Under Article 66 of the Turkish Penal Code, Law No. 5237, prosecution is barred after 8 years for offences punishable by up to 5 years or a fine, 15 years for more than 5 and less than 20 years, 20 years for 20 years or more, 25 years for life and 30 years for aggravated life imprisonment. A statement before the prosecutor, a detention order, an indictment or a conviction restarts the clock, but never beyond one and a half times the period (Article 67). Final sentences expire after 10 to 40 years (Article 68). Laws No. 7571 and 7589 left these rules unchanged.
Foreign clients often contact us years after an incident in Türkiye: a bar fight in Antalya in 2016, a business dispute that turned into a fraud complaint, a tenancy quarrel that ended at the police station. They have since left the country, and they want to know whether the file is still alive, whether they can travel back, and whether an old warrant is behind a problem at a border abroad. The answer depends on limitation, zamanaşımı, the passing of time that ends the State's power to prosecute or to enforce a sentence. The rules sit in Articles 66 to 73 of the Turkish Penal Code, Law No. 5237. The judicial reform packages of December 2025 and July 2026 changed several criminal provisions, but, as explained in section 10, they left the limitation articles untouched. This article explains how the periods are calculated, what stops or restarts the clock, which offences never expire, and what a foreigner with an old case should do in practice.
Turkish law runs two separate limitation systems, and confusing them is the most common mistake we see in correspondence from abroad.
The first is limitation of prosecution, dava zamanaşımı, which applies before a judgment becomes final. When it expires, the public action can no longer continue: the prosecutor closes the investigation, or the court issues a decision of discontinuance, düşme kararı. It is governed by Articles 66 and 67 of Law No. 5237.
The second is limitation of enforcement, ceza zamanaşımı, which applies after a conviction has become final. When it expires, the sentence can no longer be executed, although the conviction itself is not erased. It is governed by Articles 68 to 71.
A person who was convicted in absentia years ago and a person who was only questioned once by the police are therefore in very different positions. The first must look at enforcement limitation; the second at prosecution limitation. The first question in any old case is always which stage the file reached.
Article 66(1) fixes five periods according to the penalty the law prescribes for the offence. Unless another law provides otherwise, the public action is discontinued when the following periods have passed:
| Penalty prescribed for the offence | Prosecution limitation period |
|---|---|
| Aggravated life imprisonment | 30 years |
| Life imprisonment | 25 years |
| Imprisonment of not less than 20 years | 20 years |
| Imprisonment of more than 5 and less than 20 years | 15 years |
| Imprisonment of not more than 5 years, or a judicial fine | 8 years |
Under Article 66(4), the period is chosen by the upper limit of the penalty written in the law for the offence, not by the sentence a court would probably impose. Turkish law therefore follows what scholars call the abstract penalty system. Where the law provides alternative penalties, such as imprisonment or a judicial fine, imprisonment is taken as the basis.
Two everyday examples show how this works. Simple fraud under Article 157 carries one to five years' imprisonment, so the period is 8 years. Aggravated fraud under Article 158(1), for example fraud committed through information systems or banks, carries three to ten years, so the period is 15 years.
Article 66(3) adds that the qualified forms of the offence requiring a heavier penalty are taken into account on the basis of the evidence existing in the file. If the file shows that an injury was caused with a weapon, the aggravated form under Article 86(3) is used for the calculation, even if the indictment was drafted more modestly. Conversely, a heavier classification that has no support in the evidence should not be used to keep an old case alive. Defence counsel often argue this point when a prosecutor tries to stretch the period by alleging an aggravating circumstance late in the proceedings.
Article 66(2) shortens the periods for young offenders. For a person who was 12 or older but under 15 at the time of the act, the action is discontinued after one half of the period; for a person who was 15 or older but under 18, after two thirds. A simple fraud committed at 16 is therefore barred after 5 years and 4 months instead of 8 years. Children under 12 have no criminal responsibility at all under Article 31(1), so no prosecution can be brought against them.
