Dispute Resolution in Turkey

A foreign business or investor facing a dispute in Turkey is choosing between several genuinely different paths, mandatory mediation, ordinary litigation, arbitration, and the enforcement mechanism, that each lead to a different forum, a different timeline, and a different enforceability profile, and the choice is not always voluntary. Commercial claims for payment of money are routed through mandatory mediation by law before a court will even accept the case, while a debt already reduced to a court judgment skips mediation entirely and goes straight to enforcement. A constitutional ruling delivered this past February reopened part of the cassation appeal landscape that had been considered settled for years. Getting the structural picture right at the outset, which forum applies, which is mandatory, and which is faster, shapes the entire strategy that follows.

This guide maps the Turkish dispute resolution landscape: the court system structure, mandatory mediation, the cassation threshold and its 2026 reform, and how this connects to litigation, arbitration, and debt collection as the more specific paths covered in their own dedicated guides.

Legal Notice: This page provides general legal information for educational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice. For guidance specific to your situation, please consult a qualified attorney.

The Turkish Court System

Turkey’s judicial structure is divided into several branches: the ordinary judiciary (civil and criminal courts), the administrative judiciary (administrative and tax courts, culminating in the Council of State), the constitutional judiciary (the Constitutional Court), and separate jurisdictional dispute, electoral, and accounts judiciary branches. For commercial and civil disputes, the relevant structure is the ordinary judiciary.

First instance courts comprise General Courts (Civil Courts of Peace for smaller and specific matters, Civil Courts of First Instance, and Commercial Courts of First Instance for commercial disputes specifically) and Specialist Courts established by particular statutes, including Labour Courts, Family Courts, Consumer Courts, the Intellectual Property Courts covered in our IP litigation guide, Cadastre Courts, and Enforcement Courts. Where a commercial court of first instance has not been established in a particular location, the civil court of first instance assumes that jurisdiction.

Since 2016, a three-tier appellate structure has applied: first instance courts, Regional Courts of Appeal (Bölge Adliye Mahkemesi), which review first instance decisions for both factual and legal correctness, and the Court of Cassation (Yargıtay), which reviews Regional Court of Appeal decisions for legal correctness only, not the underlying facts. This added a genuine intermediate layer of judicial scrutiny compared to the two-tier system that existed before 2016, improving legal certainty but also, by most informed accounts, lengthening the overall time to a final, unappealable judgment.

The Cassation Threshold and the February 2026 Constitutional Court Ruling

This is a genuinely current development, decided this year, and one that changes the appeal landscape for a meaningful category of cases.

The General Rule

Under Article 362 of the Code of Civil Procedure No. 6100, cassation review before the Court of Cassation is generally not available for disputes below a defined monetary threshold, which is increased annually at the official revaluation rate under the Code’s Supplementary Article 1. As of 1 January 2026, this threshold stands at TRY 682,000. Disputes valued below this figure, where a Regional Court of Appeal decision would otherwise be final, were until recently genuinely unappealable to the Court of Cassation regardless of the outcome at the appellate level.

The February 2026 Ruling

The Constitutional Court, in a decision dated 26 February 2026 (E.2026/49, K.2026/48), published in Official Gazette No. 33260 on 21 May 2026, unanimously annulled Article 362(1)(a) of the CPC to the extent it applies to cases where the Regional Court of Appeal partially or fully accepts the appeal. The Court’s reasoning states that where a Regional Court of Appeal overturns or modifies a first instance decision, it is rendering a substantively new decision for the first time, not simply affirming the lower court. Closing that new decision off from any cassation review at all, regardless of monetary value, constitutes a disproportionate interference with the constitutional right to have a judgment properly examined. The ruling followed an earlier, related Constitutional Court decision (27 March 2025, E.2024/189, K.2025/83) striking down an analogous restriction in the administrative court system, suggesting a consistent constitutional principle being applied across both branches of the judiciary.

