Thirty days to stop the sale: the security that releases a seized vehicle

Which provision holds your vehicle depends on the offence the file names, not on what was found inside it. Two provisions run a thirty-day security period. They are close in wording and different in the details that decide whether a foreign owner can act in time.

Where the file is run under the smuggling law, section 10 of Law no. 5607 applies. Seizure and detention are separate steps there. A seized vehicle is detained only where one of three situations exists: the goods were hidden or carried in a specially prepared concealed compartment (section 13(1)(a)); the vehicle is not registered on a register in Türkiye; or the vehicle is used again in a smuggling offence while the investigation or prosecution is continuing. If the owner delivers a security equal to the value of the vehicle to the customs administration within thirty days of the date of detention, the vehicle is returned. Otherwise the liquidation administration liquidates it immediately, without waiting for the outcome of the investigation and the prosecution. That framework, and the offences inside it, are set out on the page on customs smuggling under Law no. 5607.

Where narcotics are found, the charge is normally TCK 188 and the vehicle falls under additional Article 2 of Law no. 2313. There is no separate detention step. The seized vehicle is simply not returned to its owner where any one of four situations exists: it is used again in the same offence during the investigation or prosecution; it is not registered on a register in Türkiye; it was seized together with a significant quantity or value of narcotic or stimulant substance; or it carries special fittings that would facilitate the commission of the offence. The owner then has thirty days from the date of seizure to deliver a security equal to the value of the vehicle to the Ministry of Finance. Failing that the Ministry liquidates the vehicle without waiting for the outcome — except that the Constitutional Court annulled that sentence on 20 July 2022 in so far as it applied to ground (c), seizure together with a significant quantity or value of narcotics, and in so far as it permitted liquidation otherwise than by sale.

Neither provision mentions notification. That is the trap. The ordinary rule in Turkish criminal procedure is that a period fixed in days begins to run the day after service (CMK 39(1)); these two periods do not wait for anyone to be told anything. They run from a date written on a document already in the file. Reading that date off the seizure record, rather than assuming it, is the first task.

Both provisions measure the security in identical terms. Section 10(5) of Law no. 5607 and the third paragraph of additional Article 2 of Law no. 2313 define value as the kasko value for land vehicles, the value forming the basis of hull and machinery insurance for sea vehicles, and the market value for uninsured vehicles and for air and rail vehicles.

A lorry registered in Bulgaria, Georgia, Iran or Romania has no Turkish kasko value. The calculation moves to market value, which means a figure produced by someone at or near a border post, usually quickly. A valuation is an opinion about a number, and a number that decides how much has to be found inside three weeks is worth examining before it is paid.

Neither provision says what the security may consist of. The general standard for what a Turkish public administration accepts as security is section 10 of Law no. 6183: cash; open-ended and unconditional guarantee letters issued by banks and open-ended and unconditional surety bonds issued by insurance companies; government domestic borrowing securities; national stocks and bonds designated by the Government, valued at fifteen per cent below the nearest exchange list; and movable or immovable property attached on a distraint warrant. Which of these the receiving office will take, and in what wording, is a question to put to that office in writing early. A bank letter drawn in the wrong terms is a refused letter, and the period does not stop while it is redrafted.

Under section 11(1) of Law no. 5607, a vehicle detained under section 10(2) is handed to the customs administration under a record showing its distinguishing features — quantity, kind, make, type, model, serial number. If the vehicle comes back months later in a worse condition, that record is the document the argument is run from.

Both provisions give the right to the owner, not to the driver. In most of these files the driver is an employee and the registered keeper is a company abroad, sometimes with a leasing company or a finance holder behind it. The person who has to act is the one furthest from the border post.

Two points are worth stating plainly. The deposit is not an admission: neither provision links it to guilt, to the driver's account of the load, or to anything said in an interview. And the two tracks do not wait for each other. A custody period, a remand hearing and an indictment can all pass while nothing has been done about the vehicle, and the thirty days will have run in the meantime.

The security buys one thing: the return of the vehicle while the case runs. It does not decide confiscation. Under section 13(1) of Law no. 5607, a means of transport knowingly used in carrying smuggled goods may be confiscated only where one of three conditions is met, and then only if the requirements of TCK 54 are also satisfied, including that the vehicle does not belong to a good-faith third party; where the file is run under TCK 188, confiscation is decided under TCK 54 alone. The narcotics themselves are never returned — section 16(1) states that goods to which the confiscation sanction may apply, because they constitute the subject-matter of the offence, cannot be returned to the owner.

On day thirty-one the vehicle is liquidated at once. If liquidation takes the form of a sale, all the costs of keeping and selling the vehicle are met out of the proceeds first, and only the remainder is placed in a deposit account to be dealt with according to the outcome of the prosecution — the wording is the same in section 10(4) of Law no. 5607 and in additional Article 2 of Law no. 2313. If a decision to return is given later, section 16(2) of Law no. 5607 provides that the sale price is paid to the entitled person with statutory interest from the date of seizure to the date of return, the customs administration meeting any shortfall from the relevant budget line. That is a remedy in money. A haulier who needs a tractor unit back is not made whole by it.

The security is the fastest route, not the only one. Under CMK 131(1), where seized property is no longer needed for the investigation or prosecution, or where it is understood that it will not be subject to confiscation, its return is ordered by the public prosecutor, the judge or the court, of their own motion or on application; a refusal can be objected to. Under CMK 268(1) the objection is made within two weeks of the day the person concerned learns of the decision, by petition to the authority that gave it, which corrects its own decision if it agrees and otherwise sends the file to the reviewing authority within three days at most. That route runs alongside the thirty days and does not pause them. Which law is doing the seizing, who may order it, and how confiscation is fought are set out on the page on a foreign-plated vehicle seized in a smuggling case.