foreign court, an apostille or consular legalisation, a certificate or endorsement showing that the judgment is final under the law of the issuing state, and sworn Turkish translations. The conditions the court examines are limited and do not include the merits: reciprocity between Turkey and the issuing state, by treaty, by statute or in practice; that the judgment does not fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Turkish courts and, if the debtor objects, was not rendered by a court with no real connection to the dispute; that the judgment is not manifestly contrary to Turkish public policy; and that the debtor was duly summoned or represented in the foreign proceedings, which is a defence only the debtor can raise. The debtor is served and may oppose, and an appeal against the enforcement judgment stays its execution, which means that the creditor's enforcement normally waits until the appeal courts have decided.
Foreign arbitral awards are enforced under the New York Convention, to which Turkey is a party with the reciprocity and commercial reservations, with MÖHUK supplying the procedure. The creditor files the award and the arbitration agreement, with translations, before the competent civil or commercial court, and the grounds on which enforcement may be refused are the Convention's own: invalidity of the arbitration agreement, lack of proper notice or inability to present the case, an award beyond the scope of the submission, irregular composition or procedure, an award not yet binding or set aside at the seat, non-arbitrability under Turkish law, and public policy. Turkish courts apply the public policy ground narrowly in commercial cases, and in our practice enforcing an institutional award against a Turkish company is more predictable than enforcing a foreign judgment, mainly because reciprocity does not arise. Our practice page on arbitration law in Turkey covers awards rendered in Turkey and the setting-aside procedure.
Both routes end at the enforcement office: the Turkish enforcement judgment, once final, is the title for enforcement on a judgment, with an enforcement order giving the debtor a short period to pay before attachment and realisation follow, and the merits cannot be reopened at that stage. While the application is pending, a provisional attachment may be sought on the strength of the foreign judgment or award where the court is satisfied that the claim is due, and asset tracing runs in parallel so that the attachment lands on something.
Representation from abroad: power of attorney, notices, interest, costs and repatriation
A foreign company does not attend in person. Enforcement and court proceedings are conducted by a Turkish lawyer under a power of attorney (vekaletname) issued abroad before a notary, with an apostille or consular legalisation, and translated by a sworn translator with the translation certified by a Turkish notary; a power of attorney issued at a Turkish consulate needs no apostille. The document names the lawyers, states the scope, which for collection matters includes starting enforcement, suing, applying for provisional attachment, settling, receiving payment and withdrawing, and is accompanied by the company's apostilled registry extract and the signatory's authority. The power of attorney is filed with the first request in each enforcement file and lawsuit; it is not registered in advance. A power of attorney drafted for another purpose is the usual cause of delay, because the office will not act on a scope that does not clearly cover enforcement or settlement.
Notices and deadlines run electronically. Turkish companies, and lawyers, receive official notifications through UETS, and the enforcement file is managed through UYAP, where the creditor's lawyer files requests, follows the office's actions and reads the banks' and registries' replies; a creditor abroad therefore sees the file through its lawyer's portal rather than through paper. Interest is claimed from the date of default: for commercial debts between merchants, default interest at the Central Bank's advance rate under the statute on legal interest and default interest applies unless the contract sets a different rate, and the Turkish Commercial Code's rules on late payment in the supply of goods and services allow default to start without a notice after the statutory period. Interest, enforcement fees, the lawyer's statutory fee recoverable from the debtor and the costs of the proceedings are added to the file and collected with the principal.
Recovered funds are paid out by the enforcement office to the creditor's lawyer, who transfers them to the account the creditor designates; a Turkish bank account in the creditor's own name is not required. Outbound transfers of collected amounts are free under Turkey's foreign exchange rules, the bank asking for the enforcement office's payment record and the underlying invoice or judgment; a foreign-currency claim is enforced at its Turkish lira value on the date the law allows the creditor to choose, so the exchange risk sits with the creditor. Our practice page on the Turkish business and commercial lawyer covers contract and dispute work for foreign companies beyond collection.
Frequently asked questions
- Can a foreign company start debt collection in Turkey without a court judgment? Yes. Any money claim can be pursued through the enforcement office without a judgment; the debtor then has seven days to pay or object. A document matters only when an objection is filed, because it decides whether the objection can be lifted summarily or must be annulled in a court action.
- What happens if the Turkish debtor objects to the payment order? A timely objection stops the proceedings. The creditor either applies to the enforcement court to lift the objection on the basis of a qualifying document, or sues in the commercial court, after mandatory mediation, to annul the objection; in both routes the debtor can be ordered to pay enforcement denial compensation.
- Does a foreign creditor have to post security in Turkey? It may be required to, under MÖHUK, when it sues or starts enforcement, unless a treaty exempts it or reciprocity is shown; the Court of Cassation has accepted de facto reciprocity on official confirmation that Turkish nationals post no security in the creditor's country.
- Is mediation compulsory before suing for a commercial debt? Yes, for commercial claims for the payment of money, including the action to annul an objection. The summary application to lift an objection before the enforcement court is not subject to it.
- How are a Turkish debtor's bank accounts and other assets found? Through the enforcement file: the office runs electronic queries of the land, vehicle, social security and tax registries, and sends attachment notices to the banks the creditor names, which must reply and freeze funds within the statutory period. The debtor must also declare its assets once the payment order is final.
- Can a foreign court judgment or arbitral award be enforced against a Turkish company? A foreign judgment needs a Turkish enforcement judgment, granted on conditions that include reciprocity, public policy and due process, and an appeal stays execution. A foreign arbitral award is enforced under the New York Convention on its narrower grounds, and reciprocity is not an issue.
- Must the company come to Turkey or open a Turkish bank account? No. A Turkish lawyer acts under a notarised and apostilled power of attorney with a certified translation, and recovered funds are paid to the lawyer and transferred to the account the creditor designates, including abroad.
Author: Av. Mirkan Günay Topcu, Managing Partner, ER&GUN&ER Law Firm, Istanbul Bar No. 67874. He represents foreign companies in enforcement proceedings, objection and annulment cases, provisional attachment and asset tracing, commercial litigation and mediation, and the enforcement of foreign judgments and arbitral awards against Turkish debtors. Education: Istanbul University Faculty of Law (2018); Galatasaray University, LL.M. (2022).
Profile: Av. Mirkan Günay Topcu. LinkedIn: Profile. Istanbul Bar Association: Official website. Related practice page: enforcement and bankruptcy lawyer in Turkey.