Offered House Arrest Instead of Remand in Türkiye: two days at home count as one day of sentence

Under CMK 109/1, where the grounds for detention set out in CMK 100 are present, a judge may place a suspect under judicial control — adlî kontrol — instead of ordering detention. Judicial control is not one thing. It is a list of obligations in CMK 109/3, and the judge selects one or more of them. What people call house arrest is item (j) on that list: konutunu terk etmemek, not leaving your residence. It was added on 2 July 2012 by Law no. 6352, alongside (k), not leaving a designated settlement area, and (l), not going to designated places.

Where the obligation sits in the Code decides most of what follows. It is a measure taken during proceedings, not a punishment, so it can be ordered before anyone has been convicted of anything. In the investigation stage it is imposed by the sulh ceza judge on the prosecutor's application under CMK 110; once the case is at trial, the court decides. And it is rarely ordered on its own where the suspect is a foreign national, because the first obligation on the same list — (a), not leaving the country — costs the court nothing to add to it.

Compliance is supervised rather than assumed. The probation directorate monitors the dwelling named in the order, in most files with an electronic tag. The order fixes that specific address; it does not follow you to another flat because you moved.

Time on remand is not lost. TCK 63 provides that all periods spent before the judgment becomes final, in circumstances producing a restriction of personal liberty, are deducted from the prison sentence imposed. One day in a remand prison is one day off the sentence.

Judicial control is the reverse by default. CMK 109/6 states that time spent under judicial control may not be treated as a restriction of personal liberty and deducted from the sentence. The paragraph then carves out two obligations from that rule — (e), the treatment and examination measure, and (j), house arrest — and, by a sentence added on 8 July 2021 by Law no. 7331, fixes the rate for house arrest in terms: every two days spent under the obligation not to leave the residence are taken into account as one day in the deduction.

Six months at home is therefore three months off a prison sentence, where six months on remand would have been six. The gap matters only if a prison sentence is imposed and executed. If the file ends in an acquittal, or in a sentence that is never served, the arithmetic never runs.

The choice is usually put to families as freedom against custody. That is not the comparison that decides it. Three quantities do.

• How long the file realistically has left to run. This is the number both options are multiplied by, and it is the first thing to establish.
• Whether a prison sentence is a realistic outcome, and whether it would be executed. If the likely end point is a suspended sentence or a deferred verdict, the deduction is worth nothing to you and the comparison collapses into the conditions themselves. Those routes are set out under suspended sentences and HAGB.
• How long each measure may lawfully last. They are not the same. CMK 110/A caps judicial control at two years for matters outside the jurisdiction of the ağır ceza court, extendable by one further year in compulsory cases with reasons stated, and at three years for matters within it, with the extension not exceeding a further three years — four for terrorism offences and the chapters of TCK the article lists. For children these periods are applied at one half.

Worked through on a file with fourteen months of trial left: fourteen months on remand would come off the sentence in full; fourteen months at home come off as seven. That is the price of the offer, and it is a real price. In a short-sentence file it can produce the odd result that the person who accepted house arrest is still being tried when the person who stayed inside would already have finished serving. Ask what sentence is actually expected before you answer, not afterwards.

Two conditions decide whether the offer is available to a foreign national at all, and neither is about the offence.

The first is an address. The order names a dwelling that can be supervised, and the court has to see that you have one: a residence permit, a registered address, a lease in your name. A hotel room, a sublet you are not registered at, or a friend's flat is where these applications fail. It is worth fixing before the hearing rather than during it.

The second is that (j) almost never travels alone. It comes with (a), the prohibition on leaving the country, and that obligation outlasts the house arrest in its effect on your life; lifting it is a separate application, dealt with under the travel ban during a criminal case. For relatives outside Türkiye it means the person can neither come to them nor be seen on prison visiting rules — the position described in what family can do from abroad.

Two provisions govern what happens next. CMK 112/1 allows the competent judicial authority to order detention immediately where a suspect or accused deliberately fails to comply, whatever length of prison sentence the case might carry. CMK 112/2 adds that where the judicial control had been ordered because the maximum remand period expired, the detention following a breach may not exceed nine months in ağır ceza matters and two months in others. CMK 111 runs the other way: on the application of the suspect or accused, and after the prosecutor's view is taken, the judge or court may decide within five days under CMK 110/2. Decisions on judicial control are open to objection (itiraz) under CMK 111/2, not to istinaf appeal. Under CMK 110 the judge may also add obligations, lift or vary them, or grant a temporary exemption. The order made in month one is not the order you must live with in month eight.

Whether house arrest is on the table at all is settled earlier, by the CMK 100 analysis of strong suspicion, grounds and proportionality, and by what the defence proposes in its place — set out on the page on remand, judicial control and release.