Someone is being held, and you are in another country.

Five facts change what can be done, and they are worth pinning down before anything else:

• Where the person physically is — which police station, courthouse or facility, in which district.
• Which authority is holding them, and under what recorded offence.
• When the custody period began. Every deadline runs from that moment.
• Whether a statement has already been taken, and whether a lawyer was present.
• Whether anything has been signed.

If you can only get one of these, get the first. Everything else can be found once the location is known.

Consulates matter and should be notified. They can normally confirm detention, request visits, pass messages to family, and raise treatment concerns. They keep lists of local lawyers.

Turkish law does not leave this entirely to you. Under CMK 107/3 the remand of a foreign national is notified to the consulate of their state unless the person objects in writing, and under CMK 107/1 a relative or a person the detainee names must be informed without delay of the remand decision and of every extension of it. Whether those notifications were in fact made is worth asking, and worth recording.

What they do not do is act as your lawyer. A consulate will not attend the statement as counsel, will not make applications to a Turkish court, will not obtain your relative's release, and will not advise on Turkish criminal law. Families often lose the first day waiting for a consulate to do something it was never able to do.

You do not need to be in Türkiye, and you do not need a signed power of attorney before a lawyer can attend. Under CMK 154/1 a suspect or accused may meet defence counsel at any time, without a power of attorney, in a setting where what is said cannot be overheard. In practice the first meeting is arranged on a relative's instruction, with the power of attorney or the detainee's own confirmation following afterwards; the statutory right to choose counsel under CMK 149 belongs to the detainee and, where there is one, to a legal representative.

There is one exception, and it is the one that most often bites. Under CMK 154/2, for the offences in Chapters Four to Seven of Part Four of Book Two of the TCK, offences within the Anti-Terror Law, and drug manufacture and trafficking committed within the activity of an organisation, a judge may — on the prosecutor's request — restrict the right of a suspect in police custody to meet counsel for twenty-four hours. No statement may be taken during that period.

Without a power of attorney the meeting is also limited in number. Once the person is inside a penal institution, Article 59/1 of Law no. 5275 allows at most three meetings with counsel without one, and Article 116 applies that rule to remand prisoners. A power of attorney is therefore a first-week problem, not merely a next-day one.

You may have a right of your own

This surprises most families. CMK 91/5 gives a right to apply for immediate release not only to the person held and their counsel, but to their spouse and to first- and second-degree blood relatives — parents, children, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren. The application goes to the sulh ceza judge, who reviews it on the papers and must conclude it without delay and within twenty-four hours.

It is not a formality and it does not always succeed. But it is a door that exists, it belongs to you rather than to the detainee, and it is frequently missed because nobody knew it was there.

It also closes. The right exists only while the person is still in police custody, and only against the prosecutor's written order for apprehension, custody or its extension. Once a sulh ceza judge orders remand it is spent, and from that point the application for release belongs to the suspect, the accused and defence counsel under CMK 103 and 104 — not to the family.

A formal power of attorney — vekâletname — is needed for the wider file, and can normally be executed at a Turkish consulate near you or before a notary with an apostille. That is a next-day problem, not a first-hour one.

• Do not post about it. Public posts about an open Turkish criminal matter can make the file harder, not easier, and in some subject areas can create a second problem.
• Do not send money to anyone who contacts you offering to fix it. Families of detained foreigners are targeted quickly and specifically.
• Do not pressure the person to explain themselves over a monitored line in order to reassure you.
• Do not assume silence means nothing is happening. The deadlines run regardless.