Shipping law in Turkey is governed by the maritime book of the Turkish Commercial Code (Türk Ticaret Kanunu), rewritten in 2011 around the international conventions, so that a foreign owner, charterer or cargo interest meets rules it largely recognises: the code's provisions on ships, carriage, collision, salvage and maritime liens follow the conventions Turkey has joined, and ship arrest is available only for the maritime claims the 1999 Arrest Convention lists. This article explains how the domestic code and the conventions fit together, how the two ship registries and the cabotage reserve work, what governs charter parties and bills of lading, how a ship is arrested and released in a Turkish port, how liens, mortgages and limitation of liability rank, who pays for pollution, how seafarers are employed, what the Turkish Straits regime requires, and where maritime disputes are decided.
- Ship arrest in Turkey follows the 1999 Arrest Convention and the Commercial Code: maritime claims only, a fixed security deposit from the claimant, and release against security.
- Two registries: the National Ship Registry for Turkish-owned ships and the Turkish International Ship Registry with income tax exemptions for operating income and crew wages.
- Cabotage between Turkish ports is reserved to Turkish-flagged ships.
- Carrier liability under bills of lading follows the Hague-Visby standard written into the code; limitation of liability follows the LLMC regime.
- Seafarers on Turkish ships work under the Maritime Labour Law and the Maritime Labour Convention.
How the Commercial Code and the conventions fit together
The maritime book of the Commercial Code covers ships and their registration, the shipowner and the master, contracts of carriage by sea, passenger carriage, collision, salvage, general average, maritime liens and ship mortgages, limitation of liability, and the arrest and forced sale of ships; marine insurance sits in the code's insurance book. The 2011 code replaced provisions dating from the 1950s with text drafted from the conventions, which is why a lawyer trained in a common-law shipping jurisdiction finds the carriage, lien and arrest rules familiar in substance even where the procedure is Turkish.
Turkey is a party to the conventions that matter in practice: the 1924 Hague Rules, with the Hague-Visby standard written into the code for carrier liability; the 1976 Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims and its 1996 Protocol, which the code applies directly; the 1999 International Convention on Arrest of Ships and the 1993 International Convention on Maritime Liens and Mortgages, both in force for Turkey since 2017; the Civil Liability Convention of 1992 and the Fund Convention for tanker oil pollution, and the 2001 Bunker Convention for bunker oil from any ship; MARPOL, SOLAS and the ISM and ISPS codes on the technical side; the Maritime Labour Convention, ratified in 2017; and the New York Convention for the enforcement of arbitral awards. Where a convention applies of its own force, it prevails over the code; where the code transposes a convention, the Turkish courts read the two together.
Below the code sit the special statutes and the administration: the Turkish International Ship Registry Law, the Cabotage Law, the Maritime Labour Law (Deniz İş Kanunu), the law on response to marine pollution by oil and other harmful substances, the Environmental Law, the Ports Law and the Straits traffic regulation. The General Directorate of Maritime Affairs of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure (Denizcilik Genel Müdürlüğü) administers registration, flag, manning and port state control through the harbour masters (Liman Başkanlığı), and the Coast Guard enforces at sea. Our practice page on transportation law in Turkey covers the wider carriage and logistics framework.
The two registries, the Turkish flag and cabotage
The National Ship Registry (Milli Gemi Sicili) is the ordinary registry for commercial ships, kept by the harbour masters of the registry ports under the code: a ship is eligible when it is owned by Turkish citizens, by a company incorporated in Turkey whose capital and management are in Turkish hands in the proportion the code requires, or by a Turkish public body, and registration is what gives the right to fly the Turkish flag and creates the public record of ownership, mortgages and other encumbrances that a buyer or financier searches. Transfers and mortgages are registered by notarised or registry deed; a ship mortgage (gemi ipoteği) is created by registration and ranks by its date.
