Pecuniary and Non-Pecuniary Damages in Turkey: A Foreigner's Compensation Guide

Pecuniary (material) damages compensate a quantifiable financial loss, such as medical bills, repairs or lost income; non-pecuniary (moral) damages compensate intangible harm, such as pain, suffering and damage to your reputation. A traffic collision in Istanbul, a botched medical procedure, a broken business contract or an online attack on your name can each give rise to a damages claim (tazminat) under Turkish law. This guide explains how foreigners recover both kinds of loss, how courts set the amount, and how to protect your rights before the deadlines run out.

What Are Pecuniary and Non-Pecuniary Damages?

When someone harms you through a wrongful act, Turkish law lets you claim damages (tazminat) to shift the burden of that harm back onto the person who caused it. Liability law in Turkey is restorative, not punitive: its goal is to put you back in the position you were in before the harm. The law recognises two distinct categories.

The difference in one table

A single event, such as a serious accident, can trigger both at once: medical bills and lost wages (pecuniary) alongside pain and suffering (non-pecuniary).

The Four Pillars of a Damages Claim

A tort claim under the TBK generally rests on four elements. If even one is missing, the claim usually fails.

• An unlawful act (haksız fiil). Conduct that breaks a legal rule or duty of care: violating a statute, breaching a contract, infringing an absolute right (property, intellectual property, personality rights), or acting against good faith (dürüstlük kuralı, TMK art. 2).
• Damage or harm (zarar). Without demonstrable harm there is no compensation. This is the pecuniary or non-pecuniary loss above.
• Causation (illiyet bağı). You must show the unlawful act actually caused the harm. The link must be adequate; an intervening cause such as force majeure or the victim's own gross fault can reduce or break it.
• Fault (kusur). In most cases the wrongdoer must be at fault. Fault runs from intent (kast), through gross negligence (ağır ihmal), to slight negligence (basit ihmal). The degree of fault strongly influences the award, especially for moral damages.

Strict (no-fault) liability

In some situations fault is not required. The operator of an inherently dangerous activity, such as a motor vehicle, bears hazard-based liability (tehlike sorumluluğu), which is why a registered vehicle owner can be liable even without driving. Employers carry vicarious liability (adam çalıştıranın sorumluluğu) for harm an employee causes on the job.

Restoring the victim

The guiding principle for pecuniary damages is restoration to the original condition (restitutio in integrum). Courts assess actual loss (fiili zarar), loss of profit (yoksun kalınan kâr) such as lost future earning capacity, and consequential losses, including loss of financial support (destekten yoksun kalma) for the dependants of someone wrongfully killed.

Common Types of Damage Claims

The foundations apply across the board, but each scenario has its own rules, court and deadline. The table that follows is an orientation, not a substitute for advice on your facts.

Traffic accidents

Liability usually forms a triangle: the at-fault driver (liable on fault), the vehicle owner/operator (strictly liable under hazard-based liability), and the insurer under Mandatory Financial Liability Insurance (Zorunlu Mali Sorumluluk Sigortası, ZMSS), governed by the Highway Traffic Law (Karayolları Trafik Kanunu, Law No. 2918, "KTK"). You can sue any or all of them. Two often-overlooked rights: diminution in value (araç değer kaybı) for the permanent loss in a repaired car's resale value, and the settled principle that the dependants of an at-fault deceased driver can still claim loss-of-support damages against that driver's own traffic insurer, because their support claim is their own right, not one inherited from the deceased. The insurer's defences against its own policyholder are limited in that situation.

Workplace accidents and occupational disease

Employers owe a very high duty of care, and liability is near-absolute unless the event was genuinely unavoidable (kaçınılmazlık). The Social Security Institution (SGK) pays initial benefits; a follow-up suit recovers only the surplus above those benefits, after the present value of SGK payments is set off. These employment claims need mandatory mediation before filing.

