Released by the Court, Moved to a Removal Centre — why your relative is still not free

The criminal court decided one question: whether he should be held in connection with the offence. Article 59 of the Turkish Criminal Code decides the next one. A foreign national sentenced to imprisonment is reported immediately to the Ministry of the Interior for assessment in connection with deportation proceedings — once a decision has been taken on execution of the sentence under probation or on conditional release, and in any event once execution of the sentence has been completed. The prison writes to the ministry. Nobody writes to you.

Article 54 of Law no. 6458 then lists who a deportation decision is taken about. The first limb is people assessed as requiring deportation within the scope of Article 59, which means people who were sentenced. If he was acquitted, or released while the trial continues, that limb does not reach him and the governorate has to rely on another one: threat to public order, public security or public health; untrue information or false documents used in entry, visa or residence procedures; a cancelled residence permit; work without a work permit; a visa or visa-exemption overstay of more than ten days; breach of the rules on lawful entry or exit; presence in Türkiye despite an entry ban.

Which limb was used is written on the decision, and it is the first thing to establish. The limbs are not equally strong, and none of them is proved by the criminal file alone.

Article 57/1 starts the first clock: where a person within Article 54 is apprehended by law enforcement, the matter is reported to the governorate at once and the assessment and decision period cannot exceed forty-eight hours. Article 57/2 starts the second: where detention is ordered, the law enforcement unit that carried out the apprehension takes him to a removal centre — geri gönderme merkezi — within forty-eight hours. That gap is why the prison tells you he was released and the police station tells you nothing. For up to two days he is between two systems, and the methods that work for a relative held in criminal custody stop working.

Everything that follows is governed by two documents, and a family abroad has usually seen neither of them.

Article 53/2 and Article 57/5 both require service with reasons on the foreign national, his legal representative or his lawyer, and both require that an unrepresented person be told the result, the objection procedure and the time limits. Until somebody reads the papers, nobody knows which limb of Article 54 is relied on, which ground in Article 57/2 the detention rests on, or when the seven days began.

The two routes do different work, and you do not choose between them. The action against removal itself belongs to the deportation decision and any entry ban; under the final sentence of Article 53/3, he is not removed within the time for bringing that action or while it is pending, unless he consents. The application to the sulh ceza judge attacks the detention, and it is the only one of the two that can get him out of the centre. It does not suspend detention, the judge concludes the examination within five days, and the decision is final — but a fresh application may be made whenever the conditions for detention have ceased to exist or have changed.

Article 55 can stop the removal decision before any of this. Even about people within Article 54, no deportation decision is taken where there are serious indications of the death penalty, torture or inhuman or degrading treatment in the country of removal; where travel is risky because of serious health problems, age or pregnancy; where a life-threatening illness is under treatment unavailable there; for trafficking victims within the victim support process; and for victims of psychological, physical or sexual violence until treatment is complete. Those assessments are made individually, on documents somebody has to produce.

Article 57/3 fixes the ceiling. Detention in removal centres cannot exceed six months. It may be extended by a maximum of six further months in one situation only: where the removal proceedings could not be completed because the foreign national did not cooperate, or did not give correct information or documents about his country.

Article 57/8 sits alongside it: the electronic and communication devices of detained foreign nationals may be examined in order to establish nationality, and the data obtained may not be used for any other purpose. Identity is the whole subject of the second six months, and it is being worked on whether or not he takes part.

Article 57/4 requires the governorate to assess every month whether continued detention is necessary, not to wait the thirty days where that is needed, and to terminate detention immediately where it is not necessary — imposing alternative obligations under Article 57/A instead. A monthly review that repeats the previous month word for word is still a document, and documents can be put in front of a judge.

A deportation decision and an unfinished criminal case can sit in the same file at the same time, and the statute knows it. Article 57/A-7 provides that where a security deposit is imposed and the person does not leave Türkiye within the period, the deposit is recorded as revenue to the Treasury — and it carves out two exceptions: force majeure, and the court process not having ended.

The real risk in that situation is consent. Article 53/3 protects him from removal while the administrative case is pending only where he has not agreed to go, and a voluntary-return declaration signed in a removal centre is agreement. Papers are put in front of people there in Turkish. Being taken to sign something is not the same as being told what it is.

If his release came with conditions attached in the criminal case, those conditions do not lapse because a second authority now holds him; that side has to be handled on its own terms. The rest of the administrative timetable — the monthly reviews, the twenty-four month ceiling on alternative obligations under Article 57/A, and what Article 59 of Law no. 6458 requires to be provided inside the centre — is set out on removal centres and administrative detention.