The Turkish International Ship Registry (Türk Uluslararası Gemi Sicili, TUGS) was created in 1999 to keep tonnage under the Turkish flag by relaxing the ownership, manning and tax rules. Ships owned by Turkish citizens or by companies established in Turkey, including companies with foreign shareholders, and certain yachts can be registered; the master must be Turkish, while a proportion of the crew may be foreign under the manning regulation. The tax advantages are the reason owners choose it: income from the operation and the transfer of TUGS-registered ships is exempt from income and corporate tax, the wages of seafarers serving on them are exempt from income tax, and a number of fees and duties do not apply. In our practice the registry choice is made with the financing and the trading pattern in view, because a TUGS ship that trades only internationally captures the exemptions in full, and the Revenue Administration's rulings on what counts as operating income are read before the structure is fixed. Practice may vary by authority and year.
The Cabotage Law of 1926 reserves to Turkish-flagged ships the carriage of goods and passengers between Turkish ports, towage, pilotage and port services, fishing and salvage in Turkish waters. A foreign-flagged ship cannot carry cargo from Izmir to Mersin, and a foreign operator who wants to work in the coastal trades does so through a Turkish company and a Turkish-flagged ship; exemptions are narrow and are granted case by case by the Ministry, for example for specialised vessels no Turkish ship can replace. For foreign investors the cabotage rule is the first question in any plan involving ferries, offshore support, dredging or coastal feeder services.
Charter parties and bills of lading
Charter parties on BIMCO and other standard forms are valid under Turkish law and are mostly governed by the law and forum the parties choose, usually English law and London arbitration; the code's provisions on voyage charters, time charters and bareboat charters apply where Turkish law governs or the clause is silent, and most of them are default rules the parties can vary. The code regulates the voyage charter in detail, including loading and discharging time, demurrage, the shipowner's lien on cargo for freight and the charterer's right to cancel, with the time charter and bareboat charter treated more briefly; a dispute under a form that chooses Turkish law is decided on the clause first and the code second.
Carriage under a bill of lading (konişmento) is where the code is mandatory. The carrier owes due diligence to make the ship seaworthy and to care for the cargo, is liable for loss or damage unless one of the listed exceptions applies, including the nautical fault and fire exceptions, and may limit liability per package or unit or per kilogram at the Hague-Visby amounts expressed in Special Drawing Rights, with the limit lost for damage caused intentionally or recklessly. Notice of loss is given at delivery or within the short period the code allows, and the claim is time-barred one year from delivery or the date delivery should have taken place; clauses that reduce the carrier's liability below the code's level are void where the bill is issued to a third-party holder.
The bill of lading is also the document that decides who may claim. The lawful holder of an order bill sues the carrier; a consignee under a straight bill or a sea waybill claims under the contract of carriage; the charterer's recourse against the owner follows the charter party. In our files the most common cargo dispute in a Turkish port is a delivery without presentation of the original bill, for which the carrier is liable to the holder, and the second is a dispute over whether the carrier or the terminal was in possession when the damage occurred, which the port's tally and survey records decide. Our note on debt collection in Turkey for foreign companies covers the enforcement side of a freight or demurrage claim against a Turkish party.
Ship arrest in a Turkish port: claims, security, release
A ship in Turkish waters, whatever its flag, can be arrested only by provisional attachment (ihtiyati haciz) under the code and only for a maritime claim on the code's closed list, which follows the 1999 Arrest Convention: damage caused by the ship, loss of life or personal injury, salvage, towage, pilotage, supplies and necessaries, construction and repair, port and canal dues, crew wages, disbursements, insurance premiums, commissions, disputes over ownership, possession or earnings, mortgages and liens, and claims arising from charter parties and carriage contracts. A claim outside the list supports attachment of the debtor's other assets under the enforcement law, not of the ship.
The application is made to the commercial court of the place where the ship is, on documents and without hearing the owner, and the claimant must deposit security in a fixed amount of ten thousand Special Drawing Rights before the court examines the request, which the owner may ask the court to increase, with exemptions for crew wage and similar claims. Once the order is granted the claimant must apply to the enforcement office within three business days, failing which the order lapses; the enforcement office then detains the ship, bans it from sailing and notifies the master, the harbour master, customs and the Coast Guard. The owner obtains release by providing security for the claim, in cash or by bank guarantee, and in practice a letter of undertaking from an International Group P&I club is accepted where the claimant agrees or the court is satisfied; the claimant then pursues the merits before the Turkish court or, where the contract so provides, in foreign arbitration, with the Turkish security standing for the outcome.