Article 66(6) sets the starting point according to the type of offence:
The last rule matters in family cases with an international element. A child abused in Türkiye by a parent who later moved abroad can still see the parent prosecuted long after the events, because the period only begins at the child's eighteenth birthday.
A separate rule covers retrial. Under Article 66(5), where a retrial of the same act is required, the limitation period starts again from the date the court accepts the request for retrial.
Suspension, durma, freezes the period. When the suspending cause ends, the clock resumes from where it stopped; the time already passed is not lost.
Article 67(1) lists three causes. The period is suspended where the investigation or prosecution depends on obtaining a permission or decision, for example permission to investigate certain public officials; where it depends on a question that another authority must resolve first; and, for an offender formally declared a fugitive in accordance with the law, until that decision is lifted.
The fugitive rule needs care. Simply living abroad does not suspend limitation. What suspends it is a formal decision that the person is a fugitive, kaçak. Article 247 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, Law No. 5271, defines a fugitive as a person who hides in Türkiye or stays abroad so that the investigation or prosecution remains inconclusive, and Article 247(2) sets out a public announcement procedure for the serious offences listed in Article 248(2), which include theft, robbery, fraud, drug trafficking and bribery. Whether a valid fugitive decision exists, and when it was made, can change the calculation by years, so the file itself must be examined.
Several procedural mechanisms also stop the clock:
Interruption, kesilme, is more powerful than suspension: the period starts again from zero. Under Article 67(2), the following acts interrupt prosecution limitation:
A statement taken only by the police is not in this list; the statement must be taken before the prosecutor. Under Article 67(3), where there are several interrupting acts, the new period runs from the last one.
Interruption cannot keep a case alive forever. Article 67(4) provides that, in the case of interruption, the period is extended by at most one half of the period the Code lays down for the offence. This produces an absolute ceiling, often called the extended limitation period, uzamış zamanaşımı:
Assume a foreign tourist was accused of simple fraud committed on 1 June 2016. The ordinary period is 8 years. The prosecutor took his statement on 1 March 2017, which interrupted the period, and an indictment followed on 1 September 2018, which interrupted it again. The hearings then stalled because he could not be served abroad. Without any further interrupting act, the new 8 year period counted from the indictment ended on 1 September 2026. If, instead, the court had convicted him in 2025, the period would have started again, but the absolute ceiling of 12 years from the offence date would still end the case on 1 June 2028. Only a suspending cause, such as a formal fugitive decision, could push these dates further. Under Article 72(1), days are counted as 24 hours, months as 30 days, and years according to the official calendar.
Some offences are excluded from limitation entirely:
In addition, Article 66(7) excludes prosecution limitation, and Article 68(3) excludes enforcement limitation, where offences in Part Four of Book Two of the Code, the offences against the State, that carry aggravated life imprisonment, life imprisonment or imprisonment of more than ten years are committed abroad. The current text of Article 66 ends at paragraph 7; we found no paragraph 8 in the consolidated text. For ordinary offences such as fraud, theft, injury, threats or drug possession, limitation always applies.
Once a conviction is final, Article 68(1) sets the periods after which the sentence can no longer be executed:
| Sentence imposed | Enforcement limitation period |
|---|---|
| Aggravated life imprisonment | 40 years |
| Life imprisonment | 30 years |
| Imprisonment of 20 years or more | 24 years |
| Imprisonment of more than 5 years | 20 years |
| Imprisonment of up to 5 years, or a judicial fine | 10 years |
| Confiscation (Article 70) | 20 years from finality |
Here the decisive figure is the sentence actually imposed, not the abstract penalty range. Under Article 68(5), the period runs from the day the judgment became final, or from the day execution was interrupted in any way, for example by escape, and it is calculated on the remaining part of the sentence. For minors, Article 68(2) applies the same one half and two thirds reductions as Article 66(2). Under Article 68(4), a judgment containing different types of penalty is not executed after the period for the heaviest penalty has passed, and under Article 69 deprivations of rights attached to the sentence last until enforcement limitation expires.
