Liability for Medical Malpractice in University Hospitals in Turkey

If you were harmed at a Turkish university hospital, your compensation claim is a full remedy action (tam yargi davasi) in an administrative court against the university rectorate, not a civil suit against the doctor. University hospitals are public institutions, so liability runs through administrative law under Article 129 of the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Code (İYUK No. 2577). This guide explains, for foreign patients and their families, who is liable, which court hears the case, the strict deadlines, how fault is proven, and how recent law changes since 2022 affect any criminal complaint against the doctor.

Why University Hospitals Are Treated Differently

Many international patients are treated at Turkish university hospitals, which combine high-volume clinical care with teaching and research. Legally, the decisive fact is that these hospitals are public institutions attached to state or foundation universities. That status changes the entire liability framework compared with a private clinic.

When malpractice occurs in a university hospital, you do not usually sue the individual physician or the department directly. Liability attaches to the administration, on the principle that the State answers for harm caused by public officials carrying out their duties. This rule flows from Article 129 of the Turkish Constitution, which channels claims for harm caused by public servants against the public body that employs them, not against the individual personally, subject to the body's right of recourse.

The practical consequence is significant: the case is heard by an administrative court, not a civil court, and it follows the procedure and deadlines of the Administrative Procedure Code (İYUK No. 2577). Confusing the two routes is one of the most common and costly mistakes foreign claimants make. If you are weighing your options, our medical malpractice lawyers in Turkey can tell you within one review which track applies to your case.

What Counts as Malpractice (and What Does Not)

Medical malpractice is harm caused to a patient by a healthcare professional's error, negligence, or failure to act in line with accepted medical standards. It covers both wrongful acts and wrongful omissions, and it tends to take two broad forms:

• Direct medical error — misdiagnosis, surgical mistakes, wrong or delayed treatment, medication errors, or procedures performed without proper indication.
• Organisational or service fault — inadequate staffing, defective or missing equipment, hygiene failures leading to infection, or poor coordination between departments. In a teaching hospital this can also include inadequate supervision of resident doctors and trainees.

It is essential to separate malpractice from a complication. A complication is a recognised, sometimes unavoidable risk of a correctly performed procedure; if you were properly informed and the standard of care was met, a poor outcome alone does not create liability. Malpractice, by contrast, involves a departure from the proper standard of care. Telling the two apart almost always requires expert medical evidence, which we cover further below.

Informed consent as a ground of fault

One of the most common service-fault grounds is the failure to obtain proper informed consent (aydinlatilmis onam). Under Turkish patient-rights rules, a patient must be told, in understandable terms, the diagnosis, the proposed treatment, its realistic risks and alternatives, and the likely consequences of refusing. A consent form signed without genuine explanation, or a procedure that went beyond what was consented to, can itself amount to fault even where the surgery was technically competent. For a deeper treatment of this point, see our guide to the physician's duty to obtain informed consent.

The Liability Test: Service Fault

Because the defendant is the administration, the case is built on the doctrine of service fault (hizmet kusuru). To succeed, you generally must establish four elements:

1. The treatment was a public healthcare service — satisfied automatically in a university hospital.
2. There was a fault in the way the service was provided — for example untimely, defective, or improper treatment, or failure to obtain informed consent.
3. You suffered actual harm — physical, psychological, or financial.
4. There is a direct causal link between the service fault and the harm.

In limited situations the administration can be liable even without proven fault (strict or faultless liability), under the risk principle (rare, extraordinary harm inherent in a public service) or the principle of equality in public burdens (where one person bears a disproportionate harm from a service that benefits society). These are exceptional and fact-specific.

Liability may be reduced or excluded by force majeure, genuinely unforeseeable circumstances, the fault of a third party, or your own contributory conduct. For how the underlying medical fault is graded against the standard of care, our note on how a physician's legal liability is assessed explains the analysis a court applies.

Who You Sue and Which Court Hears It

In a university hospital case the proper defendant is normally the university rectorate (the legal person of the university), as the public body responsible for the hospital. You do not name the individual surgeon or physician as defendant in the compensation action.

The claim is a full remedy action (tam yargi davasi) before the administrative court with territorial competence where the healthcare service was provided. This is governed by the Administrative Procedure Code (İYUK No. 2577), not the ordinary civil procedure of the Code of Civil Procedure (HMK No. 6100) that applies to private hospitals.

The three hospital types sit on different tracks:

For the parallel public route against state hospitals, see our guide to malpractice claims against state (Ministry of Health) hospitals.

Where the administration pays compensation because of a physician's personal fault, it may later seek reimbursement (a recourse action) from that individual. For university hospitals, recent law has reshaped how that decision is made — explained in the next two sections.

Deadlines: The Mandatory Pre-Application

Administrative cases have a strict two-stage timeline, and missing it can permanently bar the claim. Before filing a lawsuit, you must first make a written application to the relevant administration (the university). Under İYUK No. 2577, Article 13, the application must be made:

• Within one year of becoming aware of the harm; and
• In any event within five years of the event that caused it.

The administration then has 30 days to respond. If it rejects the application, or stays silent (which counts as an implied rejection), you have 60 days from that point to file the full remedy action in the administrative court (İYUK No. 2577, Articles 13 and 11).