Speed and documents decide arrests. A claimant with the charter party, the invoices and the correspondence in hand, translated, with a power of attorney and the security ready, obtains the order and the detention within the working day in Istanbul, Izmir or Mersin; a claimant who arrives with an unsupported claim or a claim outside the list obtains nothing and faces liability for wrongful arrest. A wrongful arrest exposes the claimant to the owner's damages, which is what the security deposit secures. Practice may vary by authority and year.
Liens, mortgages, forced sale and limitation of liability
Maritime liens (gemi alacaklısı hakkı) arise by law without registration and follow the ship into the hands of a buyer. The code's list follows the 1993 Convention: wages and other sums due to the master and crew, claims for loss of life or personal injury connected with the ship's operation, salvage, port and waterway dues and pilotage, and claims for damage to property outside the ship caused by its operation; they rank among themselves in the order the code sets, with salvage liens that arose later ranking ahead of earlier ones, and all of them rank ahead of a registered mortgage. The liens are extinguished one year after the claim arose unless the ship is arrested in time, which is why a lienholder who waits loses to the bank.
Ship mortgages are registered in the ship's registry and rank by date; a mortgage registered in a foreign registry is recognised in Turkey under the 1993 Convention if it was validly created and is recorded in a public register. The forced sale of an arrested ship is conducted by the enforcement office by auction, with the proceeds distributed first to the costs, then to the liens, then to the mortgages and then to ordinary creditors, and the buyer at a Turkish forced sale takes the ship free of liens and mortgages, which the registry deletes on the enforcement office's notice. In ship finance and sale-and-purchase work we run a lien and litigation search in the registry port and the ports of recent call before completion, because the liens are not on any register.
Owners, charterers, managers, salvors and their insurers may limit their liability for the claims the Limitation Convention covers by constituting a limitation fund in Turkey or by invoking the limit as a defence, at the amounts of the 1996 Protocol as amended, calculated on the ship's tonnage; the right is lost only for loss caused by the person's own intentional or reckless act. Tanker oil pollution claims follow the separate CLC limits, and passenger claims follow the code's passenger provisions. Where a casualty in Turkish waters is likely to produce claims above the limit, the fund is constituted early, because it stops arrests for the covered claims.
Pollution, casualties and port state control
Liability for oil pollution from tankers is strict on the registered owner under the Civil Liability Convention, backed by compulsory insurance and a direct action against the insurer, with the Fund Convention supplementing compensation above the owner's limit; bunker oil pollution from any other ship is strict on the owner under the Bunker Convention, with compulsory insurance for ships above the convention's tonnage threshold. The domestic law on response to marine pollution gives the Ministry and the Coast Guard the authority to direct and carry out response operations, to require the polluter to fund them and to recover the cost, and sets the procedure for assessing and compensating the damage to the environment, to fisheries and to tourism; the Environmental Law adds administrative fines, calculated on the ship's tonnage and the pollutant, which the harbour master imposes and which are challenged before the administrative courts.
Operational discharges, garbage, sewage and air emissions are regulated under MARPOL as implemented by the Turkish regulations, and port state control inspections in Turkish ports, which follow the Mediterranean and Black Sea memoranda, check the oil record book, the garbage record book, the certificates and the crew's documents and detain ships with deficiencies. A detention is recorded in the regional databases and raises the ship's inspection profile for months; an owner's lawyer in Turkey reviews the deficiency report and, where a detention is unjustified, lodges the review the memoranda provide and the administrative action the Turkish law allows.
Collision and salvage follow the code's provisions, written from the 1910 Collision Convention and the 1989 Salvage Convention: liability in collision is apportioned by fault, salvage is rewarded according to the result and the criteria the convention lists, with special compensation for salvors who prevent environmental damage, and general average is adjusted under the York-Antwerp Rules the parties have chosen or, failing that, the code's own rules. A casualty in the Turkish Straits adds an administrative investigation by the Ministry's accident investigation board and the Straits authority, whose findings the civil courts read. Our practice page on insurance law in Turkey covers hull, cargo and liability cover and the insurer's position in these claims.
