The Police Came After an Argument With Your Turkish Wife: the first 48 hours for a foreign husband

Turkish officers who attend a domestic call act without waiting for a written complaint. Once you are taken in, CMK 91/1 fixes the limit: custody may not exceed twenty-four hours from the moment of apprehension, plus a transport period to the nearest judge or court that cannot itself exceed twelve hours. If the prosecutor does not release you inside that window, you are brought before a criminal judge of peace. Your lawyer may also apply to that judge under CMK 91/5 for immediate release, and the judge decides on the papers within twenty-four hours.

CMK 147/1 sets out what precedes your statement: the alleged offence is explained, you are told that you may choose a lawyer and that the bar will appoint one if you cannot, that saying nothing about the allegation is your legal right, and that you may ask for evidence in your favour to be collected. The only questions you are obliged to answer truthfully concern your identity. What that first hour looks like in practice is set out in our note on being arrested in Türkiye.

Two provisions concern you specifically as a foreign national. Under CMK 95/2 the consulate of your country is informed of the custody unless you object in writing. Under CMK 202/1 and 202/3, a suspect who cannot express himself adequately in Turkish is heard through an interpreter, appointed at the investigation stage by the judge or the prosecutor. Domestic files turn on wording — who said what, in which order, whether a push was a push — and a Turkish record signed after a rough oral summary is the hardest document to undo later, which is why interpreter rights in a Turkish criminal file matter more here than in almost any other case.

Alongside the criminal file, and often before you leave the station, a measure under Law 6284 may be issued. Article 5/1 lists what may be ordered against the person alleged to have used violence: removal from the shared home and allocation of that home to the protected person (5/1-b), no approach to her home, workplace or school (5/1-c), no contact by communication devices or otherwise (5/1-f), and surrender of any lawfully held firearm to the police (5/1-g). Under Article 5/2, where delay carries risk, the four measures in sub-paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (d) may be imposed by the police chief on the spot — the measure in (ç), on an existing contact order with the children, stays with the judge; the papers go to the judge by the first working day, and a measure not confirmed by a judge within twenty-four hours lapses of its own accord.

Two features surprise most foreign spouses. Article 8/3 states that no evidence or document is required for a protective measure and that a preventive measure is issued without delay — the order is not a finding that you did anything. Article 8/2 allows a first order of up to six months, which can later be extended, changed or lifted.

The order is served on you with an express warning, required by Article 8/5, that breach carries coercive detention. Article 13 makes that concrete: breaking the order brings three to ten days of coercive detention by judicial decision, even where the same conduct is itself a separate offence; on each repetition the range becomes fifteen to thirty days, with a ceiling of six months in total. One reply to a message from your wife is enough to start it. Article 9/1 gives you two weeks from service to object before the family court, the reviewing court decides within one week, and that decision is final (Article 9/3). No fee is charged for any application under this law (Article 20/1).

Intentional injury under TCK 86/1 carries one year six months to three years. Where the effect on the victim can be remedied by simple medical intervention, TCK 86/2 brings it down to six months to one year six months or a judicial fine, and that lighter form is prosecuted only on complaint — with a lower limit that cannot fall below nine months where the victim is a woman. TCK 86/3-a changes both points at once: where the injury is committed against a spouse or a former spouse, the sentence is increased by one half and prosecution proceeds without any complaint being sought.

Conciliation (uzlaştırma), the route that quietly closes many minor assault files, is shut here by drafting. CMK 253/1-b-1 brings intentional injury within conciliation excluding the third paragraph of Article 86 — that is, excluding exactly the spousal form. A threat under TCK 106/1 sits on the conciliation list in its own right (CMK 253/1-b-3), but CMK 253/3 provides that where a conciliation-eligible offence is committed together with a non-eligible offence against the same victim, conciliation applies to neither. In a file that pairs a shove with a shouted threat, the whole of it goes to the prosecutor for a decision on indictment.

Remand is not automatic. CMK 100/1 requires strong suspicion resting on concrete evidence, a statutory ground, and proportionality to the sentence expected. Two provisions nonetheless raise the risk in this particular file. CMK 100/3-i lists intentional injury committed against a woman among the catalogue offences for which a ground of remand may be presumed. And the general protection in CMK 100/4 — no remand where the maximum sentence does not exceed two years — expressly excludes offences committed against bodily integrity, so it does not shield an assault charge. A foreign husband with no property in Türkiye also fits the flight-risk ground in CMK 100/2-a more readily than a local defendant, whatever the merits of the allegation.

In practice a first incident more often ends in judicial control. CMK 109/3 lists what a judge may impose instead of remand: a ban on leaving the country (109/3-a), regular reporting to a named station (109/3-b), a security sum fixed by the judge (109/3-f), and orders not to leave the home or not to enter defined places (109/3-j, k and l). For someone whose work, residence or family sits abroad, the travel ban is usually the measure that bites; how it is imposed and how it comes off is covered in our note on remand and release conditions in Türkiye.