Your First Hearing in a Turkish Criminal Court: What Happens, in What Order, and What You Decide Beforehand

A criminal case in Türkiye is opened by the court's acceptance of the prosecutor's indictment; with that acceptance the prosecution phase begins, the court fixes the hearing date and summons the people who must attend (CMK 175). The indictment itself is served on the defendant together with the summons, the çağrı kâğıdı (CMK 176/1). Where the file contains a telephone number, an e-mail address or similar contact details, information about the indictment and the hearing date is also sent by those means, but the legal consequences of the summons attach only to the served document, not to the message. A defendant who is not in custody is told on the summons that failure to attend without an excuse will lead to being brought by force (CMK 176/2); a defendant in custody is notified of the date in the prison, is asked whether there is anything he wishes to request for his defence, and his lawyer is invited with him (CMK 176/3).

The rule that matters most for preparation is CMK 176/4: at least one week must separate the service of the summons from the hearing date. The week exists so that the defence can be prepared; if the summons reaches you with less than a week to go, the hearing can be postponed at your request, and a defence that was not ready is not treated as waived.

The second deadline is your own. If you want the court to summon a witness or an expert, or to gather evidence in your favour, CMK 177/1 requires a written application, identifying the facts each item relates to, to be filed with the presiding judge at least five days before the hearing. The decision on the application is communicated to you at once, and requests that are granted are also notified to the prosecutor (CMK 177/2-3). A witness you simply bring along on the day may still be heard, but the five-day application is the route that obliges the court to rule on your evidence before it hears the prosecution's.

The hearing follows a sequence written into CMK 191, and it does not vary with the seriousness of the charge. The court first establishes who is present: the defendant, the defence lawyer, and the witnesses and experts who were summoned. The defendant is brought into the courtroom unrestrained. The presiding judge announces that the hearing has begun by reading the decision accepting the indictment (CMK 191/1). Witnesses are then sent out of the courtroom so that they do not hear one another or the defendant (CMK 191/2).

Then, in order (CMK 191/3): the defendant's identity is established and information is taken about his personal and economic circumstances; the acts on which the charge rests, the evidence, and the legal characterisation of the charge in the indictment are explained to him; he is told that he has the legal right not to make any statement about the charge, together with the other rights listed in CMK 147; and, if he says he is ready to speak, his questioning (sorgu) is conducted in the proper form. Since a 2016 amendment the indictment is explained rather than read aloud, which for a long indictment is a summary by the judge; a defendant who wants a particular passage read can ask.

The presiding judge conducts the hearing, questions the defendant and ensures that the evidence is produced (CMK 192/1). If a party objects that a measure ordered by the presiding judge for the conduct of the hearing is legally inadmissible, the full court decides the point (CMK 192/2). Anything that follows the questioning, the hearing of witnesses, the reading of documents, the expert, is evidence-taking under the later sections of the Code and usually spans more than one session; the first hearing is very often the questioning and the scheduling of what comes next.

The questioning of a defendant in court follows the same list of safeguards as the questioning of a suspect by the prosecutor, because CMK 147 applies to both. Before anything else your identity is established, and you are obliged to answer identity questions truthfully (147/1-a). The charge is explained (b). You are told that you may choose a lawyer, that the lawyer may be present during the questioning, and that if you cannot afford one and want one, the bar association will appoint one (c). You are told that you have the legal right not to make a statement about the charge (e). You are reminded that you may ask for concrete evidence to be gathered to dispel the suspicion, and you are given the opportunity to remove the grounds of suspicion against you and to put forward what is in your favour (f). Information is taken about your personal and economic situation (g), technical means are used to record the questioning (h), and the whole is reduced to a written record that states where and when it took place, who was present, whether each safeguard was observed and, if not, why, and that the record was read by you and your lawyer and signed, or the reason for a refusal to sign (i).

Two practical consequences follow. First, silence is a right, not a tactic the court may hold against you; the court must inform you of it before you are questioned, and a statement taken without that information is defective. Second, the questioning is not an interrogation by the prosecutor; it is the defendant's own account, given after the charge and the evidence have been explained, and it is the first place in the file where your version appears in your own words. The decision whether to speak, to speak only on certain points, or to remain silent until the evidence has been heard is made with your lawyer before the date, not in the room.

