An interpreter in a Turkish criminal case, and what the right actually covers.

The Code does not ask whether you speak some Turkish. CMK 202 sets one threshold: whether you know Turkish well enough to express what you mean — meramını anlatabilecek ölçüde. Below that threshold an interpreter is appointed. It is not a favour granted on request, and it is not withheld because you managed a few sentences at the airport.

What the article says

CMK 202/1: where a defendant or a victim does not know Turkish to that degree, the essential points of the prosecution case and of the defence at the hearing are translated through an interpreter appointed by the court.

CMK 202/2 deals with a disabled defendant or victim: the essential points are explained in a form they can understand.

CMK 202/3 extends both paragraphs to the investigation stage — to a suspect, a victim or a witness who is heard before trial. At that stage the interpreter is appointed by the judge or by the public prosecutor.

Why the third paragraph is the one that matters to you

Most foreign nationals meet this system in a police station, not a courtroom. CMK 90/4 requires the police to inform an apprehended person of their legal rights immediately, and Article 19 of the Constitution requires that the grounds of arrest and the allegations be notified. Neither provision says in what language. CMK 202/3 is the provision that closes that gap — and it names the judge or the prosecutor as the appointing authority, not the police. Where somebody was simply produced to translate your ifade, that is a fact worth having written into the record at the time.

Cost is the first question families abroad ask, and here the answer is unusually clean.

CMK 324/1 defines yargılama giderleri — court fees, scale advocacy fees, and every expense made from the Treasury for the conduct of the investigation and prosecution. CMK 324/5 then takes interpreters out of that category: the cost of an interpreter assigned for a suspect, defendant, victim or witness who does not know Turkish, or who is disabled, is not a trial expense and is met by the State Treasury. Article 12 of the implementing Regulation repeats it.

That rule does not depend on the outcome. A convicted defendant is not billed afterwards for the interpreter who sat beside him.

The separate right that is not free

CMK 202/4 was added in 2013. It gives a defendant a different and narrower thing: the right to make his oral defence in another language he states he can express himself better in. It is available at two moments only — after the indictment has been explained, and after the prosecutor has delivered the opinion on the merits (esas hakkında mütalaa). The interpreter is chosen by the defendant from the commission's list, and the Code says in terms that these costs are not met by the Treasury. Under Article 12/2 of the Regulation the court fixes the fee and the period within which it must be paid into court. CMK 202/4 also states that the facility may not be abused to draw the proceedings out.

CMK 202/5 requires that interpreters be selected from a list drawn up each year by the il adlî yargı adalet komisyonu — the judicial commission of the province. Judges and prosecutors are not confined to their own province: the same paragraph lets them select from lists made in other provinces. The lists are remade every year and circulated by 31 December for the year that follows.

What puts a person on the list

Article 6 of the Regulation sets the conditions. The applicant must be a Turkish citizen or hold a Mavi Kart under Article 28 of Law no. 5901; have legal capacity; be at least a primary school graduate; have completed eighteen years of age; have no conviction — and no deferred verdict — for offences against the State or against the administration of justice, offences under the Anti-Terror Law no. 3713, or embezzlement, extortion in office, bribery, theft, fraud, forgery, breach of trust, fraudulent bankruptcy, smuggling and rigging of public tenders, even if pardoned or suspended; not have been expelled from a profession or from public service on disciplinary grounds; live or work professionally in the province; and not be registered on another commission's list.

The oath, and six duties

Under Article 10 of the Regulation, a person admitted to the list for the first time takes the oath set out in CMK 64/5 — the same oath as a court-appointed bilirkişi, sworn once before the commission and not repeated at each assignment. The same article binds interpreters to six principles: independence, impartiality, honesty and telling the truth, performing the task personally, confidentiality, and compliance with the fundamental principles of the trial.

The fourth of those is the one that breaks in practice. An interpreter who sends someone else, or who lets a bystander take over a passage, is outside the Regulation.

Removal from the list

Article 14 sets out when a name is struck off: losing the conditions of admission, declining to interpret without lawful ground, asking to be removed, conduct incompatible with those ethical principles, or conviction or deferred verdict for the listed offences. Where a prosecution is opened for one of those offences the name is suspended until the case ends. That is a real route, and it runs to the commission — not to the trial court hearing your case.

This is where expectation and the Code separate, and it is worth being blunt about it.

CMK 202/1 requires the essential points — esaslı noktalar — of the prosecution and the defence at the hearing to be translated. Not every word spoken in the room. Not the file. Not the authorities cited. In a long hearing with several defendants, that difference is not small.

