Leaving the scene of an accident in Türkiye: what the 2026 amendment added.

KTK 81 does not use the phrase hit and run. It sets out duties that bind everyone involved in a traffic accident, and the offence is the failure to perform them. Nothing in the article turns on fault. You can be the driver who was hit and still commit it.

The duties

• Stop. If you are moving, stop immediately in a way that does not create a further hazard, and take the measures needed for traffic safety at the site (KTK 81/1-a).
• Do not alter the scene. Where there is a death, an injury or material damage, and the accident is not itself affecting traffic or the safety of life and property, leave the site as it is — including the traces and evidence that will be used to establish responsibility (KTK 81/1-b).
• Identify yourself. On request from anyone involved, state and show your identity, address, driving licence and registration document, and the date and number of your insurance policy (KTK 81/1-c).
• Report it, and stay. Notify the competent officers, and do not leave the scene until they arrive or without their permission (KTK 81/1-d).
• If the owner is absent. A driver who damages a vehicle, goods or a load while the owner is not there must find the owner or the persons concerned; failing that, must record the situation, leave written information on the damaged property, and inform the police as soon as possible (KTK 81/1-e).

The one lawful way to leave

Where the accident caused material damage only, everyone involved may leave without waiting for an officer — provided they all consider an officer unnecessary and record the position between them in writing (KTK 81/2). That written record is the whole of the exemption. A spoken understanding at the roadside is not it, and neither is a photograph of a number plate.

There is no threshold anywhere in the article. KTK 81 sets no minimum damage, no minimum speed and no minimum injury below which the duties fall away.

The third paragraph of KTK 81 was replaced on 12 February 2026 by article 27 of Law no. 7574. Before that date, leaving a scene was answered with money. It is now answered with money in some cases and with imprisonment in others, and the line between them is whether a person was hurt.

Where there is damage only

Outside the agreement case in KTK 81/2, a driver who leaves the scene of an accident involving material damage, injury or death without the police's permission and outside a necessity — or who fails to comply with the duty to preserve the scene in KTK 81/1-b — is fined 46,000 lira. That is an administrative fine, imposed without a trial.

Where there is injury or death

In accidents involving injury or death, a driver who leaves the scene without the police's permission and outside a necessity is sentenced to one to three years' imprisonment. This is a criminal penalty imposed by a court. It sits on top of the administrative fine, and it is separate from whatever charge arises out of the accident itself.

The licence

For those same drivers — the ones inside the prison sentence — the driving licence is withdrawn for two years. The withdrawal is made by the officials named in KTK 6, not by the court. The paragraph does not say at what stage of the criminal file it is applied, and the provision is new — it took effect on 12 February 2026. And the licence is not handed back at the end of the two years unless every administrative fine imposed under the Highway Traffic Code has been collected in full (KTK 81/3).

Other breaches of the article — not identifying yourself, not leaving written information on a parked car you damaged — carry a separate administrative fine under the last paragraph of KTK 81. Fine amounts across the Code are increased every year at the revaluation rate published under the Tax Procedure Law (KTK Ek Madde 3), so the sum in force when you are fined can be higher than the figure printed in the statute.

The 2026 offence punishes the departure. It says nothing about the accident. In an injury or fatal case you are normally answering two things at once, decided on different evidence and often at different speeds.

The accident itself

• Negligent injury — TCK 89. Four months to two years' imprisonment, or a judicial fine. The sentence is increased by half where the injury caused, among other outcomes, a bone fracture, the permanent weakening of a sense or organ, a permanent mark on the face, or a life-threatening condition (TCK 89/2), and doubled for the graver outcomes in TCK 89/3. Where one act injures more than one person, the range becomes nine months to five years (TCK 89/4).
• Negligent killing — TCK 85. Two to six years' imprisonment; two to fifteen years where more than one person died, or where a death and an injury occurred together (TCK 85/2).
• Failure to help or to report — TCK 98. Up to one year's imprisonment or a judicial fine for not helping, so far as circumstances allow, a person who cannot look after themselves through age, illness or injury, or for not reporting the situation to the authorities immediately. One to three years where that person dies as a result (TCK 98/2).

The test that was never taken

Where a driver is involved in an accident causing injury or death, or in a material-damage accident that the police attended, examination for alcohol and for narcotic or stimulant substances is compulsory, not a matter of discretion (KTK 48/3). Leaving means the measurement is not taken at the moment it would have meant something. A driver who later refuses measurement or will not permit it faces a 150,000 lira fine and a five-year licence withdrawal (KTK 48/9). Driving a private car over 0.50 promille carries 25,000 lira and a six-month withdrawal in its own right, with a 0.21 threshold for vehicles other than private cars (KTK 48/5).

