You Have Been Summoned as a Witness in Türkiye: What You Must Do, and What You May Refuse

Witnesses are summoned by a written summons, the çağrı kâğıdı, which must state the consequences of not attending (CMK 43/1). The same article allows the summons to be communicated by telephone, telegram, fax or e-mail, but with a qualification that matters to anyone who receives a message rather than a document: the consequences attached to the formal summons do not apply where the call was made by those means (CMK 43/2). A phone call from a police station asking you to come in as a witness is therefore an invitation; the compelled-attendance machinery is built on the paper summons. Article 43 applies only where you are to be heard as a witness before a public prosecutor, a judge or a court (CMK 43/5).

A witness who has been duly summoned and fails to attend without notifying an excuse is brought by force, and the costs caused by the failure to attend are assessed and collected under the rules for public receivables (CMK 44/1). Since 2021 the compelled-attendance order may also be notified by telephone, fax or e-mail where those details are in the file. A witness brought by force who later shows that the absence was justified has the costs order lifted. In cases with a detained suspect, a compelled-attendance order may be issued for witnesses from the outset, with the reasons stated in the order (CMK 43/1).

Two things follow for a foreign witness. First, if you cannot attend on the date given, say so in writing before the date, with the reason, rather than letting the date pass. Second, a summons that reaches you abroad is served under the Notification Act and the applicable treaties, and a court that needs your evidence while you are outside Türkiye can take it by letters rogatory or by video link rather than insisting on travel; asking for that in your reply is legitimate. What is not legitimate is silence, which converts a witness into a person the police are instructed to fetch.

The duty to testify has three statutory exceptions, and each works differently.

Relatives of the suspect or accused may refuse to testify at all. CMK 45/1 lists them: the fiancé or fiancée; the spouse, even after the marriage has ended; ascendants and descendants by blood or marriage; blood relatives up to the third degree and relatives by marriage up to the second degree; and persons connected by adoption. Before they are heard they must be told that they may refuse, and they may stop at any point while testifying (CMK 45/3). Where such a person is a child or lacks capacity to understand the significance of refusing, they may be heard only with the consent of their legal representative, and a representative who is himself the suspect cannot decide (CMK 45/2).

Professionals may refuse in respect of what they learned in that capacity: lawyers, their trainees and assistants; doctors, dentists, pharmacists, midwives and other members of the medical professions about their patients and the patients' relatives; financial advisers and notaries about the persons they served (CMK 46/1). For everyone in that list except lawyers, the privilege falls away if the person concerned consents (CMK 46/2).

Anyone may refuse to answer a question whose answer could expose the witness, or one of the relatives listed in Article 45/1, to criminal prosecution, and the witness must be told in advance that this right exists (CMK 48). This is the rule that matters most to a foreign witness who was present at the events: you are obliged to attend and to tell the truth, but you are not obliged to supply the answer that would make you a suspect. When a prosecutor, judge or court considers it necessary, a witness who relies on Articles 45, 46 or 48 states the facts on which the refusal rests and may be put on oath about those facts (CMK 49).

Before a witness is heard, the authority explains four things: the importance of telling the truth; that a false statement is punishable as the offence of false testimony; that the witness will take an oath to tell the truth; and that, at a hearing, the witness may not leave the courtroom without the express permission of the presiding judge (CMK 53). The oath is then taken, with exceptions. Persons under fifteen, persons who cannot grasp the nature and importance of an oath, and persons who are themselves suspected, accused or convicted of participating in the offence under investigation, of harbouring the offender or of destroying, concealing or altering evidence, are heard without an oath (CMK 50). Relatives who could have refused but chose to testify may be sworn or not at the judge's discretion, and may themselves decline the oath; they must be told so (CMK 51).

The questioning opens with your identity: name, age, occupation, residence and work address, telephone numbers, and, where relevant, your relationship to the suspect, the accused or the victim, so that the judge can assess how far your evidence can be trusted (CMK 58/1). In investigations into an organised group, a witness whose identity would put the witness or relatives in serious danger may have that identity kept confidential, and may be heard without the parties present through audio and video transmission, the right to put questions being preserved (CMK 58/2-5); the further protective measures are governed by the separate Witness Protection Act.

