Name them, or say nothing? the account holder's decision in a Turkish fraud file

By the time the question is put to you, the investigation already holds the parts that do not depend on your answer: a complainant in another city who transferred money after a call or an online listing, the bank record showing that money arriving in an account opened with your passport, and the withdrawal or onward transfer that followed within hours. What the file does not contain is any explanation of why the account was available. Your statement is the only place that gap gets filled.

The charge is aggravated fraud under TCK 158, almost always subparagraph (f) of the first paragraph: the use of information systems or of banks and credit institutions as the instrument of the fraud. Article 158/1 sets three to ten years of imprisonment together with a judicial fine of up to five thousand days, and because (f) appears in the aggravated list at the end of that paragraph, the prison term cannot be fixed below four years and the fine cannot be lower than twice the benefit obtained. Article 158/3 adds a further layer: where the offence is committed by three or more people together the sentence is increased by half, and where it is committed within the activity of an organisation formed to commit crime it is doubled.

A name moves none of that by itself. What moves it is whether anything you say can be tested. Article 160/2 CMK obliges the prosecutor to collect the evidence in your favour as well as the evidence against you, but nothing can be collected in your favour from a description like 'a man I met at a café in Aksaray'. A name with a phone number, a meeting place, a date and a message thread is investigative material. A name without them is an opinion.

Article 147/1 CMK draws the line precisely. Under (a) you are obliged to answer questions about your identity truthfully. Under (e) you must be told that remaining silent about the alleged offence is your legal right. Under (c) you must be told you may choose a lawyer, that the lawyer may be present while your statement is taken, and that if you cannot appoint one the bar association will assign a defence counsel. Under (f) you may ask for concrete evidence to be collected so that the suspicion is cleared. Article 154/1 lets you speak with that lawyer in private, without a power of attorney, before you say anything.

If you cannot express yourself adequately in Turkish, Article 202/3 CMK requires an interpreter at the investigation stage too, appointed by the prosecutor or the judge. This matters more here than in almost any other file, because the difference between 'I gave him my card' and 'he took my card' is a single verb in a record you will sign. Read the rules on interpretation before you accept a summarised translation.

The timeline is short. Article 91/1 CMK caps police custody at twenty-four hours from the moment of arrest, excluding a transfer period to the nearest judge that cannot exceed twelve hours. Article 91/3 lets the prosecutor extend custody in writing in offences committed collectively, one day at a time, for up to three days. Files with several account holders and several banks are routinely handled as collective. Silence taken at the police station and a full, prepared statement given to the prosecutor afterwards is a normal sequence, not an obstruction.

TCK 158/4 was added by article 13 of Law no. 7589, adopted on 16 July 2026 and in force from 31 July 2026. It provides that where participation in the offences in Articles 157 and 158 is limited to handing over, with the aim of obtaining an unjust benefit for yourself or another, payment instruments such as a bank or credit card belonging to you or to someone else, or the mandatory information or means that enable the use of an account held at a bank, brokerage house, payment service provider or crypto asset service provider, the sentence to be imposed is reduced by half. Article 7/2 TCK requires the more favourable of the successive laws to be applied, so a file opened before 31 July 2026 is not outside the provision.

The load-bearing words are limited to. That is what your statement is really arguing about, and it is why the identity of the other person is a means rather than an end. A name that shows where your involvement stopped is worth giving; a name that leaves your own subsequent conduct unexplained buys nothing.

This is why a lawyer will spend the meeting before the statement on your own movements rather than on the other person's. The date and place of the handover, what you were told the account was for, what you received, whether you ever logged in afterwards, whether your phone shows the account app being opened after that date: each of those facts either holds the boundary in place or breaks it.

Article 267/1 TCK punishes with one to four years anyone who attributes an unlawful act to a person, before the competent authorities, knowing that the person did not commit it. Honest mistake is not that offence. But a name you cannot support does something quieter and more damaging: it makes every other part of your account look constructed, and it hands the prosecutor a second version of events to set against your first.

Remand is where that cost is paid. Aggravated fraud is not in the catalogue of offences in Article 100/3 CMK, so detention cannot rest on the label of the charge. It requires strong suspicion based on concrete evidence under 100/1 together with a ground under 100/2: flight, concealment, or concrete facts suggesting the destruction of evidence or pressure on witnesses. For a foreign national with no registered address in Türkiye, the flight ground carries almost all the weight, which is why the realistic argument is judicial control under Article 109 — a ban on leaving the country under 109/3-a, reporting to a designated station under 109/3-b, or a security deposit fixed by the judge under 109/3-f. The remand and judicial control hearing usually follows the statement within hours, and the credibility of that statement is what the judge weighs.

There is also the practical question nobody puts in writing. If the person who took your account has threatened you or your family, that is information for your lawyer in a private meeting under Article 154/1, and it can be put to the prosecutor as a reason for how the handover happened. It is not something to work out alone in an interview room while a record is being typed.

The record is read back and signed under Article 147/1-i CMK, and paragraph 5 of that provision requires the reasons to be recorded if you refuse to sign. A refusal is a right, not a confession; a signature on a Turkish record you did not follow line by line is far harder to undo than a noted objection.

Restitution works independently of anything you say about anyone else. Article 168/1 TCK allows a reduction of up to two thirds where the loss is fully repaired by return or compensation after the offence is complete but before prosecution begins, and Article 168/2 allows up to one half where that happens after prosecution has begun but before judgment. Partial payment counts only with the victim's consent under 168/4. Where several complainants paid into the same account, which of them is repaid and in what order is a defence decision with sentencing consequences.

How the charge is built against an account holder in the first place — the intent element, what the bank actually produces, and what the transfers do and do not show — is set out on the main page on Turkish accounts used by someone else.