Article 71 lists two causes. First, lawful service on the convicted person by the authority competent to execute the judgment, or the apprehension of the person for that purpose. Second, the commission by the convicted person of a new intentional offence carrying imprisonment with an upper limit of more than two years. Unlike Article 67(4) for prosecution, Article 71 contains no one half ceiling, so each valid interruption starts the enforcement period again. A convicted person abroad who is never lawfully served and never apprehended can, however, see the sentence become unenforceable once the period has run.
Article 72(2) provides that both forms of limitation are applied ex officio, and that the suspect, the accused and the convicted person cannot waive them. A court must therefore stop the case when the period has expired, even if nobody raises the point, and an accused who would prefer a full trial cannot insist on one merely by waiving limitation.
There is one important qualification. Under Article 223(9) of Law No. 5271, where an immediate acquittal is possible, the court may not instead issue a decision of discontinuance. If the evidence already in the file shows that the accused did not commit the act, the accused is entitled to an acquittal rather than a mere closure on limitation grounds. For a foreigner whose reputation, visa applications or employment depend on the outcome, that difference can matter, and it is worth asking counsel to argue for acquittal where the file supports it.
Under Article 223(1), a decision of discontinuance is a judgment in its own right, and Article 223(8) requires it wherever a ground of discontinuance under the Penal Code exists. It can be challenged through the ordinary remedies. Once it becomes final, it is the document that proves the case is over.
For offences that can be prosecuted only upon complaint, şikâyete bağlı suçlar, a second and much shorter deadline applies. Under Article 73(1), if the person entitled to complain does not do so within six months, no investigation or prosecution can be conducted. Under Article 73(2), the six months begin when that person learned of the act and of the identity of the offender, but never beyond the limitation period. Since an amendment made by Law No. 7531 in November 2024, the complaint period for insult may not exceed two years from the date of the act in any event.
The two clocks interact in this way: the complaint deadline decides whether a case can be started at all, and the limitation period decides how long a validly started case can last. A victim of a minor injury under Article 86(2), which requires a complaint, who learns the identity of the attacker four years later can still complain within six months, because the 8 year limitation has not yet expired. A victim who learns it after 8 years cannot.
Under Article 73(4), withdrawal of a complaint in an offence prosecuted only on complaint leads to discontinuance of the action, and under Article 73(5) a withdrawal in favour of one participant extends to all of them, but under Article 73(6) it does not affect an accused who refuses it.
Three recent statutes amended the Penal Code or the Code of Criminal Procedure:
None of them amended Articles 66 to 73 of Law No. 5237. The limitation periods, the interruption causes, the one half cap, the enforcement periods and the six month complaint deadline are unchanged. Two indirect effects deserve attention, however. The rewritten Article 231(8) keeps the rule that prosecution limitation is suspended during the HAGB supervision period, and the rewritten Article 247(3) allows a prosecution of a fugitive accused to continue, while forbidding a conviction if the accused was never interrogated. Penalty changes in other articles can also move an offence into a different limitation band, so the version of the law in force at the time of the act must be checked; under Article 7(2) of Law No. 5237, the law more favourable to the offender applies.
Nothing can be calculated without the file. A lawyer with a power of attorney can search the national judicial network for investigation and prosecution records, identify every interrupting act and its date, check whether a fugitive decision exists, and see whether an arrest warrant, yakalama kararı, was issued. Where a power of attorney is needed from abroad, it can be signed at a Turkish consulate. Our article on consulate services and arrest warrants describes how foreigners and dual nationals usually start this process, and our guide on checking a travel ban status explains how to find out whether an exit ban was imposed as a judicial control measure under Article 109(3)(a) of Law No. 5271.
Where Türkiye has requested an international search through Interpol, the notice does not lapse automatically when the Turkish limitation period expires. The practical route is to obtain a final decision of discontinuance or non-prosecution from the Turkish court or prosecutor, together with the lifting of any arrest warrant, and then submit those decisions to the authorities concerned. In extradition proceedings, limitation is also a defence: under Article 10 of the European Convention on Extradition, to which Türkiye is a party, extradition is refused where the person has become immune from prosecution or punishment by lapse of time under the law of the requesting state. A certified Turkish decision is the strongest evidence of that.
