The half reduction in TCK 158/4 applies only if handing over the account was all you did

The reduction itself is not the argument. The number it operates on is.

TCK 61/4 requires that where more than one qualified circumstance applies to an offence, the increases are made first and the reductions afterwards. TCK 61/5 then fixes the order in which the reductions run: attempt, participation, chain offence, unjust provocation, minority, mental illness, personal grounds of reduction, and last the discretionary reduction. The half in 158/4 is best read as a participation reduction, which would place it at that point in the TCK 61/5 sequence; the classification has not been ruled on. Either way TCK 61/4 puts the increases before the reductions, so the half bites on a figure that already carries whatever the aggravating paragraphs have added to it.

Run the statutory minimum through that sequence. A file charged under 158/1-f alone begins at four years; halved, two. Add the three-person increase and the same file begins at six; halved, three. The paragraph is worth the same proportion in both, but only one of those two results lands beneath the line that decides whether the sentence is served.

Which is why the paragraph you should read first in your own file is often 158/3, not 158/4. Money-mule investigations almost always name several account holders. Whether the file treats that as three or more persons acting together, or as separate acts of participation by people who never met, moves the starting figure by fifty per cent before the half is ever applied.

Under TCK 52 a judicial fine is a number of days multiplied by a daily rate. The court fixes the days, then fixes the rate between one hundred and five hundred lira according to your economic and personal circumstances, and multiplies the two. It may allow up to a year to pay, or instalments over no more than two years in no fewer than four payments. TCK 61/8 requires that sentencing increases and reductions on a fine be applied to the day units rather than to the lira figure.

The (f) limb of 158/1 adds a second floor, and it is expressed in money rather than in days: the fine cannot be less than twice the benefit derived from the offence. Whether the half in 158/4 runs against that money floor, or stops at the day units sitting above it, has not been decided. The paragraph was added by article 13 of Law no. 7589, dated 16 July 2026, and has been in force since 31 July 2026. There is no Court of Cassation authority on it. Anyone who tells you the answer is confident rather than informed.

Two years is the threshold that the half reduction is really aimed at, because two Turkish sentencing routes stop there.

CMK 231 — deferral of the announcement of the judgment — was itself rewritten by the same Law no. 7589 on 16 July 2026. It is available where the sentence imposed is two years or less. Under 231/6 it requires that you have no previous conviction for an intentional offence, that the court is satisfied you will not reoffend, and that the loss suffered by the victim or by the public has been fully made good by restitution, restoration or compensation. Where you cannot pay at once, 231/9 permits monthly instalments across the supervision period. That period is now five years (231/8). Within a deferral the prison sentence cannot be suspended or converted (231/7), and since the July 2026 amendment the decision is challenged by appeal to the regional court of appeal rather than by the old objection route (231/12). Complete the five years without an intentional offence and the case is dismissed (231/10).

TCK 51 — suspension — is also capped at two years, and requires that you have not previously been sentenced to more than three months' imprisonment for an intentional offence. The supervision period is one to three years and can never be shorter than the sentence itself. Under 51/2 the court may make suspension conditional on the loss being fully made good.

Both roads end at the same toll. TCK 168 prices it earlier: full restitution after the offence is complete but before prosecution begins reduces the sentence by up to two thirds; shown after prosecution has begun and before judgment, by up to one half. Partial repayment counts only with the victim's consent (168/4). Applied to a four-year floor already halved to two, either figure is the difference between a deferred judgment and a term to serve — the conditions attached to both routes are set out on our page on deferred and suspended sentences.

TCK 158/4 is written into articles 157 and 158. It reduces the sentence for the fraud. It does nothing to anything else in the file.

• TCK 282/2 — acquiring, accepting, holding or using property that is the subject of laundering, knowing that it has that character, without having participated in the laundering itself: two to five years. That is a separate count with its own sentence, and the half does not touch it.
• TCK 282/1 — taking property derived from an offence carrying a minimum of six months or more out of the country, or subjecting it to transactions to conceal its illegitimate source or to create the impression that it was legitimately obtained: three to seven years and a judicial fine of up to twenty thousand days. 282/6 removes the penalty entirely where, before prosecution begins, the person secures the recovery of the property or tells the authorities where it is.
• TCK 55 — confiscation of the material benefit obtained through the offence and of any economic gain produced by converting it; where it cannot be seized, its equivalent value is confiscated instead. A confiscation order under 55/1 is possible only where the benefit cannot be returned to the victim.
• The victim's civil claim, which runs on its own track regardless of what the sentence is reduced to.

So the question that decides the size of your file is not whether 158/4 applies but how many counts the prosecutor writes. Where the money left the account again — withdrawn, forwarded, converted to crypto — the same conduct that removes you from "limited to" is also the conduct that supports a separate laundering count. The reduction and the second charge turn on the same facts, in opposite directions. How the fraud count itself is constructed is set out on our page on fraud charges in Türkiye.

Under TCK 7/2, where the law in force when the offence was committed differs from a law that comes into force afterwards, the law favourable to the offender is applied and enforced. A mandatory half reduction is favourable by definition, so the date of your act does not exclude you.

Where you stand changes only the route. If the investigation is still open, the paragraph belongs in the defence statement, together with the reason your participation was limited. If the case is at trial, it goes in before judgment. If the sentence is already final, the route is an adaptation request to the court that sentenced you — that reopens the calculation of the sentence, not the finding of guilt.

None of this decides the prior question, which is whether you were a participant at all. The paragraph requires that you acted with the aim of obtaining an unjust benefit for yourself or for another. A defence that opens by asking for the half has conceded that aim. Before that concession is made, the file has to be read the other way round — what our page on accounts used to receive other people's money sets out in full.