Where the offence carries a minimum sentence of more than five years, a lawyer is appointed for a defendant who has none, whether or not he asks (CMK 150/2-3); in every other case the appointment follows your request.

A defendant who does not know enough Turkish to express himself is provided with an interpreter appointed by the court, through whom the essential points of the charge and the defence at the hearing are translated (CMK 202/1). The interpreter is chosen from the annual lists drawn up by the provincial judicial justice commissions, and the court may use another province's list (202/5). The costs of the court-appointed interpreter are not counted as costs of the proceedings and are borne by the State treasury (CMK 324/5).

CMK 202/4 adds a second, distinct right. After the indictment has been explained, and again after the prosecutor's final opinion on the merits, the defendant may make his oral defence in another language in which he says he can express himself better, even if he speaks Turkish; in that case the translation is provided by an interpreter from the official list whom the defendant chooses, and the cost of that interpreter is not borne by the State treasury. The provision states that this facility may not be abused to prolong the proceedings. For a foreign defendant the two rights are used together: the court-appointed interpreter for the hearing generally, and, where the defence turns on nuance, an interpreter of your own choosing for the defence speech. Both should be arranged before the first hearing, not requested on the day; the note on bringing your own interpreter explains how.

The starting rule is that no hearing is held in the absence of the defendant, save for the exceptions the Code allows, and that a defendant who does not attend without a valid reason is ordered to be brought by force (CMK 193/1). A first hearing missed without an excuse therefore does not simply happen without you; it produces a compulsion order executed by the police, and for a foreign defendant it can also produce the measures that keep him in the country once found. There is one exception in the defendant's favour: where, on the evidence collected, the court concludes that it should give a decision other than a conviction, a finding of no punishment or a security measure, it may end the case in the defendant's absence even though he was never questioned (CMK 193/2); an acquittal, in other words, does not require your presence.

A defendant who attends and then leaves, or who does not appear at the session following an adjournment, may have the case concluded in his absence if he has already been questioned and the court no longer considers his presence necessary (CMK 194). Where the offence carries only a judicial fine, or confiscation, alone or together, the hearing may be held without the defendant, and the summons must say so (CMK 195).

The sequence in the table below sets these rules against the steps of the first hearing.

The Code does not assume that every defendant can travel to every hearing, and CMK 196 provides four routes that a foreign defendant uses in practice. First, exemption: once the defendant has been questioned by the court, the court may, on his request or on his lawyer's where the lawyer has been authorised for this, exempt him from attending further hearings (196/1). The questioning is the price of the exemption, which is why the first hearing is often the only one a foreign defendant attends in person.

Second, letters rogatory: except for offences whose minimum sentence is five years or more, the defendant may be questioned by another court on the trial court's request; the date is notified to the prosecutor, the defendant and the lawyer, neither of whom is obliged to attend, and before the questioning the defendant is asked whether he prefers to give his statement before the trial court itself (196/2). The record is read at the hearing (196/3). Third, video link: where the judge or court considers it necessary, a defendant within Türkiye may be questioned, or may take part in hearings, by simultaneous audio-visual communication (196/4). Fourth, and specific to defendants abroad, 196/6 allows the court, where it will be difficult for a defendant outside Türkiye to attend on the date fixed, to open the hearing earlier than that date for his questioning, or to have him questioned by letters rogatory.

The sequence that keeps a foreign defendant's position intact is therefore short. On receiving the summons, check the date against the one-week rule and instruct a lawyer with a power of attorney that expressly authorises requests under CMK 196. Decide, with the lawyer, whether to attend the first hearing in person and be questioned, then seek exemption, or whether to ask under 196/6 for an earlier date or questioning by letters rogatory. File the five-day application for any defence witnesses and evidence under CMK 177. Arrange the interpreter, and the own-choice interpreter if the defence speech will be given in your language. What must not happen is silence: an unanswered summons becomes a compulsion order, and a compulsion order becomes a warrant.