A Conciliation Offer in Your Assault File: Accept, Refuse, or Let Seven Days Run Out?

The offer does not come from the police officer who took your statement. Once the prosecutor concludes that the offence falls within the conciliation regime and that there is enough suspicion to prosecute, the file goes to the conciliation bureau (uzlaştırma bürosu) attached to the chief public prosecutor's office. A conciliation officer (uzlaştırmacı) drawn from a Ministry of Justice list is then appointed and contacts you and the complainant separately.

Article 253/4 allows that officer to make the offer in person, by explained service (açıklamalı tebligat), or through letters rogatory (istinabe) if you are in another district. From the day the offer reaches you, seven days run. If you do not communicate a decision inside that period, the law treats you as having refused. There is no formal extension of the seven days, and no second offer.

The seven days apply only to the answer. The process that follows is longer: the officer has thirty days from receiving the copies of the file, and the bureau may extend that twice, each time by up to twenty days (Art. 253/12). Time spent in conciliation does not run against you — limitation and the complaint period are suspended from the first offer until the officer files the report (Art. 253/21).

Conciliation is not available for every assault file, and a great deal turns on which paragraph the prosecutor has written on the cover. Article 253/1-b-1 brings in intentional injury under Article 86 of the Penal Code — expressly excluding its third paragraph — and injury by omission under Article 88.

Three further limits are easy to miss. Insult (Art. 125) and persistent stalking (Art. 123/A) can never be conciliated, even though they are complaint-based (Art. 253/3). Where a conciliable offence was committed together with a non-conciliable one against the same victim, the conciliation rules do not apply to either. And where one incident produced several complainants, all of them must accept before conciliation can proceed (Art. 253/7).

The outcome depends on the stage and on how you perform. At the investigation stage, if you perform the agreed obligation in full and at once, the prosecutor issues a decision of no prosecution (kovuşturmaya yer olmadığı). If performance is postponed, paid in instalments or continuing in nature, the prosecutor instead defers the opening of the case, and the file only closes when you have finished (Art. 253/19). After an indictment, Article 254/2 mirrors this: immediate full performance produces dismissal of the case (düşme), while deferred performance produces a stay, and the trial resumes if you default.

Neither route is a conviction. That matters more than it sounds: Article 4 of Law No. 5352 records in the judicial record only final convictions. A file closed by conciliation leaves nothing there. Our note on the Turkish criminal record and what appears on it sets out how the register is read by residence-permit and work-permit authorities.

Compare the alternatives you are realistically left with after a trial. Deferral of the announcement of the judgment under Article 231 requires a sentence of two years or less, no prior intentional conviction, and full repair of the damage — and then carries a five-year supervision period plus an entry in a dedicated register. Suspension under Article 51 of the Penal Code is a conviction, with a supervision period of one to three years. Both are worse positions than a closed file; the comparison is set out in our note on suspended sentences and HAGB.

Two further consequences are often decisive. A completed settlement bars a compensation claim for that offence, apart from losses that could not be identified at the time or that emerge later, and any pending civil case is treated as withdrawn (Art. 253/19). And where conciliation succeeds, the officer's fee and the conciliation costs are borne by the Treasury, not by you (Art. 253/22).

The obligation (edim) is whatever the two of you agree. It is commonly a payment, but it can be restitution, a written apology, an undertaking to stay away, or a donation. The prosecutor does not fix the amount; he checks that the agreement rests on the free will of both sides and that the obligation is lawful before sealing the report into the file (Art. 253/17).

Accepting is not, in form, an admission. Statements made during the negotiations cannot be used as evidence in any investigation, prosecution or case (Art. 253/20), and the file ends without a finding of guilt. What accepting does concede is the fight: you give up the chance of an acquittal on the merits.

• Instalments keep the file alive. If you default on a deferred or instalment obligation, the case is opened without the ordinary conditions of Article 171, and the conciliation report itself counts as an enforceable document under Article 38 of the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Act — the complainant can pursue you directly for the money.
• There is no second attempt. Once conciliation has failed, it cannot be tried again in the same file (Art. 253/18).
• Your residence position is a separate track. A no-prosecution decision removes the conviction risk, not the administrative one. Deportation under Article 54/1-d of Law No. 6458 rests on a public-order assessment made by the provincial directorate, not by the criminal court; Article 59 of the Penal Code, which sends a foreigner's file to the Ministry of the Interior, is triggered only by a prison sentence. See our page on deportation decisions and how they are challenged.

There are files in which refusal is right. If you did not throw the punch, if you were the one defending yourself, if the complainant started the incident and you have filed your own complaint, or if the forensic report (adli rapor) overstates the injury, then buying a closure with money removes your chance to establish that on the record. Refusal is also the correct answer when the sum demanded is plainly a lever rather than a loss.

Refusing is not, however, an irreversible slam of the door. Under Article 253/16, even after the offer has been refused, you and the complainant may go to the prosecutor with a document showing that you have in fact settled — at any time up to the date the indictment is drawn. That window is worth knowing about, because it is often the one that remains after a seven-day period has quietly expired.

Whatever you decide, decide it having understood it. Article 253/5 requires the officer to explain the nature of conciliation and the legal consequences of acceptance and refusal; if that explanation reaches you in a language you do not command, the answer you give is not an informed one, and our note on interpreter rights in Turkish criminal proceedings explains how to insist on one. The mechanics of the process itself — who the officer is, what the session looks like, what goes into the report — are set out in our page on criminal mediation and conciliation in Turkey.

Where the conciliation offer sits in the wider sequence, from the custody statement to the first hearing, is covered on our main page on assault and public order charges in Turkey. If seven days are running now, that sequence is the context in which the answer should be given.