Three dates decide when he comes out, and only one of them is the end of the sentence.

Turkish execution law works with three dates. Keeping them apart is most of the conversation.

• Hakederek tahliye — the day the sentence ends. Nothing is served after it.
• Koşullu salıverilme — conditional release, article 107 of Law no. 5275. The remainder of the sentence is not cancelled. It runs outside prison as a supervision period.
• Denetimli serbestlik — article 105/A. The last stretch before the conditional release date, served outside prison under a probation directorate.

Article 107/2 sets the periods. Aggravated life imprisonment: thirty years inside. Life imprisonment: twenty-four years. All other determinate prison sentences: half the sentence — unless the offence appears on one of the lists in the next section, which is where the years are won and lost.

Where there is more than one sentence, article 107/3 caps the time inside: thirty-six years for more than one aggravated life sentence, or for an aggravated life sentence together with a life sentence; thirty years for more than one life sentence; and twenty-eight years where there is more than one determinate sentence.

Article 107/1 states the condition that runs through everything else on this page: the period inside must be served iyi hâlli — with good conduct, as the prison assesses it.

After conditional release there is a supervision period. Under article 107/6 it is as long as the period that had to be served inside, and for determinate sentences it cannot run past the hakederek tahliye date. A new intentional offence punishable by imprisonment during that period, or persistent breach of the obligations after the infaz hâkimi has given a warning, revokes the release (article 107/12). Where it is revoked for a new offence, twice the sentence imposed for that offence is served in full, running from the date of the new offence and not beyond hakederek tahliye; and no second conditional release is granted on that judgment (article 107/13). If the supervision period passes without incident, the sentence counts as executed.

Time spent deprived of liberty before the judgment became final is deducted from the sentence under TCK 63. That deduction is the starting point of the arithmetic, not a concession.

The half in article 107/2 is a default with a long list of exceptions, and a second list sits outside article 107 altogether, in article 108. Read the fractions against the offence and article number actually recorded in the judgment, not against the offence as it is described over the telephone.

The row that surprises people most is the fifth. A conviction under TCK 188 does not sit at one half. Article 108/9 puts it on the recidivist schedule and, since the 2020 amendment, applies a rate of three quarters to determinate sentences. On a fifteen-year sentence that is the difference between seven and a half years inside and eleven years and three months. Anyone quoting one half for a trafficking file is quoting the wrong provision.

The row above it does the same work for terrorism files. Article 17 of Law no. 3713 applies articles 107/4 and 108 of Law no. 5275 to offences within the scope of that Law, and since the amendment of 14 April 2020 it adds that the conditional release rate for determinate sentences is three quarters. Two absolute bars sit in the same article. Under art. 17/2, a person convicted of escape or of mutiny while in detention or serving a sentence, and a person who has received the disciplinary penalty of hücre hapsi three times, cannot benefit from conditional release at all — even where those disciplinary penalties have since been lifted. Under art. 17/3, nor can a person who commits a further offence within the scope of that Law after the judgment against them became final.

Article 107/4 also raises the caps in organisation cases: forty years for more than one aggravated life sentence, thirty-four for more than one life sentence, and thirty-two where there is more than one determinate sentence. And under article 107/16 there is no conditional release at all where an aggravated life sentence was imposed for an offence in the state-security, constitutional-order or national-defence chapters committed within the activity of an organisation.

Article 105/A allows the final part of a sentence to be executed outside prison, under a denetimli serbestlik müdürlüğü, up to the conditional release date. The conditions are cumulative:

• The prisoner is in an açık ceza infaz kurumu (open prison) or a children's education house.
• He is assessed as iyi hâlli.
• One year or less remains to the conditional release date.
• He asks for it. The article says talebi hâlinde. Nobody opens the file for him.
• Since the amendment of 4 June 2025, he must already have spent in prison at least one tenth of the period he is required to serve up to the conditional release date, and in no case fewer than five days. Under provisional article 11, that requirement does not apply to offences committed before the amendment came into force.

The prison prepares an evaluation report; the infaz hâkimi of the place where the execution is administered decides. Two categories have a longer runway under article 105/A/3: women with a child in the nought-to-six age group, at two years; and prisoners who cannot manage alone because of serious illness, disability or old age, at three years, on a report from the Adlî Tıp Kurumu or from a full hospital board approved by it. Prisoners whose unpaid judicial fine was converted into imprisonment are excluded (article 105/A/4).

The transitional windows

Two provisional articles widen the door for older offences, and both are tied to the date of the offence, not to the date of the conviction or of the application.

• Provisional article 6. For offences committed up to 30 March 2020, the "one year" in article 105/A/1 is read as three years. The exclusions are wide: intentional killing; intentional injury and injury aggravated by its result committed against an ascendant, a descendant, a spouse or a sibling, or against a person unable to defend themselves physically or mentally; aggravated injury by result under TCK 87/2-d; torture and eziyet; all offences against sexual inviolability; offences against private life; TCK 188; the state-security chapters and offences within the Anti-Terror Law.
• Provisional article 10/6. For offences committed on or before 31 July 2023, prisoners in closed prisons who have served one month (total sentence under ten years) or three months (ten years or more) and are within three years of open-prison eligibility may be moved to open prison; and those prisoners, together with those already in open prison for such offences, benefit from probation-based execution three years early, on request, provided they have spent at least three months in open prison. The exclusions here are narrower — certain aggravated killings, killings arising from building collapse in the earthquake, sexual offences under 102, 103 and 104/2–3, the state-security chapters, terrorism offences and offences committed within the activity of an organisation.