A witness who refuses to testify or to take the oath without a lawful reason may be ordered to pay the resulting costs and may be placed in disciplinary detention until the testimony or oath is given, for no longer than three months and in any event not beyond the judgment in the case; the witness is released at once on complying, and the decision is open to objection (CMK 60). The same article names who may impose it: at the investigation stage the criminal judge of peace, at trial the delegated judge or the court acting on letters rogatory.

A witness who cannot express himself adequately in Turkish is entitled to an interpreter. In the investigation phase, CMK 202/3 applies the interpreter provisions to suspects, victims and witnesses heard at that stage, and the interpreter is appointed by the judge or the public prosecutor. Interpreters are drawn from the lists prepared each year by the provincial judicial commissions, and a prosecutor or judge may use a list from another province (CMK 202/5). At trial the court arranges interpretation for the evidence it takes; ask for it in writing when you receive the summons so that the hearing is not adjourned for want of an interpreter.

Two practical points arise from experience with foreign witnesses. The first is that the statement is written in Turkish and read back through the interpreter before you sign; do not sign a text you have not had read back in full, and ask for corrections to be recorded. The second is that the summons itself will be in Turkish. If the document reaches you abroad, have it translated before the date it names, because the reply that protects you, the notice of an excuse or the request to be heard by video link, is one you must send in time, not after the date has passed.

False testimony, yalan tanıklık, is a graded offence. A person who testifies falsely in an investigation before an authority entitled to hear witnesses faces four months to one year's imprisonment (TCK 272/1). Before a court, or before an authority entitled to hear witnesses on oath, the range is one to three years (TCK 272/2). Where the investigation or prosecution concerns an offence carrying more than three years' imprisonment, false testimony is punished with two to four years (TCK 272/3). The Article then scales the penalty to what the false evidence caused: an increase by half where a protective measure other than custody or detention was applied to the person testified against and that person was later acquitted or the case was dropped (272/4); liability as an indirect perpetrator of unlawful deprivation of liberty where the person was taken into custody or detained and later cleared (272/5); twenty to thirty years where the person was sentenced to life or aggravated life imprisonment (272/6); and three to seven years where a sanction other than imprisonment was applied to the person testified against (272/8).

Two provisions soften this for the reluctant witness. Under TCK 273/1 the court may reduce the sentence or refrain from imposing one where the false statement concerned a matter that could have exposed the witness or the witness's ascendants, descendants, spouse or sibling to prosecution, or where the witness had a refusal right and testified falsely without being reminded of it; that relief does not apply to false testimony in private-law disputes (273/2). Under TCK 274, a witness who tells the truth before any decision restricting the rights of the person testified against and before judgment is not punished at all; truth told after such a decision but before judgment reduces the sentence by between two thirds and a half; truth told before the conviction becomes final reduces it by between a half and a third.

The witness summons is the one criminal-procedure document a foreign national is most likely to receive without ever having been in trouble. The following sequence keeps it that way.

1. Identify the authority and the case. The summons names the prosecutor's office or court and the investigation or case number. Check whether you appear in the file as a witness or as a suspect; the rights differ, and a person listed as a suspect is questioned under CMK 147 with a right to counsel, not as a witness.
2. Decide whether a refusal right applies. A family tie listed in CMK 45/1, a professional secret under CMK 46, or the risk that the truthful answer incriminates you or a listed relative under CMK 48. Each is invoked at the hearing, on being reminded, and can be invoked question by question.
3. Reply before the date. If you cannot travel, write to the authority with the reason and offer to be heard by video link or by letters rogatory through the authorities of the country where you live; CMK 44 punishes silence, not a documented excuse.
4. Arrange the interpreter in advance. Ask that an interpreter be appointed under CMK 202 for the date, and bring your own translation of any document you intend to refer to.
5. Tell the truth, and only what you know. A witness answers about perceptions, not conclusions. "I do not know" and "I do not remember" are answers; an invented detail is the offence in TCK 272.
6. Read the record before signing. Have the statement read back in full through the interpreter; corrections are recorded, and the copy you keep is the version you may be asked about a year later at trial.
7. Claim your expenses. CMK 61 entitles a summoned witness to compensation for lost time and to travel, accommodation and meal costs, paid without deduction of tax or duty.

A witness is not a party and does not need counsel at the hearing, but a foreign witness whose own conduct is close to the events, the friend who was in the car, the employee who signed the documents, the business partner who saw the money move, is well advised to take advice before the date, because the line between witness and suspect is drawn by the file, and the answer that crosses it cannot be taken back.