Should you tell the Turkish prosecutor who paid you in a migrant smuggling file?

In a narcotics file there is a provision to point to. TCK 192/3 reduces the sentence by from one quarter to one half where a person, after the offence has been learned of, helps to bring it to light and to apprehend the other participants. That is a trade written into the code.

TCK 79 contains no equivalent. There is no effective remorse provision for migrant smuggling. Nothing in the article, and nothing standing next to it, converts information about an organiser into a reduced sentence.

What is left is TCK 62 — discretionary mitigation, which reduces a sentence by up to one sixth. Applied to the five-year floor of TCK 79/1, one sixth produces four years and two months. That is the whole of the arithmetic, applied by the trial court at the end, on its own view of the case, whatever was said to you at the beginning.

The routes that would matter more are closed by the range itself. Deferral of the verdict under CMK 231/5 and suspension under TCK 51 both require a sentence of two years or less; criminal mediation runs only for the offences listed in CMK 253, which do not include TCK 79.

An account detailed enough to be worth something is an account of who arranged what, who paid whom, and who stood above whom. That is a description of an organisation, going into a file in which you are a defendant.

TCK 79/3 increases the sentence by up to half where the offence is committed by more than one person together, and by half up to a full further term where it is committed within the activity of an organisation. TCK 220/1 punishes founding or directing such an organisation with five to ten years and states that one exists only where there are at least three members; 220/2 punishes membership with two to five years; 220/4 imposes a sentence for the offence itself as well.

Execution moves with the same label. Under Article 107/2 of Law no. 5275 conditional release comes after half of a fixed-term sentence; Article 107/4 sets it at two thirds where the offence was committed within the activity of an organisation formed to commit crime.

The 79/2 increases for danger to life or degrading treatment, and the fine of one thousand to ten thousand days, sit on top of every line. If your own account establishes three people and a hierarchy, you have moved yourself down the table.

Where a file does turn that way, effective remorse on the organisation charge is a separate provision: TCK 221/4 removes the penalty where a person surrenders voluntarily and gives information about the structure, and reduces it by from one third to three quarters where the information comes after arrest, once only under 221/6. It works on the organisation offence, not on the sentence under TCK 79.

People give names on the assumption that something will then be done to keep their family safe. Read the statute first. Witness protection is governed by Law no. 5726, and Article 2(a) defines a witness as a person heard as a witness in criminal proceedings, together with victims heard as witnesses and the listed relatives. A suspect answering questions about his own offence is not being heard as a witness.

Article 3 then sets thresholds: aggravated life imprisonment, life imprisonment, or a lower limit of ten years or more; or a lower limit of two years or more where the offence is committed within an organisation's activity. TCK 79/1 begins at five years, so it does not reach the first. It reaches the second only where the file is an organisation file — the same label that raises the sentence and moves conditional release to two thirds.

The measures in Article 5 run from confidential identity and address through physical protection to relocation inside Türkiye; under 5/1(ı) relocation to another country is possible only in accordance with international agreements and the principle of reciprocity. If the family you are worried about lives where the organiser operates, that is the paragraph governing them. CMK 58/2 and 58/3 allow a witness's identity to be kept confidential and the witness to be heard without those entitled to be present, but 58/5 confines both to offences committed within an organisation's activity.

Counsel. CMK 150/3 requires a defence lawyer to be appointed without any request from you where the offence carries a lower limit of more than five years. TCK 79/1 begins at exactly five years, which is not more than five. On that charge alone, do not assume anyone will appoint one: say you want a lawyer, and repeat it, before the questions about other people begin.

Language. CMK 202/3 places the appointment of an interpreter at the investigation stage in the hands of the judge or the public prosecutor, on the threshold of whether you know Turkish well enough to express what you mean. A name you say in your own language becomes a sentence in Turkish, in a record you cannot read and are asked to sign. What that record does to you afterwards is set out under interpreters and language.

What is already there. Your account is worth something to a prosecutor only measured against what has been collected already — interception and recording under CMK 135/1, and the record of who communicated with whom and when under CMK 135/6. An account that contradicts intercept material already in the file damages you; one that merely repeats it adds nothing.

Silence costs nothing in law. CMK 147/1-e makes saying nothing about the allegation a legal right, and exercising it is not evidence against you. The decision to speak is worth making once, after counsel has read the file — the element the charge turns on, the tiers and the remand ceilings are set out under migrant smuggling charges under TCK 79.