Medical malpractice

The key question is whether the harm was an unavoidable complication or a preventable error. Liability can arise from inadequate informed consent (aydınlatılmış onam), diagnostic or treatment errors, or organisational fault (organizasyon kusuru). The court path differs sharply: a claim for medical malpractice compensation against a private hospital is civil (usually in the Consumer Courts), while malpractice at a public hospital is a "service fault" (hizmet kusuru) pursued as a full-remedy action (tam yargı davası) against the administration in the Administrative Courts.

Breach of contract

Contractual damages distinguish positive (expectation) damages, which include lost profit and place you where you would have been had the contract been performed, from negative (reliance) damages. A penalty clause (cezai şart) can be claimed without proving loss, though a judge may reduce an excessive (fahiş) penalty. The Turkish Commercial Code (TTK, Law No. 6102) governs breach-of-contract damages between merchants, which also require mandatory mediation as a precondition to filing.

Defamation and personality rights

Turkish law protects honour, dignity and reputation (şeref ve haysiyet) from unlawful attacks, including on social media. A claimant must satisfy the directedness requirement (matufiyet): the statement must identify them clearly enough that an ordinary reader knows who is meant. Abusing the right to complain by filing a knowingly baseless report can itself be a tort.

How Turkish Courts Calculate Damages

Quantifying loss blends objective calculation with judicial discretion.

The calculation: pecuniary damages

In complex injury or wrongful-death cases the court appoints an actuarial expert (hesap bilirkişisi) who works out the loss using salary evidence, the fault split, official life-expectancy tables (such as the TRH 2010 table) and a statutory discount rate. Bodily-injury awards are built in layers: treatment expenses (tedavi giderleri), temporary incapacity (lost earnings during recovery), and permanent incapacity (loss of future earning capacity to retirement, multiplied by the disability rating and discounted to present value). In wrongful-death cases, dependants claim loss of support (destekten yoksun kalma) plus funeral expenses, after deducting the deceased's own personal consumption.

The discretion: non-pecuniary damages

TBK art. 56 empowers the judge to award an "appropriate amount" (uygun bir miktar) of moral damages for bodily injury or death; for personality-rights claims the basis is TBK art. 58. There is no fixed formula. The judge weighs the severity of the act, the degree of fault, the nature and intensity of the harm, the economic and social standing of both parties, and the date of the incident. The award must give genuine solace and a deterrent effect without causing the victim's unjust enrichment (sebepsiz zenginleşme).

Deadlines, Reductions and Key Doctrines

Statute of limitations (zamanaşımı)

Deadlines are strict; miss them and the right to sue is generally lost for good. Under TBK art. 72, a general tort claim faces a two-year period running from when you learn of the damage and the liable party, and an absolute ten-year long-stop from the date of the act, whichever expires first. A vital lifeline: if the act is also a crime under the Turkish Penal Code (TCK, Law No. 5237) carrying a longer limitation period, that longer criminal deadline applies to the civil claim. Limitation can be interrupted (kesilme) by suing, starting enforcement, or the debtor's acknowledgment or part-payment, and suspended (durma) in defined situations.

Joint and several liability (müteselsil sorumluluk)

Under TBK arts. 61–62, where two or more parties cause the same indivisible harm, each is liable to the victim for the full amount. You can recover 100% from any one of them; that party then pursues the others through a right of recourse (rücu hakkı). This shifts the burden of apportioning fault away from the innocent victim.

Equitable reductions

Courts have broad discretion over the extent of an award. Under TBK art. 51 the judge sets the scope of damages by reference to the circumstances and the degree of fault, and may temper an award where fault is slight. Under TBK art. 52 the award can be reduced for the victim's contributory fault, consent to a known risk, or other equitable grounds, and the victim's duty to mitigate loss (zararı azaltma külfeti) is weighed here. A free, courtesy ride (hatır taşıması) is a classic example that can justify a reduction.

Mandatory Mediation Before You Sue

For a growing list of claims, pre-suit mediation (arabuluculuk) is now a condition of the action (dava şartı): file without it and the court dismisses the case on procedural grounds.

