Say a London court granted your divorce, or a German court confirmed a debt owed to you. Here, so far, that is paper. A foreign judgment, however final it is at home, carries no direct legal effect here until a Turkish court gives it force. The instrument that opens that door is the Turkish Act on Private International and Procedural Law (MÖHUK), Law No. 5718, together with Türkiye’s treaty obligations for arbitration.
Our foreign-national clients typically arrive in one of two positions. Some need only their status recognised — a divorce, an adoption, a custody or paternity ruling — so that the Turkish civil registry and Turkish institutions treat it as real. Others need to collect: to seize an asset, garnish a bank account or register a property transfer that a foreign judgment or award already ordered. Turkish law treats those two needs differently, and getting the category right at the start saves months.
Recognition (tanıma) versus enforcement (tenfiz)
Get the category wrong and you lose on procedure without anyone looking at the merits. It is the most common defect we see in files clients started themselves.
- Recognition (tanıma) gives a foreign judgment the authority of res judicata — it is accepted as final and binding proof of what it decided. This is sufficient for declaratory and status matters. A recognised foreign divorce, for example, lets the Turkish registry record you as divorced; nothing needs to be “executed” against anyone.
- Enforcement (tenfiz) does everything recognition does and adds executability. Once a judgment is enforced, it can be pursued through Turkish enforcement offices (icra müdürlükleri) exactly like a Turkish court order. You need tenfiz whenever the decision commands a payment, a delivery or an act to be performed in Türkiye.
The practical consequence: a money judgment always needs enforcement, while a pure status judgment usually needs only recognition — and recognition carries a lighter set of conditions, which is why an inheritance dispute or a debt claim should never be filed as a simple recognition case.
Which court hears it? Jurisdiction lies with the Turkish civil courts of first instance (asliye hukuk mahkemesi), and family-status matters such as divorce go before the family court (aile mahkemesi). The proper venue is the defendant’s Turkish domicile; where the defendant is not resident in Türkiye, the courts of Ankara, İstanbul or İzmir have jurisdiction under MÖHUK.
The conditions for enforcement under MÖHUK
A Turkish enforcement court does not retry the merits of your dispute — there is no révision au fond. It instead checks that the foreign judgment satisfies the statutory conditions of Articles 50 to 54 of MÖHUK 5718. In broad terms, the court verifies the following.
- Finality. The judgment must be final and conclusive under the law of the country where it was rendered, evidenced by a finality annotation.
- A genuine court judgment. It must come from a court (or a body treated as one), not from a purely administrative authority.
- Reciprocity. There must be reciprocity with the origin state — by treaty, by statute, or de facto in practice — for enforcement specifically.
- Exclusive jurisdiction not breached. The matter must not fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Turkish courts (for example, rights over immovable property located in Türkiye).
- Public policy. The judgment must not be manifestly contrary to Turkish public order (kamu düzeni).
- Right to be heard. The losing party must not have been deprived of a proper opportunity to defend, and must have been duly summoned before the foreign court.
Reciprocity and public policy produce almost all of the contested litigation. The other conditions are paperwork.
Reciprocity
Reciprocity is required for enforcement but not for recognition. It can rest on a bilateral or multilateral treaty, on a matching provision in the other country’s own law, or on demonstrated practice that Turkish judgments are in fact enforced there. Because reciprocity does not apply to recognition, a foreign divorce can be recognised even where the same country’s money judgments would need a reciprocity showing.
Public policy
The public-policy screen is narrow by design. The court is not asking whether the foreign result matches Turkish substantive law — differences are expected and tolerated. It intervenes only where enforcing the judgment would violate fundamental Turkish values, such as core due-process guarantees or basic principles of Turkish family and personal-status law. In contested files the objection is raised almost as a reflex, and Turkish courts read it narrowly.
Foreign divorce decrees
Recognition of foreign divorces is the single most common request we handle in this area, because until it is done the Turkish registry still records you as married — with knock-on effects for remarriage, inheritance, surname and residency filings. A final foreign divorce decree is recognised by a Turkish family court under MÖHUK, after which your civil-registry (nüfus) record is updated.
Since 2018 there has also been a streamlined administrative route: certain uncontested foreign divorces can be registered directly through the civil registry where the strict statutory conditions are met — both spouses applying, a properly finalised and apostilled decree, and no conflict with Turkish public order — without a full court proceeding. Whether your case fits the registry route or needs a court file depends on the wording of your decree and how it was rendered. We assess both paths and file through the faster one that will actually hold. If your matter also involves custody, spousal claims or a fresh Turkish proceeding, our family & divorce team handles the two tracks together.
Enforcing foreign arbitral awards
Awards have an easier route than judgments. Türkiye is a longstanding party to the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, and Articles 60 to 63 of MÖHUK 5718 govern the domestic procedure. For international commercial parties this is often the most reliable way to bring a cross-border result into Türkiye.
As with court judgments, the enforcing court does not reopen the merits. It reviews only the limited refusal grounds recognised by the Convention — for instance, the absence of a valid arbitration agreement, a party not given proper notice of the proceedings, an award exceeding the scope of the submission, an irregular tribunal, or conflict with public policy and non-arbitrability. The party resisting enforcement bears the burden on most of these grounds, which structurally favours the award-holder.
Most of the cases we take over were losing on documents, not law. A missing finality annotation. An apostille on the wrong sheet. A translation nobody swore. Sort that before the first hearing and there is usually little left to argue about.
The court process and timeline
The procedure has the same shape either way. We prepare a petition supported by an authenticated copy of the foreign judgment or award, its finality annotation, an apostille (or consular legalisation for non-apostille states), and a sworn Turkish translation of everything. The petition is filed in the competent court, the respondent is served — often abroad, which is the step most likely to stretch the calendar — and the court holds a hearing on the statutory conditions rather than the underlying dispute.
An uncontested divorce recognition can conclude in a matter of months. A contested enforcement of a money judgment or arbitral award, especially where service abroad and an appeal are involved, takes longer. What we can control is the file. A complete, apostilled and sworn-translated bundle at filing is worth more than any argument made afterwards.
Debt recovery after enforcement
Enforcement is rarely the client’s real goal — getting paid is. Once a Turkish court grants tenfiz, the judgment becomes an executable title that we take straight to the enforcement office to open proceedings against the debtor: attaching bank accounts, placing liens on real property, and seizing movable assets. Where the debtor obstructs collection, contests the debt or dissipates assets, the matter shifts into contested execution and, if needed, enforcement litigation. Most of this stage is asset tracing rather than advocacy. If nothing findable sits in the debtor’s name in Türkiye, tenfiz on its own leaves you holding another piece of paper.
Not sure which route your judgment needs? Send it. We will read it and tell you what it takes, including when our answer is that filing is not worth the cost. Message us through our contact page or on WhatsApp.