Practical implication: Parties who succeed on appeal before a Regional Court of Appeal, securing a reversal or modification of an unfavourable first instance ruling, can no longer have that success rendered unreviewable simply because the case falls below the monetary threshold; cassation review remains available to the other party in that specific scenario. Where the Regional Court of Appeal instead rejects the appeal and affirms the first instance decision, the monetary threshold continues to apply as before. This is a real, current change to appellate strategy for parties with disputes valued below TRY 682,000, and one we factor into the assessment of any case approaching the Regional Court of Appeal stage.

A narrower exception remains untouched: Reinstatement actions under Article 20 of Labour Law No. 4857, disciplinary sanction annulment actions, and certain actions under the Trade Unions and Collective Bargaining Agreements Law No. 6356 are governed by their own separate statutory cassation exclusion, independent of the CCP provision the Constitutional Court addressed, and remain closed to cassation review even after this ruling.

Mandatory Mediation: A Condition the Court Checks Before It Will Even Hear the Case

This is the single procedural step most likely to catch foreign parties by surprise, because in many jurisdictions mediation is purely voluntary, while in Turkey, for a defined category of disputes, it is a precondition the court verifies before the lawsuit can proceed at all.

Where It Applies

Mandatory mediation was introduced for labour disputes on 1 January 2018, and extended to commercial disputes through Article 5/A of Turkish Commercial Code No. 6102, effective 1 January 2019, governed together with the Law on Mediation in Civil Disputes No. 6325. It applies specifically to commercial disputes involving claims for payment of a sum of money, compensation, or related monetary claims, the category that constitutes the bulk of ordinary commercial litigation. Whether a specific dispute falls within scope requires a case-by-case assessment against current judicial practice, since the boundaries of “commercial dispute” within the meaning of Article 5/A are not always self-evident from the statute’s text alone.

A lawsuit filed without first attempting mediation where it is required is dismissed on procedural grounds, not decided on the merits, representing a costly and entirely avoidable error for a party that simply files first and tries mediation later, or skips it on the assumption it is optional.

The Process and Timeline

Mediation is conducted by a registered mediator, either appointed through the official Mediation Bureau or chosen by the parties, who must remain impartial throughout. For commercial disputes, mediation must conclude within six weeks, extendable by a further two weeks in appropriate cases, being a genuinely fast timeline compared to the multi-year horizon of full litigation. If mediation succeeds, the resulting settlement agreement, once its enforceability is confirmed by the relevant peace court of first instance where required, carries the same enforceable force as a court judgment. If mediation fails, the dispute proceeds to litigation, with the mediation requirement now satisfied.

What Falls Outside Mandatory Mediation

This is a point worth knowing specifically, since it affects creditors weighing their options after a dispute has already been determined. Enforcement proceedings under the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Code, where a creditor is collecting on an already-established right rather than litigating a live dispute, do not require mandatory mediation first. The Court of Cassation confirmed this position decisively in a February 2025 ruling (Yargıtay 11th Civil Chamber, E. 2024/2949, K. 2025/977), reasoning that an enforcement action is not an adjudication of the underlying dispute’s merits at all, and that the Article 5/A list of mediation-required commercial actions is exhaustive and does not include enforcement proceedings. This matters in practice because a creditor with a clear monetary claim can, and often should, consider the direct enforcement route, including Turkey’s distinctive enforcement without judgment mechanism, discussed in our Debt Collection guide, rather than assuming mediation is always the required first step for every money claim.

Voluntary Mediation and Other ADR

Outside the mandatory categories, parties can still choose voluntary mediation for disputes not otherwise subject to the requirement, and Turkish practice also recognises conciliation, being a related but distinct process where the neutral third party can propose a resolution rather than purely facilitating the parties’ own negotiation.

Arbitration as an Alternative Forum

For commercial and particularly cross-border disputes, arbitration under International Arbitration Law No. 4686 (for disputes with a genuine international element) or the arbitration provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure (for domestic arbitration) offers confidentiality, party autonomy in selecting arbitrators with relevant subject-matter expertise, and, generally, a faster path to a final, binding decision than court litigation, since arbitral awards cannot be appealed in the way court judgments can, only challenged through a narrow annulment action on limited statutory grounds. Turkey’s ratification of the New York Convention supports the cross-border enforceability of awards rendered here, and institutions including the Istanbul Arbitration Centre (ISTAC) and the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce Arbitration and Mediation Center (ITOTAM) provide institutional arbitration services for both domestic and foreign parties. The full mechanics of choosing and conducting arbitration in Turkey are covered in our dedicated Arbitration guide.

