Robbery in Türkiye, and where theft stops being theft.

Turkish law does not treat robbery as a heavier grade of theft. It is a separate offence, in a separate article, tried in a different court.

Theft is TCK 141: taking a movable thing belonging to another from where it is, without the consent of the person in possession, in order to obtain a benefit for oneself or for someone else. The sentence is one to three years.

Robbery — yagma — is TCK 148. What the article punishes is not the taking. It is the compelling. A person commits yagma who, by using force (cebir) or by threatening to carry out an attack on the life, bodily integrity or sexual integrity of the victim or a relative of the victim, or to cause the victim large damage to property, compels that person to hand a thing over or to not resist its being taken. The sentence is six to ten years.

Two further paragraphs widen the article, and both come up in real files.

• TCK 148/2 — the same penalty applies where force or threat is used to make a person give a bond putting themselves or another under debt, give a document showing that an existing bond is void, not resist the taking of such a bond, sign a paper that could later be turned into one, or destroy an existing bond or not resist its destruction.
• TCK 148/3 — rendering the victim, by any means, unable to know what is happening and unable to defend themselves counts as force in robbery.

148/3 is the paragraph that reaches cases with no blow and no weapon: a drink that was interfered with, a substance given, a person put beyond resistance rather than struck.

Value decides nothing here. A phone taken by force is yagma, at six years. The same phone taken from an unattended table is theft — but theft has its own grades, and they are not mild. Under TCK 141 the range is one to three years. Under TCK 142/1-c, where the thing was inside a vehicle open to public use, or at its designated stops or terminals, it is three to seven. Under TCK 142/2-b, where the thing was snatched from the hand or from the person, or taken by special skill, it is five to ten. So a wallet taken from a bag on a bus is not the one-year offence it is often assumed to be. The question that separates theft from robbery is not the value, and not the setting. It is whether a person was compelled.

TCK 149 does not add a percentage to the basic range. It replaces it. Where any one of the listed circumstances is present, the sentence becomes ten to fifteen years.

These are not questions of degree. Each one is present or it is not, and one of them is enough. Two of the eight are defined in the Code rather than left to impression: a weapon under TCK 6/1-f, and night under TCK 6/1-e, which means the period beginning one hour after sunset and continuing until one hour before sunrise. In a file where the timing is disputed, that is a matter of a sunset table, not of what the parties remember.

Subparagraph (c) is the one that catches groups. It does not require an organisation, or planning, or an agreement in advance. More than one person acting together is enough, and a passenger who stayed in the car will be argued into it.

One further provision: under TCK 149/2, where the aggravated forms of intentional injury by result occur during the robbery, the provisions on intentional injury are applied in addition. That is a second sentence on top, not an adjustment to the first.

There are five routes down, and they are the whole of the sentencing argument. They are set out in the Code with their own limits.

Three things about that table are worth reading twice.

The remorse provision is time-priced. Effective remorse under TCK 168 means the person, the instigator or the helper personally showing remorse and making the victim's loss good in full, by returning the thing itself or by compensation. Do that before prosecution starts and the reduction can be one-half. Do exactly the same thing a month later, after the indictment is accepted, and the ceiling drops to one-third. Under TCK 168/4, if the return or compensation is only partial, the victim's consent is also required. This is the single most expensive piece of timing in a robbery file, and it is routinely missed because nobody explains it while the client is still in the first weeks of remand.

Low value helps less here than in theft. In theft, TCK 145 allows the court not only to reduce the sentence but to decline to impose one at all. In robbery, TCK 150/2 offers a reduction of one-third to one-half and nothing more, and it is discretionary.

Deferral of the verdict is out of reach at the top of the range. Under CMK 231/5, the announcement of the verdict can only be deferred where the sentence imposed is two years or less. Whether the reductions above can bring a particular file under that ceiling is an arithmetic question about that file, not something a page can answer — but from a starting point of six years, and ten under TCK 149, most of them cannot.

Under Law no. 5235, article 12, the agir ceza court — the heavy penal court, sitting with a panel — is expressly given jurisdiction over yagma under TCK 148, alongside offences carrying more than ten years. The qualified form under TCK 149 exceeds that threshold in any event. Ordinary theft under TCK 141 and most of TCK 142 is heard by a single judge in the asliye ceza court. Crossing the line from theft to robbery therefore changes the courtroom as well as the number.

