Getting someone out, and the rules that decide whether you can.

Under CMK 100, a detention order requires concrete evidence showing strong suspicion that the offence was committed, and a ground for detention. It also requires proportionality: where detention is not proportionate to the importance of the matter and the expected penalty or security measure, a detention order cannot be made.

The grounds (CMK 100/2)

• The suspect or accused flees or hides, or there are concrete facts raising a suspicion that they will flee.
• Their conduct creates strong suspicion of destroying, concealing or altering evidence, or of attempting to put pressure on witnesses, victims or others.

The catalogue (CMK 100/3)

For a listed set of offences, a ground for detention may be presumed where strong suspicion based on concrete evidence exists. The list includes intentional killing, intentional injury under TCK 86/3(b), (e) and (f) and aggravated injury under TCK 87, torture, sexual assault under TCK 102 excluding its first paragraph, sexual abuse of children, theft and robbery, drug manufacture and trafficking under TCK 188, forming an organisation to commit crime under TCK 220 excluding paragraphs 2, 7 and 8, and offences against the security of the State and the constitutional order, among others. The carve-outs written into the catalogue decide whether a ground is presumed at all: where the charge falls inside one of them, the prosecutor must establish a ground under CMK 100/2 in the ordinary way.

Where detention is not available at all (CMK 100/4)

No detention order may be made for offences carrying only a judicial fine, or for offences where the upper limit of imprisonment is not more than two years — except for offences committed intentionally against bodily integrity.

CMK 109 provides that where the grounds for detention under CMK 100 exist, the suspect may be placed under judicial control instead of being detained. Judicial control involves one or more obligations. The first one on the statutory list is the one foreign nationals feel most:

• Not leaving the country. This is the travel ban that appears in most files involving a foreign national, and it is an obligation under judicial control rather than a separate order.
• Reporting regularly to places designated by the judge, within specified periods.
• Complying with the other obligations the judge specifies.

Under CMK 109/2, the provisions on judicial control may also be applied in cases where detention is prohibited by law.

Who decides, and who can ask for a change

Under CMK 110, judicial control may be imposed at any stage of the investigation on the prosecutor's request and the decision of the sulh ceza judge. The judge may, on the prosecutor's request, add new obligations, or lift or vary the existing ones in whole or in part.

Under CMK 111, on the application of the suspect or accused, and after taking the prosecutor's view, the judge or court may decide within five days. Decisions on judicial control may be appealed.

Judicial control is not open-ended

Under CMK 110/4, whether the obligation should continue must be decided at intervals of no more than four months — by the sulh ceza judge on the prosecutor's request during the investigation, and by the court of its own motion at trial. CMK 110/A then caps the total: two years in matters outside the jurisdiction of the ağır ceza court, extendable by one further year in compulsory cases with reasons stated; three years in matters within it, where the extension may not exceed three years in total, or four years for the offences in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Chapters of the Fourth Part of the Second Book of the TCK and for offences within the scope of the Anti-Terror Law. For children these periods are applied at one half.

CMK 102 sets outer limits. They are limits, not expectations — most files do not run to them, and quoting the maximum to a family as though it were the likely outcome is not honest.

Under CMK 102/3, extension decisions are taken after the views of the prosecutor, the suspect or accused and defence counsel have been obtained. That is a hearing point, and it is one of the regular opportunities to argue for release rather than a formality to be waived.

For those under eighteen at the time of the offence, these periods are applied at three quarters; for those under fifteen, at one half.

• An application under CMK 103. The prosecutor may ask the sulh ceza judge to release the suspect under judicial control. The suspect and defence counsel may make the same application. In the investigation stage, if the prosecutor concludes that judicial control or detention is no longer necessary, the suspect is released of the prosecutor's own motion.
• An application under CMK 104. At every stage of the investigation and of the trial, the suspect or the accused may ask to be released; the judge or court rules on continuation or release, and that decision may be appealed. Under CMK 105 the request is decided within three days once the views of the prosecutor and the defence have been taken, and within seven days for offences committed within the activity of an organisation.
• The review under CMK 108. In the investigation stage, whether remand should continue is decided at intervals of no more than thirty days, with the suspect or defence counsel heard, and under CMK 108/2 the suspect may ask for that review within the same period. At trial the court rules on continuation of its own motion at every hearing.
• An application under CMK 111 to lift or vary judicial control, decided within five days, with a right of appeal.
• The extension hearing under CMK 102/3, where views must be taken before the period is extended.
• Appeal against the reasoning. Under CMK 101, decisions on detention, its continuation, or the refusal of a release request must state the strong suspicion, the existence of grounds for detention, that the measure is proportionate, and — since the 2021 amendment — why the application of judicial control would be insufficient. A decision that does not do this is open to attack on that basis.

The flight-risk ground in CMK 100/2 requires concrete facts. In practice, foreign nationality is frequently treated as though it supplied those facts on its own. It does not, and the distinction is worth insisting on.

What actually helps is material: a settled address in Türkiye, a residence permit, employment, family here, a passport that has been surrendered, a willingness to accept reporting obligations and a prohibition on leaving the country. Judicial control exists precisely so that the risk can be managed without detention, and the application is stronger when it proposes the specific obligations rather than simply asking for release.

Two further points. A prohibition on leaving the country is not indefinite — CMK 110/4 requires it to be reviewed at intervals of no more than four months and CMK 110/A caps how long it may run — but within those limits it can outlast the stage of the case that produced it, and lifting it is a separate application under CMK 111. And whatever happens in the criminal file, a parallel administrative process may decide your residence and your ability to return — with a much shorter deadline than anything in this page.