What it is, and what it is not

It is not release. Under article 105/A/5 the probation directorate imposes one or more obligations: unpaid work of public benefit, remaining in a specified residence or district under supervision, staying away from named places, attending programmes. A person convicted under TCK 191 is additionally placed in treatment and rehabilitation programmes. After leaving prison there are five days to report to the probation directorate named in the request (article 105/A/6). Failure to report, persistent breach, or asking to go back sends the file to the infaz hâkimi and the prisoner back to open prison. If two further days pass without reporting, or without surrendering after a return order, article 105/A/8 applies the escape provisions of TCK 292 and 293 — a fresh offence, on top of everything else.

Every date on this page runs through one assessment. Under article 89, the prison's idare ve gözlem kurulu reviews each prisoner at least once every six months: compliance with prison rules, good faith in exercising rights, participation in programmes, readiness to rejoin society, and the risk of reoffending. Article 89/2 lists what is weighed — education and training programmes, sport, culture and art activities, certificates, reading, relations with staff and other prisoners, remorse for the offence, compliance with work rules, and disciplinary penalties received.

For prisoners serving a total of ten years or more, and for those convicted of terrorism, organisation offences, offences committed within an organisation's activity, intentional killing, offences against sexual inviolability, or drug manufacture and trafficking, article 89/3 changes the composition of the board: the Cumhuriyet başsavcısı or a prosecutor he designates presides, and a member of the monitoring board plus one expert each from the Family and Health ministries sit on it. Those are the files where the decision is least routine.

Transfer to open prison is decided on the same assessment (article 14/3). For that same group of prisoners, the board's transfer decision only takes effect after the infaz hâkimi approves it (article 14/4). Once in open prison, article 14/5 sends a prisoner back to closed conditions for escape, for arrest in another matter, for any final disciplinary penalty other than kınama, or where he is found unable to meet open-prison or work conditions.

Almost none of this is advocacy in a courtroom. It is arithmetic, paperwork and deadlines, and it goes wrong in predictable places.

The aggregation decision

Under article 99, each sentence remains independent, but where a person has separate final judgments a toplama kararı must be requested from the infaz hâkimliği so that article 107 can be applied at all. Prison sentences converted from unpaid judicial fines are included once they reach the execution stage. This is the point at which the fractions attach: a one-half sentence and a three-quarter sentence do not merge into a single average, and the caps in articles 107/3 and 108/1 only operate on a correctly constituted total.

Disputes about the calculation

Article 98 divides them. A dispute about how much is left to serve, or whether the sentence has been executed in whole or in part, goes to the infaz hâkimliği. A dispute about how the judgment itself is to be read, or whether a later statute is more favourable under TCK 7, goes back to the court that passed the sentence. Neither application suspends execution by itself, although the court or the infaz hâkimliği may stay it.

The report, the decision and the two weeks

Under article 107/11 the prison administration prepares a reasoned report on conditional release and sends it to the infaz hâkimliği, which decides on the file — without a hearing. If the report is not accepted, reasons must be given. Where the sentence has been executed under article 105/A, the probation directorate prepares the report instead (article 105/A/9).

The objection period is short and it is easy to lose. Under article 6 of Law no. 4675, decisions of the infaz hâkimi may be challenged within two weeks of service, and the objection goes to the ağır ceza mahkemesi in whose district the infaz hâkimliği sits. The same rule applies where a decision required the infaz hâkimi's approval. Two weeks runs from service on the prisoner, in Turkish, inside the prison. If nobody outside knows the decision has been served, the period is often half gone before anyone reads it.

The parole date is not the date of the flight home. For a foreign national it is the date on which the file is handed to a different authority.

TCK 59 is explicit: where a foreign national sentenced to imprisonment has been granted execution under denetimli serbestlik or conditional release — and in any event once the sentence has been fully executed — his position is notified immediately to the Ministry of the Interior so that removal can be considered. Article 54/1-a of Law no. 6458 then provides that a deportation decision is taken in respect of those assessed as requiring removal under TCK 59. What follows release is therefore an administrative process with its own deadlines, its own file and its own detention power. It is set out on the deportation and entry bans page, and it is the reason a family should not book a ticket against the parole date.

Three further points that only arise for foreign prisoners.

• Consular access. Under article 84 of Law no. 5275, a visit request from the diplomatic mission or consulate of the prisoner's state is carried out without delay, in accordance with the applicable procedure. Where there is no representation, or the prisoner is a refugee or stateless, the same applies to the protecting state's mission or to a national or international body that has assumed that protective role. A consulate cannot argue the sentence calculation, but it can confirm where someone is being held and that he is alive.
• Language. The evaluation report, the infaz hâkimi's decision and the calculation itself are all in Turkish, and they are served on the prisoner inside. The two-week objection period in Law no. 4675 runs from that service, whether or not the document was understood on the day it arrived.
• Participation. Article 89/2 weighs programmes, courses, work and certificates. A prisoner who cannot follow instruction in Turkish participates in less, and a thin record of participation reads on paper as a thin record of good conduct. That is a practical problem worth addressing early rather than a legal argument to be made late.

What this page cannot tell you

It cannot tell you the date. The calculation turns on the offence and the article number in the judgment, the date the offence was committed, the aggregation of separate judgments, the deduction under TCK 63, the disciplinary record, whether a transitional provision applies, and an assessment of good conduct that is made inside the institution. Anyone who gives you a release date over the telephone, without the judgment and the execution file in front of them, is guessing. The honest version is that the date can be calculated once those documents exist, and that the calculation is worth checking rather than accepting.