Litigation & Arbitration

Two separate questions face any foreign party with a Turkish dispute: where the dispute should be resolved, and whether the resulting decision will actually be enforceable against assets. They are different questions, and answering only the first is how good judgments end up worthless.

Turkish courts hear commercial disputes through the commercial courts of first instance, with appeal to the regional courts and, where the route is open, to the Court of Cassation. Certain subjects have designated specialist courts. Arbitration is a genuine alternative: Türkiye is a party to the 1958 New York Convention, and ISTAC has become a workable seat for regional disputes.

Enforcement is where the technical work sits. A foreign court judgment requires a Turkish enforcement action, and the conditions it must satisfy are set by statute — including reciprocity, which is required for enforcement but expressly not required for the recognition of status decisions such as divorce. Foreign arbitral awards travel on the New York Convention and face a narrower set of refusal grounds. Getting this distinction wrong costs years.

The guides below cover court procedure, arbitration, recognition and enforcement, debt recovery and interim measures. For maritime disputes see maritime and admiralty law; for the commercial background see corporate and commercial law.