On remand, one point is often overstated and should be put accurately. CMK 100/3 allows a ground for detention to be presumed where there are strong grounds based on concrete evidence, for a listed set of offences — and that list, at paragraph (a) subparagraph 8, names theft (articles 141, 142) and robbery (articles 148, 149) together. So the catalogue is not what separates the two. What separates them is everything downstream of it: the range, the panel, and the clock.

The clock is CMK 102:

Those are outer limits, not expectations. But they are the reason a robbery file has to be answered as though it will be long, from the first week.

The alternative to remand is judicial control under CMK 109. Where the detention grounds in CMK 100 exist, the court may impose judicial control instead of detention, choosing from a list that includes a prohibition on leaving the country, regular reporting, a security deposit fixed by the judge, house arrest, and a prohibition on leaving a defined area. How that application is built is set out on the remand page.

Not with the sentence. With the article.

Which paragraph the conduct falls under

Almost every contested robbery file is really an argument about characterisation: theft or robbery, and if robbery, basic or qualified. Whether there was compulsion of a person, whether an object in the hand was in fact suitable for use in attack or defence, whether two people were acting together or one was present, whether the place was a dwelling or its annex, whether the clock had passed one hour after sunset. Each of those is a fact question with a documentary answer, and each of them is worth years.

The account, the medical report and the recordings

The complainant's account is evidence, not a verdict. It is tested against the medical report, the location and timing of the camera footage, the recovery record for the property, and the movement data. Where the file rests on identification, how that identification was made matters as much as what it produced.

Mediation is not available, and it is important to know that early

Under CMK 253, criminal mediation (uzlastirma) applies to a listed set of offences. That list includes theft under TCK 141. It does not include qualified theft under TCK 142, and it does not include robbery under TCK 148 or 149. An arrangement with the complainant therefore does not end a robbery case. It can still matter — through TCK 168 and TCK 62 — but only inside the sentencing framework, and only on the timetable set out above.

The first statement

Most of what is argued at trial in these files was fixed in the first twenty-four hours. That is the reason the practice treats the police stage as the case, not the prelude to it.

The article and the ranges are the same for everyone. Four things around them are not.

• The interpreter. Under CMK 202, where a defendant does not speak Turkish well enough to explain themselves, the essential points of the prosecution case and of the defence are translated by a court-appointed interpreter, and the same applies at the investigation stage, where the interpreter is appointed by the judge or the prosecutor. There is a separate right under CMK 202/4 to make the oral defence, after the indictment is read and after the closing opinion, in another language you say you can express yourself in better — but with an interpreter you choose from the official list, and those costs are not met by the Treasury. A file that turns on how a struggle was described is a file where the quality of the interpretation is a substantive issue, not an administrative one.
• The consulate. Under CMK 95/2, where the person taken into custody is a foreign national, their situation is notified to the consulate of their state unless they object in writing. Whether that notification helps you depends entirely on which state it is, and it is a decision to take deliberately rather than by default.
• Leaving the country. A prohibition on leaving Türkiye is the first listed obligation under CMK 109/3-a. In a robbery file it is close to standard, and it can outlast release. Removing or varying it is a separate application, dealt with on the travel ban page.
• What follows the sentence. Under TCK 59, a foreign national sentenced to imprisonment is reported to the Ministry of the Interior for assessment of removal proceedings — after a decision on conditional release or on execution under probation measures, and in any event once the sentence has been fully served. Under Law no. 6458, article 54/1-a, a deportation decision is taken in respect of those assessed as requiring deportation within the scope of TCK 59, and under 54/1-d in respect of those who constitute a threat to public order or public security. This is a separate process, under separate legislation, with its own deadlines, and it does not wait politely for the criminal case to finish.

It cannot tell you what your sentence will be. The ranges above are statutory brackets; where a court lands inside one depends on findings that only exist once the file exists.

It cannot tell you whether your file is theft or robbery. That is decided on the description of the physical contact, and the description that matters is the one already in the record.

It cannot promise release. Remand is decided against CMK 100 on the material in front of the judge, and no lawyer can honestly tell you in advance what that decision will be.

And it cannot substitute for reading your own documents. The catalogue of offences in CMK 100, the deferral threshold in CMK 231, the remand ceilings in CMK 102 and the deportation grounds in Law no. 6458 have all been amended more than once. Where a figure decides something for you, take it from the decision served on you, with your lawyer, not from a page.