She Says She Will Withdraw: why that can end the case when mediation cannot

Two exits get confused in a TCK 123/A file. Uzlaştırma — criminal mediation — is a procedure the state runs: the prosecutor refers the file, a mediator is appointed, and performance of the agreement produces a decision not to prosecute. Şikayetten vazgeçme — withdrawal of the complaint — is a declaration by one person, made into the file, that ends a complaint-dependent case by operation of law.

Only the second exists here. CMK 253/3 provides that even where investigation and prosecution depend on a complaint, mediation cannot be resorted to in offences against sexual integrity, in persistent following under article 123/A, or in insult. The same paragraph goes further: where an offence within the scope of mediation has been committed together with an offence outside that scope against the same victim, the mediation provisions do not apply at all. Threat under TCK 106/1 is expressly listed as a mediation offence in CMK 253/1-b, so a threat allegation standing alone would have gone that way. Add TCK 123/A against the same complainant and it does not.

The mediator's telephone call that relatives keep telling you to wait for is not late. It is not coming. What that procedure involves in the files where it does apply is set out under criminal mediation and CMK 253.

TCK 123/A/3 makes both investigation and prosecution dependent on a complaint, and TCK 73/4 provides that in complaint offences the withdrawal of the person harmed drops the case.

What decides whether it works is where it is made. A withdrawal takes effect when it reaches the file: recorded in a statement before the prosecutor or the court, or filed as a petition in the investigation or the case. A message to you saying she will withdraw, or a signed paper passed through a mutual friend, closes nothing. Until a decision follows — non-prosecution at the investigation stage, or discontinuance under CMK 223/8 once the file is in court — you remain a suspect or a defendant, and every summons binds you.

• There is an outer limit. TCK 73/4 provides that a withdrawal made after the judgment has become final does not prevent the sentence being carried out.
• It covers everyone charged. Under TCK 73/5, a withdrawal in respect of one participant in a jointly committed offence extends to the others.
• You can refuse it. Under TCK 73/6 a withdrawal does not affect a defendant who does not accept it. A defendant who wants a judgment on the merits rather than a discontinuance may decline.
• The civil side needs words of its own. Under TCK 73/7, a complainant who withdraws and states at that moment that she also waives her personal claims can no longer bring a civil action.

The third of those is a real decision. A discontinuance records that the case ended, not that the allegation was untrue. Neither it nor an acquittal is a conviction, but which certificate shows what is a separate question, dealt with under the judicial record and the archive record.

A withdrawal reaches the charges that depend on a complaint, and only those. In a file that began as messages, several of the things sitting beside TCK 123/A do not.

The 6284 order is what catches people out. A first order may run for up to six months; article 10/5 states that failure to pronounce or serve it does not prevent enforcement; and breach is met under article 13 with three to ten days of coercive detention, fifteen to thirty for each repetition, up to six months in total. A withdrawn complaint touches none of that, and how the order runs alongside the criminal file is set out under 6284 orders and domestic violence allegations.

Most withdrawals that never happen are lost in the week somebody decides to go and ask for one. Every route to her is the conduct the article describes: TCK 123/A covers attempted contact through communication devices, through information systems, or through third persons, so the mutual friend carrying your message commits the act you would. Where a 6284 order has been served, that message also engages TCK 123/A/2-c, lifting the range to one to three years and opening the remand that CMK 100/4 had closed on the basic form.

The pressure point is separate again. CMK 100/2-b-2 makes it a ground for detention where the suspect's conduct raises strong suspicion of an attempt to put pressure on a witness, the victim or others. A brother telephoning her family to discuss a withdrawal reads, on paper, exactly like that. Nor is any of it protected: CMK 253/20 shields statements made during mediation negotiations, and there is no mediation here to shield them. Transfers, intermediaries and the messages arranging them become evidence.

Money cuts both ways. Where a withdrawal is made conditional on payment, TCK 107/1 punishes compelling another to provide an unjust benefit by reference to something one has a right or a duty to do: one to three years and a judicial fine of up to five thousand days. But the record of that demand is also the record of your negotiation, so it is preserved and handed to counsel, not answered.

She will normally be represented. CMK 234/1-a-3 lets a victim in persistent-following files ask the bar association to appoint a lawyer at the investigation stage, and CMK 234/1-b-5 repeats it for trial. That is the address for anything you want conveyed. What the charge has to establish on persistence and on effect is set out on the page on stalking and threat allegations in Türkiye.