How Service Fault Is Proven: Expert Evidence

Administrative malpractice cases are decided on documents and expert reports, not on courtroom cross-examination. Two sources of expert opinion dominate:

• The Council of Forensic Medicine (Adli Tip Kurumu, ATK), the state forensic body whose specialist boards frequently report on whether the care fell below standard and on the degree of any fault.
• University expert panels (bilirkisi) of independent specialists in the relevant field, appointed by the court.

The court relies heavily on these reports to fix both liability and the value of the claim, alongside the hospital's own records. A report is not the last word: a party may file written objections, request clarification, or ask the court to obtain a fresh report from a different board where the reasoning is incomplete or contradictory. In practice, well-drafted objections supported by independent medical input are often what turns a case.

The Criminal Route and the Professional Responsibility Board

A compensation claim against the administration is civil-administrative in nature. Separately, a patient may try to pursue a criminal complaint against the responsible professional under the Turkish Penal Code (TCK No. 5237) — but since 2022 this route has a gate that many older guides miss.

Following Law No. 7406 (Official Gazette, 27 May 2022), which added Additional Article 18 to Law No. 3359, a criminal investigation of a physician or health worker for acts carried out during medical practice cannot start automatically. It first requires an investigation permission (sorusturma izni) from the Ministry of Health's Professional Responsibility Board (Mesleki Sorumluluk Kurulu). The permission procedure follows the model of Law No. 4483, with the time periods applied at double length, and the Board's decision can be challenged before the Ankara Regional Administrative Court.

There is an important distinction for university hospitals:

• State-university physicians are not covered by the Board for this purpose; they remain under the rectorate's own investigation-permission procedure under Law No. 2547, Article 53.
• Foundation-university physicians (like private-sector health workers) fall under the Professional Responsibility Board regime.

The practical message for a foreign patient: you cannot simply trigger an automatic prosecution of the doctor. Whether and how a criminal complaint proceeds depends on this permission step, which is why the administrative compensation claim is usually the primary route. We can advise on both tracks together — see our work on filing a criminal complaint against the physician.

Recourse Against University Physicians After the 2024 Ruling

If the administration pays you compensation and considers the physician personally at fault, it may seek to recover that sum from the doctor through a recourse action. For most health workers, Additional Article 18 of Law No. 3359 gave the Professional Responsibility Board the power to decide whether, and how much, to claim back, within a one-year period.

For university hospitals, a 2024 development changed the picture. The Constitutional Court, in a decision published in the Official Gazette on 2 February 2024 (No. 32448), annulled that rule insofar as it covered state-university physicians, on the ground that letting a central Ministry board decide recourse against academic staff conflicts with university autonomy under Article 130 of the Constitution. As a result, recourse against a state-university physician is now decided by the university itself under its own rules, not by the Ministry's Board.

This is, in any event, a matter between the administration and the doctor — it does not change your right to claim compensation from the university. But it explains why the recourse paragraph in older university-hospital articles is now out of date.

Compensation You Can Claim and How It Is Measured

Turkish law allows recovery of both economic and non-economic loss. In a university hospital case these typically include:

• Material (economic) damages — past and future medical expenses, corrective treatment and rehabilitation, medication, hospitalisation, lost income and loss of earning capacity, and, in fatal cases, funeral expenses and loss of support for dependants.
• Moral (non-economic) damages — compensation for pain, suffering, disfigurement, psychological trauma, and the grief of close family members in death cases.

Material damages are not guessed at. Loss of earning capacity is usually quantified actuarially, using the claimant's income, the disability rate set out in the expert report, and recognised calculation methods, while moral damages are assessed by the court on the facts. Compensation generally carries statutory interest, typically from the date of the administrative application. Where malpractice is fatal, the surviving spouse, children and dependants may bring loss-of-support and moral-damage claims; because these intersect with the estate, our guidance on inheritance and dependant claims is often relevant.

The amounts always turn on the facts and the expert reports. In line with Turkish bar rules, no lawyer can promise a specific sum or guarantee an outcome — be cautious of anyone who does.

Foreign Patients: Running the Claim From Abroad

Foreign and expat patients have the same rights as Turkish citizens when harmed in a Turkish hospital, and you do not need to be in Turkey to claim. A claim can be run entirely from abroad through a Turkish lawyer acting under a power of attorney. The practical sequence usually looks like this:

• Power of attorney (vekaletname) — executed before a notary in your country and apostilled (or legalised at a Turkish consulate), then translated into Turkish so your lawyer can act.
• Medical records — obtained under patient-rights regulations and, where in another language, officially translated.
• Pre-application — the written application to the university, within the one-year and five-year limits.
• Litigation — the full remedy action in the administrative court, where expert reports are obtained and challenged.
• Payment and interest — once the court awards compensation, the administration pays the awarded sum with statutory interest; enforcement steps exist if payment is delayed.

Lexin Legal advises foreign patients and their families on university and public hospital claims from initial assessment through the administrative application and litigation. To discuss your situation, learn more about our medical malpractice service or contact us for a confidential review. Because facts and law are case-specific, a Turkish lawyer should review your situation before you act.

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