What is never translated in writing

No provision requires a written translation of the indictment. CMK 176/1 provides that the iddianame is served on the defendant together with the summons — in Turkish. At the opening of the trial, CMK 191/3-b requires that the acts and evidence on which the accusation rests, and its legal characterisation, be explained, and CMK 191/3-c requires that the right to silence and the other CMK 147 rights be notified. That spoken explanation is what your interpreter renders. The document stays in Turkish.

The same is true of the hearing record, the judgment, expert reports and the file itself. A defendant who wants to read his own case in a language he understands is relying on his lawyer to have it translated, not on the court.

A bad interpretation is not argued in the abstract. It is argued from the record — and the record has to be made while the interpretation is happening.

The record must name the interpreter

CMK 221 lists what the duruşma tutanağı has to contain. Among the items: the name and surname of the interpreter; the elements reflecting the course and the outcome of the hearing and showing that all the fundamental rules of procedure were observed; the defendant's statements; requests, and the reasons where a request is refused. A hearing that ran through an interpreter but names none in the tutanak is a gap on the face of the file.

The equivalent at the statement stage is CMK 147/1-i-3: the record must state whether the required steps were carried out and, if they were not, why not.

Saying you did not understand — at the time

The most useful sentence in an interpreted hearing is that a question was not understood, minuted as such. Because CMK 221 requires requests and the reasons for refusing them to be recorded, a request that a question be put again, or that an interpretation be corrected, goes into the tutanak. A year later, an objection that is in the record is a fact. An objection that is not is a claim.

The statement you signed

CMK 148/1 requires that a suspect's statement rest on his free will and prohibits bodily or mental interference of a kind that prevents this, deception included. CMK 148/3: statements obtained by prohibited methods cannot be evaluated as evidence even if given with consent. CMK 148/4 is the one that most often decides these files: a statement taken by the police without counsel present cannot be made the basis of the judgment unless the suspect or defendant confirms it before a judge or a court.

For a foreign national who signed a Turkish document he could not read, at a station where no lawyer was present, CMK 148/4 is frequently the shortest road. It also means one thing in practice: do not confirm before the judge what you did not say to the police.

Further up the system

CMK 217/1 allows a judge to base a decision only on evidence brought to the hearing and discussed in his presence; CMK 217/2 requires that evidence be lawfully obtained. CMK 288 provides that an appeal on points of law lies where a rule of law was not applied or was applied wrongly. CMK 289 lists violations treated as absolute even if the petition does not raise them — including restriction of the right of defence by a decision of the court on matters important for the judgment (289/1-h) and a judgment resting on evidence obtained by unlawful methods (289/1-i). What each of those needs is the same thing: something in the file from the day it happened. Where the remedies run and by when is set out on the appeals page.

Some of what follows is not in any article, and it is the part that costs people most.

Your consulate

CMK 95/2: where the person apprehended or held in custody is a foreign national, unless he objects in writing, the situation is notified to the consulate of the State of which he is a national. Note which way the default runs. Notification happens unless you stop it, and stopping it takes a written objection. Both choices are legitimate and both should be made deliberately, not by accident.

Languages that are not on the list

If no interpreter for your language sits on the province's list, CMK 202/5 permits the court to take one from another province's list. Where that fails, files are sometimes relayed through a third language — your language into English or Russian, then into Turkish. Every relay is a place where meaning is lost and nobody in the room can check it. Say so, and ask that the relay itself be recorded in the tutanak.

The bilingual friend

A relative, a co-defendant, an employer's driver or a cellmate who speaks both languages is not an interpreter within the meaning of CMK 202. The Regulation requires independence, impartiality and personal performance of the task. Where such a person did the translating at a police station, that is not a small procedural detail — it is the reason the resulting record should be challenged rather than confirmed.

What follows the criminal case

Language problems rarely stay inside the criminal file. A travel ban imposed as a judicial control measure, and the administrative steps that can follow a conviction, are separate processes with their own deadlines — set out on the deportation page. A misunderstood answer in an ifade can shape both.

What this page cannot tell you

It cannot tell you whether a translation problem will change the outcome of your case. Sometimes it does; often it does not. A court reading a tutanak that names an interpreter, records no objection and carries your signature will begin from the position that you understood what was happening. Almost all of the value of the interpreter right lies in what was done at the time — the objection raised, the question put again, the refusal to sign recorded with its reasons. Reconstructing it afterwards is possible, and it is a great deal harder. Anyone who tells you that a poor interpreter is by itself a route to acquittal is selling something.