Seafarers, the Straits and dispute resolution
Seafarers on Turkish-flagged ships are employed under the Maritime Labour Law, a separate statute from the general Labour Law, which requires a written seafarer's employment agreement stating the ship, the rank, the wage, the duration and the leave, regulates working hours, rest, repatriation and termination, and gives the seafarer a maritime lien for wages; social insurance follows the general scheme, and the Maritime Labour Convention, in force for Turkey since 2018, adds the certified standards of accommodation, food, medical care and the maritime labour certificate that port state control inspects on Turkish and foreign ships alike. On TUGS-registered ships the seafarers' wages are exempt from income tax, which the crew contract and the payroll are drafted to reflect. Disputes between seafarers and owners go to the labour courts, with the mandatory mediation step that applies to employment claims.
The Turkish Straits are governed by the Montreux Convention of 1936, which guarantees freedom of passage to merchant ships in peacetime and regulates warships, and by the Turkish Straits maritime traffic regulation, which sets traffic separation schemes, reporting to the vessel traffic services, pilotage, which is recommended for ships in transit and compulsory for ships calling at Turkish ports in the Straits, daylight and escort rules for large ships and dangerous cargoes, and the sanctions for breaches, from fines to suspension of passage. For an operator trading to the Black Sea the Straits rules are part of the voyage plan; our practice page on the transportation lawyer in Turkey covers compliance and incident work in the Straits.
Maritime disputes are decided by the commercial courts, with a commercial court in Istanbul designated for maritime cases, and the procedure follows the Code of Civil Procedure with expert reports on technical questions; appeals go to the Regional Court of Appeal and the Court of Cassation. Most charter party and bill of lading disputes carry arbitration clauses, and Turkey enforces foreign awards under the New York Convention, while the Istanbul Arbitration Centre offers a Turkish seat; an arrest in Turkey can secure a claim that is pursued in London or elsewhere. Our practice page on arbitration law in Turkey covers seats, enforcement and setting aside.
Frequently asked questions
- Can a foreign-flagged ship be arrested in Turkey? Yes, by provisional attachment for a maritime claim on the Commercial Code's list, which follows the 1999 Arrest Convention. The claimant deposits security of ten thousand Special Drawing Rights, obtains the order without a hearing, and must apply to the enforcement office within three business days.
- How is an arrested ship released? By providing security for the claim, in cash or by bank guarantee; a P&I club letter of undertaking is accepted in practice where the claimant agrees or the court is satisfied. The merits are then decided in the Turkish court or in the arbitration the contract provides.
- What is the difference between the National Ship Registry and the TUGS? The National Registry is for Turkish-owned ships; the TUGS admits ships owned by Turkish citizens or companies established in Turkey, including foreign-invested companies, with a Turkish master and partly foreign crew, and exempts operating income, transfer gains and crew wages from income taxes.
- Can a foreign ship carry cargo between Turkish ports? No. The Cabotage Law reserves carriage between Turkish ports, towage, pilotage, port services, fishing and salvage in Turkish waters to Turkish-flagged ships, with narrow case-by-case exemptions.
- Which rules govern a carrier's liability for cargo in Turkey? The Commercial Code's bill of lading provisions, written to the Hague-Visby standard: due diligence as to seaworthiness, care of cargo, listed exceptions, package and weight limits in Special Drawing Rights, and a one-year time bar from delivery.
- Who pays for oil pollution from a ship in Turkish waters? The registered owner, strictly, under the Civil Liability Convention for tankers and the Bunker Convention for other ships, with compulsory insurance and direct action against the insurer; the domestic pollution response law adds the response costs and the Environmental Law adds administrative fines.
- Where are maritime disputes heard? Before the commercial courts, with a court in Istanbul designated for maritime cases, or in arbitration where the contract so provides; foreign awards are enforced under the New York Convention, and the Istanbul Arbitration Centre offers a Turkish seat.
Author: Av. Mirkan Günay Topcu, Managing Partner, ER&GUN&ER Law Firm, Istanbul Bar No. 67874. He advises shipowners, charterers, cargo interests, insurers and financiers on ship arrest and release in Turkish ports, charter party and bill of lading claims, registration under the Turkish flag, liens, mortgages and forced sales, pollution and casualty matters, and the enforcement of foreign awards. 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: international arbitration lawyer in Turkey.