The Money Left an Account in Europe and the file opened in Türkiye

Turkish criminal law does not ask where the complainant lives or where the account was held. TCK 8/1 provides that Turkish law applies to offences committed in Türkiye, and that an offence counts as committed here where the act is carried out wholly or partly in Türkiye, or where the result occurs in Türkiye. Either limb is enough on its own.

In a fraud file the first limb is the one that usually bites, because the deceiving conduct is an act with a location. Any of the following puts part of it in Türkiye:

• The calls, messages or emails carrying the false picture were sent from a desk, a flat or a phone here.
• The website, the trading dashboard or the messaging account was operated from here.
• A Turkish bank, exchange or payment account received part of the money, or moved it on.
• Documents, invoices or identity papers used in the deception were produced here.

One of those is sufficient, and it does not matter whether the complainant is in Munich, Rotterdam or Manchester, or whether they know a Turkish court is involved at all. This is the ordinary shape of the files described in the note on online investment fraud in Türkiye.

A second provision catches people badly. TCK 9 states that a person against whom a judgment has already been given in a foreign country, for an offence committed in Türkiye, is tried again in Türkiye. A discontinuance in Germany, an acquittal in the Netherlands or a civil claim settled in the complainant's own country is material the defence can use on the facts, on identity and on what role another court found you had. On the face of the code it is not a bar to the Turkish case.

The harder case is the one where you were outside Türkiye throughout: a foreign national, acting abroad, against a complainant abroad. TCK 8 gives the prosecutor nothing there, and jurisdiction has to be built out of TCK 12, which is narrower than it is usually assumed to be.

Read the third row against a European fraud complaint. Simple fraud under TCK 157 starts at one year, below the three-year threshold, so a foreign-victim file resting purely on conduct abroad does not reach TCK 12/3 unless the charge is a qualified one. The paragraph is also drafted as an alternative to surrender rather than an addition to it: it opens where extradition is unavailable or has been refused. The relationship between the two routes is set out in the note on extradition from Türkiye.

Where a case does proceed on conduct abroad, TCK 19/1 caps it. The sentence under Turkish law cannot exceed the upper limit provided by the law of the country where the offence was committed. TCK 19/2 removes that ceiling where the offence was against Türkiye's security or to its detriment, or against a Turkish citizen or a private-law legal person established under Turkish law — which means the ceiling survives in precisely the foreign-victim case.

Jurisdiction and venue are separate questions, and the second one decides where you will be travelling to, which prosecutor holds the file and which bar your lawyer answers to.

• CMK 12/1 — the court of the place where the offence was committed.
• CMK 12/6, added in July 2021, adds the courts of the victim's place of residence where information systems, banks or credit institutions, or bank or credit cards, were used as a vehicle. Where the victim lives abroad this limb produces no Turkish court, so the file stays where the conduct was.
• CMK 13 — where the place of the offence is not established, venue falls to the court of the place you were apprehended; if you were not apprehended, your place of residence; if you have no residence in Türkiye, your last address here; failing all of those, the place of the first procedural step.
• CMK 14 — for offences committed abroad that must be prosecuted here, venue is fixed by the first two paragraphs of Article 13. The Court of Cassation may assign a court nearer the place of the offence on the application of the prosecutor, the suspect or the accused. Where you were never apprehended, settled or addressed in Türkiye, venue is determined by the Court of Cassation on the Minister of Justice's request and the application of the Chief Public Prosecutor of the Court of Cassation — two documents to look for in the file, not one.

Jurisdiction is the threshold question, not the whole answer. Four things move once a fraud file crosses a border.

The paragraph, and the floor. Under TCK 157 simple fraud carries one to five years and a judicial fine of up to five thousand days. Where the offence is committed by using information systems, banks or credit institutions as a vehicle — TCK 158/1-f — the range becomes three to ten years, and the closing sentence of 158/1 sets a floor: the prison term cannot begin below four years, and the fine cannot be less than twice the benefit obtained. Nearly every cross-border file is charged under that paragraph, because the transfer itself passed through a bank or an app. TCK 158/3 then adds a half to the sentence where three or more persons acted together, and doubles it where the offence was committed within the activity of an organisation formed to commit crime.

Mediation is often gone before you hear of it. CMK 253/1-b lists fraud at item 8, and the item reads madde 157 — the simple form only. Qualified fraud under TCK 158 is outside it. CMK 253/6 closes the door from the other side: where the victim cannot be reached, whether because they are not at the address recorded in the investigation file or because they are abroad, the investigation is concluded without recourse to mediation at all.

Repaying a complainant in another country takes time you may not have. TCK 168/1 allows a reduction of up to two thirds where the loss is made good in full before the prosecution phase opens, and 168/2 up to one half after that and before judgment. An international transfer, an identified beneficiary and a complainant willing to confirm receipt are three things that rarely align inside the first window.

Time already spent in custody abroad counts. TCK 16 provides that time spent in a foreign country in police custody, under observation, on remand or serving a sentence for the same offence is deducted from the sentence imposed in Türkiye — wherever the offence was committed.

Which of these apply depends on the paragraph the prosecutor has selected and on where each act in the chain took place. Those are the questions worked through in the main note on fraud charges in Türkiye, and they are worth settling before the first statement rather than after it.