Almost every defence to KTK 81 is a defence about facts that existed for a few minutes and were never recorded. Establishing them late is harder than establishing them early, which is why the first useful work is preservation rather than argument.

The four questions the file has to answer

• Was there an accident you were part of? The duties bind those involved in a traffic accident. Where the contact itself is disputed — a mirror, a bumper at parking speed — the paint transfer, the damage geometry and the reconstruction report carry the point, not either driver's recollection.
• Was anyone injured? This decides everything. Without injury or death, KTK 81/3 produces an administrative fine. With it, the same conduct carries one to three years. The forensic report on the degree of injury is not a formality in this file; it is the boundary between a fine and a prison sentence.
• Was there permission, or a necessity? The provision punishes leaving without the police's permission and outside a necessity. Taking an injured passenger to hospital, or moving away from a scene where you were being threatened, is a factual claim that has to be supported — admission times, call records, the location data your own phone already holds.
• When did you come back, and what did you do? A driver who returns within the hour and reports the accident stands in a different evidential position from one traced three days later, even where the statutory text does not distinguish between them.

Ask for the evidence in the room

Footage from private premises is usually overwritten within days, and nobody requests it unless someone asks. CMK 147/1-f requires that a suspect be reminded they may ask for concrete evidence to be collected in order to dispel the suspicion, and be given the opportunity to remove the grounds of suspicion and put forward what is in their favour. A request made at the statement and written into the record is worth considerably more than an application filed after the recording is gone.

What this page cannot tell you

Whether your departure amounted to a necessity within the meaning of KTK 81/3 cannot be answered from a description of what happened. It is answered from the file — the officers' record, the timings, the medical documents, what you said at your first statement and what was written down as your having said it. Anyone who gives you an outcome before reading those documents is guessing.

Language

Where a defendant or a victim cannot express themselves adequately in Turkish, the essential points of the accusation and the defence are interpreted by an interpreter appointed by the court (CMK 202/1); the same applies to a suspect, victim or witness heard during the investigation, where the interpreter is appointed by the judge or the prosecutor (CMK 202/3).

In a leaving-the-scene case the interpretation of one sentence can decide the file — whether you said you did not feel the impact, or that you did not think it was serious. Those are not the same admission. If a question is not clear to you, say so, and ask for that to be recorded.

Your consulate

If you are apprehended or taken into custody, the consulate of your state is notified unless you object in writing (CMK 95/2). A consulate does not defend you and will not pay for a lawyer. It confirms where you are, which is what allows a family abroad to instruct anyone at all.

Leaving Türkiye

For most foreign drivers the practical consequence is not custody. It is a ban on leaving the country, imposed as a judicial control measure in place of remand (CMK 109/3-a). The same provision allows a prohibition on driving any vehicle and the surrender of the driving licence against a receipt (CMK 109/3-d). Judicial control can run for months while the reports are prepared, and it is not deducted from any sentence later imposed (CMK 109/6).

If you have already left Türkiye, the file does not close behind you. Save where the law provides otherwise, no hearing is held in the absence of the defendant, and a defendant who does not appear without a valid reason may be ordered to be brought by force (CMK 193/1). A case can be finished in absence only where the outcome would be something other than a conviction (CMK 193/2). In practice the file waits, and it is still waiting when you next present a passport at a Turkish border.

Two numbers inside the sentence

The range is one to three years, and two thresholds sit inside it. A sentence of two years or less may be suspended under TCK 51/1, where you have not previously been sentenced to more than three months' imprisonment for an intentional offence and the court is satisfied you will not offend again; suspension can be made conditional on the loss being fully made good (TCK 51/2). A sentence of two years or less may also attract a deferral of the pronouncement of judgment — hükmün açıklanmasının geri bırakılması — under CMK 231/5, which requires no previous conviction for an intentional offence and full compensation of the loss suffered by the victim or the public (CMK 231/6), followed by a five-year supervision period (CMK 231/8). Above two years, neither route exists. That is why the figure the court arrives at, and not only the verdict, is what a defence is built around.

Residence and removal

A foreign national sentenced to imprisonment is reported to the Ministry of the Interior for assessment of removal once supervised execution or conditional release is ordered, and in any event once the sentence has been completed (TCK 59). Separately, a deportation decision is taken in respect of foreigners assessed as falling within TCK 59, and in respect of those considered a threat to public order, public security or public health (YUKK 54/1-a and 54/1-d). A conviction and a removal decision are two different decisions by two different authorities; the second does not follow automatically from the first, and it is contested separately.