An expired criminal case does not lift an entry ban by itself. Under Article 9 of the Law on Foreigners and International Protection, Law No. 6458, an entry ban is imposed by the migration administration for public order, security or health reasons or following deportation, normally for up to five years, extendable by up to ten more years where there is a serious threat. It must be challenged or lifted through administrative channels. Our articles on foreign restriction codes and how to remove them and on the difference between entry and exit bans cover that route. In practice we often run both tracks at once: closing the criminal file first, then using the closure decision in the application to lift the entry ban.
Where the file is still open, limitation has not run, or the calculation is close, returning to Türkiye without advice can lead to detention at the airport. Our criminal law services page explains how we handle such files for clients who are still abroad.
It is the period after which the State can no longer prosecute an offence (Article 66 of Law No. 5237) or execute a final sentence (Article 68). Prosecution periods range from 8 to 30 years depending on the maximum penalty.
Eight years for offences punishable by imprisonment of up to five years or by a judicial fine, such as simple fraud, simple theft or simple intentional injury. With interruptions, the absolute maximum is 12 years.
No. Under Article 66(4), the upper limit of the penalty written in the law decides, together with any aggravating circumstance supported by the evidence in the file.
No. Article 67(2) refers to a statement or interrogation before the prosecutor, a detention order, an indictment or a conviction. A statement taken only by the police does not interrupt the period.
No. Under Article 67(4), interruption extends the period by at most one half, so an 8 year period can never exceed 12 years and a 15 year period can never exceed 22 years and 6 months.
Not by itself. Limitation is suspended only where a formal fugitive decision has been made in accordance with the law, and only until that decision is lifted.
Genocide, crimes against humanity, organisations formed to commit them, and torture. Certain grave offences against the State committed abroad are also excluded under Articles 66(7) and 68(3).
Ten years for sentences of up to five years and judicial fines, 20 years for sentences over five years, 24 years for 20 years or more, 30 years for life and 40 years for aggravated life, counted on the remaining sentence.
No. Article 72(2) makes limitation mandatory and not waivable, but under Article 223(9) of Law No. 5271 the court must acquit rather than discontinue if an acquittal is immediately possible on the file.
Yes. They are halved for offenders aged 12 to 14 at the time of the act and reduced to two thirds for those aged 15 to 17, both for prosecution and for enforcement.
Six months from learning of the act and the offender's identity for offences prosecuted only on complaint, never beyond the limitation period, and never more than two years from the act in the case of insult.
No. Laws No. 7571, 7589 and 7593 amended other provisions, but Articles 66 to 73 of Law No. 5237 remain as they were.
Yes. Under Article 231(8) of Law No. 5271, prosecution limitation is suspended during the five year supervision period after a deferment of the announcement of the verdict.
No. An entry ban under Article 9 of Law No. 6458 is an administrative measure and must be lifted through a separate application or court action, although the closure decision is useful evidence.
Not automatically. You need a final Turkish decision of discontinuance and the lifting of the arrest warrant, which can then be submitted to the authorities handling the notice or an extradition request.
Limitation in Turkish criminal law turns on a few fixed rules: the prosecution periods of 8, 15, 20, 25 and 30 years under Article 66 of Law No. 5237, chosen by the maximum penalty; four interrupting acts and an absolute cap of one half under Article 67; suspension for fugitive decisions, HAGB supervision, deferral of the public action and reconciliation; separate enforcement periods of 10 to 40 years under Article 68; and a six month complaint deadline under Article 73. None of these was changed by the reform laws of December 2025 and July 2026. What varies from case to case is the dates, and a calculation is only as good as the file it is based on.
If you left Türkiye with an unresolved case, face a red notice or an extradition request, or cannot return because of an old file or an entry ban, we can obtain the file, calculate the limitation dates, and apply for the decisions that close the case. To discuss your situation in confidence, contact our legal team.