Litigation Timelines in Practice

First instance commercial proceedings typically take roughly one to three years, depending on case complexity, evidentiary requirements, and the specific court’s caseload, with Regional Court of Appeal review adding a further 18 to 30 months or more where an appeal is pursued. Mediation, by contrast, concludes within weeks where it succeeds. Filing an appeal does not, as a general rule, stay enforcement of the underlying judgment, meaning a successful claimant can generally begin collecting on a first instance judgment while an appeal is pending, representing a point that shapes the strategic calculus for both sides considerably. The fuller procedural detail of litigation itself, including evidentiary stages, interim measures, and the specific appeal mechanics, is covered in our dedicated Litigation guide.

Choosing the Right Path

A monetary commercial claim against a Turkish counterparty generally must go through mediation first if it falls within Article 5/A’s scope, regardless of preference, making the real strategic question how to use that mandatory six-week window effectively rather than whether to use it at all.

A dispute with a genuine cross-border element, or where confidentiality and arbitrator expertise matter more than the wider precedential value of a published court judgment: It is often better suited to arbitration, assuming the parties’ underlying contract included or can still agree to an arbitration clause.

A debt already reduced to a clear, undisputed monetary obligation is generally a debt collection and enforcement question rather than a fresh litigation question, and Turkey’s enforcement without judgment mechanism can move considerably faster than initiating new proceedings from scratch.

A dispute genuinely requiring judicial determination on contested facts or law, where mediation has failed or does not apply and arbitration is not available under the parties’ agreement, proceeds through the ordinary court litigation track described above.

We assess this routing question at the outset of every new matter, since choosing the wrong path, attempting litigation where mediation is mandatory, or litigating where a debt is already enforceable without a fresh lawsuit, costs real time that a five-minute strategic assessment at the outset would have saved.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is mediation mandatory for all disputes in Turkey?

No, only for specific categories, currently labour disputes and certain commercial monetary claims under Article 5/A of the Turkish Commercial Code. Many other dispute types can proceed directly to litigation or arbitration without a mandatory mediation step.

What happens if I file a lawsuit without attempting required mediation first?

The court dismisses the case on procedural grounds without examining the merits. This is an entirely avoidable error, and confirming whether mediation applies before filing is a basic first step in any commercial dispute.

What changed with the February 2026 Constitutional Court ruling on cassation?

Where a Regional Court of Appeal partially or fully accepts an appeal (overturning or modifying the first instance decision), cassation review before the Court of Cassation is now available regardless of the dispute’s monetary value, even below the TRY 682,000 threshold that otherwise applies. The threshold remains in effect where the Regional Court of Appeal instead rejects the appeal.

Do I need to attempt mediation before enforcing an existing debt?

No. The Court of Cassation has confirmed that enforcement proceedings do not require mandatory mediation, since they do not involve adjudicating a live dispute’s merits. Creditors with an established claim can generally proceed directly to enforcement.

How long does it take to resolve a commercial dispute in Turkey?

Mediation, where it applies, concludes within six to eight weeks. Full litigation through first instance typically takes one to three years, with appeals adding significant further time. Arbitration generally falls between these, often concluding within 12 to 18 months.

Can I appeal an arbitration award like a court judgment?

No. Arbitral awards are binding and cannot be appealed on the merits. They can only be challenged through a narrow annulment action on limited statutory grounds, and filing such an action does not automatically halt enforcement of the award.

Working With Aslan Attorney

Aslan Attorney advises businesses and individuals on dispute resolution strategy in Turkey, including forum selection, mandatory mediation, litigation, and arbitration. Our services cover dispute assessment and strategic routing at the outset of a matter, representation in mediation, litigation through all instances including current cassation practice, and coordination on arbitration and enforcement matters covered in more depth in our dedicated guides.

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