Offered Uzlaşma After an Injury Accident in Türkiye — what settling closes, and what you give up

Uzlaştırma is not a private arrangement between you and the injured person. It is a statutory procedure under Article 253 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CMK). Once the prosecutor finds sufficient suspicion for an indictment in an offence within the mediation list, the file is sent to the uzlaştırma office, a mediator from the Ministry of Justice list is appointed, and that mediator makes a formal offer to each side.

The offer has a deadline. Under CMK 253/4, if you do not communicate your decision within seven days of the offer being made to you, you are treated as having refused it. The mediator must close the process within thirty days of receiving the file copies, a period the office may extend twice, by no more than twenty days each time (CMK 253/12). So the whole window is short — usually well under three months.

If a settlement is reached and you perform your side of it in one go, the prosecutor issues a decision not to prosecute. There is then no indictment, no trial and no sentence. The mediator's fee and the other mediation costs are borne by the Treasury when a settlement is reached (CMK 253/22).

Negligent injury under Article 89 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) is expressly listed in CMK 253/1-b-2, and it is listed regardless of whether the offence requires a complaint. That matters, because complaint and mediation are two different exits and they do not always both stay open.

The base offence in TCK 89/1 carries four months to two years of imprisonment or a judicial fine. The sentence is increased by one half if the injury caused, among other results, a permanent weakening of a sense or organ, a bone fracture, a fixed mark on the face, or a life-threatening condition (TCK 89/2), and it is doubled for the graver results in TCK 89/3, such as loss of an organ's function. Where more than one person was injured, TCK 89/4 sets a separate range of nine months to five years.

Under TCK 89/5 the offence is complaint-based, but with an exception: where the case goes beyond the first paragraph and the driving amounted to conscious negligence — foreseeing the result yet not wanting it, under TCK 22/3, which itself raises the sentence by one third to one half — no complaint is needed and withdrawal will not close the file. Mediation still can. Note also that a complaint must be filed within six months of the injured party learning of the act and of the driver (TCK 73/1).

Two structural points decide many files:

• More than one injured person. Mediation can only proceed if all of them accept (CMK 253/7). One refusal ends it for everyone.
• More than one driver at fault. Only the person who settles benefits from the settlement (CMK 255). Your co-suspect's file continues on its own track.

Distance is a real obstacle here. If a party cannot be reached because they are abroad or not at the address on file, the investigation is concluded without any mediation attempt (CMK 253/6) — which usually means an indictment. The mediator may serve the offer abroad by explained notification or by letter rogatory (CMK 253/4), so if you have left Türkiye, keeping a Turkish address of service and a lawyer on record is what keeps this route open. The general mechanics of the procedure are set out in our note on criminal mediation in Türkiye.

The outcome depends on two things: the stage the file has reached, and whether you perform immediately or over time.

Three consequences deserve attention before you sign anything.

The civil claim closes with the criminal file. Once a settlement is reached, no compensation action may be brought over the same offence, and a pending action is deemed abandoned — except for damage that could not be identified at the moment of settlement or that emerges afterwards (CMK 253/19). For an injured party whose treatment is still ongoing, that exception is the whole negotiation. For you, it means a settlement signed too early may not be as final as it looks.

The report is enforceable against you. If you do not perform, the settlement report counts as a document having the nature of a judgment under Article 38 of the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law (CMK 253/19). The other side does not need to sue you; they can go straight to enforcement — and the criminal case opens as well.

Talking is not confessing. Statements made during the mediation sessions cannot be used as evidence in any investigation, prosecution or lawsuit (CMK 253/20), and the sessions themselves are confidential (CMK 253/13). Agreeing to sit down does not put an admission of fault into your file. Refusing to attend, however, counts as refusing the settlement.

The obligation you accept does not have to be a payment. The prosecutor checks only that the settlement rests on the parties' free will and that the obligation is lawful (CMK 253/17).

Refusing is a real option, and sometimes the correct one — for instance where the accident report and the expert findings put fault on the other driver, or where the injury does not meet the medical thresholds the indictment assumes. But you should compare the settlement against what actually replaces it, not against an acquittal you hope for.

If convicted at trial, the most common softening for a first offence in this range is deferral of the announcement of the judgment (HAGB) under CMK 231. It applies where the sentence imposed is two years or less, and it requires that you have no previous conviction for an intentional offence, that the court is satisfied you will not reoffend, and — importantly — that the damage suffered by the victim or by the public has been fully made good by restitution or compensation (CMK 231/6). Where you cannot pay at once, the court may allow monthly instalments across the supervision period (CMK 231/9). You are then under supervision for five years (CMK 231/8); stay clean and the case is dismissed at the end (CMK 231/10), but a new intentional offence or a breach means the judgment is announced. The decision is kept in a separate register accessible only to a prosecutor, judge or court in connection with an investigation (CMK 231/13). We set out that mechanism, and how it differs from a suspended sentence, in our note on HAGB and suspended sentences.

So the practical comparison is this: with HAGB you will very likely still pay the injured party, but two or three years later, after a trial, with five years of exposure attached and a file that a court can revive. Settlement removes all of that in weeks. There is no sentence, so there is nothing to enter as a conviction — a point that matters for the Turkish criminal record extract you may later need for a residence or work permit.

For a foreign driver there is a further cost that never appears in the file: time and movement. Pending a case, a judge may impose judicial control instead of detention, on the prosecutor's request, and the first measure on the list is a ban on leaving the country (CMK 109/3-a). Months of that is often more damaging than the sum in dispute. Before you answer the mediator, read the offer against the fault allocation and the medical report in your file — the elements that decide the charge itself are set out in our main page on traffic accidents causing injury in Türkiye.