The mechanics matter for your deadline. Once an application is made, the mediation process is meant to conclude within weeks; if the parties do not settle, the mediator issues a final report of disagreement (son tutanak). You attach that report to your statement of claim. Critically, the clock on your limitation period stops while mediation is pending, so a good-faith mediation does not eat into the time you have left to sue. Mediation that is not a precondition (for example, an ordinary tort claim) remains available on a voluntary basis and can still produce a fast, enforceable settlement.

Filing, Litigating and Enforcing a Claim

Before court: evidence and pre-litigation steps

Act fast to preserve evidence: photograph the scene, secure official reports such as the Traffic Accident Detection Report, identify witnesses, and keep every medical record, invoice and proof of lost income. A formal notarised demand letter (ihtarname) can place the other side in default (temerrüt), which starts interest and signals that you are serious.

The lawsuit

Litigation runs under the Code of Civil Procedure (HMK, Law No. 6100). It begins with the Statement of Claim (dava dilekçesi) and its prayer for relief (netice-i talep). A Turkish judge cannot award more than you demand, but procedure allows a one-time amendment (ıslah) to raise your claim once an expert report quantifies the full loss. The case then runs through the exchange of pleadings, the preliminary examination hearing, and the investigation (tahkikat) phase with witnesses, expert reports (bilirkişi raporu) and site inspections. Decisions can be appealed to the Regional Court of Appeal (istinaf) and then the Court of Cassation (Yargıtay).

Securing the assets first: interim attachment

The biggest fear for any claimant is winning on paper against a defendant who has emptied their accounts. Turkish law answers this with interim (precautionary) attachment (ihtiyati haciz) for monetary claims and interim injunction (ihtiyati tedbir) for other rights. On a sufficient showing, and usually against security, the court can freeze a defendant's assets before judgment so that something remains to enforce against. Raising this early is often decisive.

Costs and legal aid

Expect an application fee, a proportional fee on the sum claimed, and an expense advance (gider avansı). Those who cannot afford the fees may apply for legal aid (adli yardım).

Enforcement and interest

Once a judgment is final (kesin) and annotated as such, you begin enforcing a Turkish damages judgment through judgment enforcement (ilamlı icra) under the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law (İcra ve İflas Kanunu, Law No. 2004, "İİK"). The Enforcement Office can trace assets, levy bank accounts, seize property and garnish wages.

Default interest generally runs from the date of the event for torts, from the date of default for contracts, and the date interest begins on moral damages is itself frequently litigated; many Yargıtay decisions run it from the date of the wrongful act rather than the filing date. Your lawyer will frame the interest claim in the petition to protect this.

Cross-Border Issues for Foreign Claimants

Currency and value of an award

Turkish court awards are generally expressed and paid in Turkish lira (TRY). Where the loss itself is in foreign currency (for example, a contract priced in euros or repair invoices paid abroad), you can ask the court to award in that currency or by reference to it, which protects you against lira depreciation between the event and payment. This should be pleaded deliberately at the outset.

Enforcing against a defendant or assets abroad

If the defendant or their assets sit outside Turkey, a Turkish judgment must be recognised and enforced in that country under its own rules. Conversely, a foreign court judgment can be enforced in Turkey only after a Turkish recognition-and-enforcement action (tanıma ve tenfiz) under MÖHUK, where the court checks matters such as reciprocity, due process and public policy, but does not retry the merits. Planning the forum with this end-game in mind, before you sue, often matters more than the judgment itself.

Tax on the compensation you receive

Compensation paid for actual material or moral harm is, in principle, not treated as taxable income in Turkey: the Revenue Administration has confirmed that court-ordered moral compensation is not wage income and is not subject to income-tax withholding, and that damages paid against real loss are not a gratuitous transfer caught by inheritance and transfer tax. Tax treatment can still vary with the nature of the payment, so confirm the position for your specific award.

Frequently asked questions