Server logs held in Türkiye, the content of an email account or the registration details behind a domain name are usually sought through the mutual assistance provisions of the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime. Türkiye signed the Convention on 10 November 2010 and ratified it on 29 September 2014; it entered into force for Türkiye on 1 January 2015. For anyone preparing the file, the Convention’s most striking feature is an absence: it has no language or translation article, and Türkiye entered no language declaration under it.
No language article
A search of the Convention text for a provision on language or translation returns nothing. The instrument that opens cross-border access to electronic evidence between more than seventy States, including several that share no other mutual assistance treaty, leaves the target language of a request to be found elsewhere. That is deliberate, and Article 25(4) says where to look.
Article 25(4): where the rule comes from
Except as otherwise specifically provided in the chapter on mutual assistance, assistance is subject to the conditions provided for by the law of the requested Party or by applicable mutual assistance treaties, including the grounds on which the requested Party may refuse co-operation. The language and form of a translation therefore come from the assistance treaty in force between the two States, and where there is none, from the law of the requested Party. The Convention neither says that no translation is required nor sets a requirement of its own, and it contains no exemption from authentication and no provision on costs.
Where no treaty applies: Article 27
Where there is no mutual assistance treaty in force between the two Parties, the procedure in paragraphs 2 to 9 of Article 27 applies (Article 27(1)). Under that procedure requests are executed in accordance with the procedures specified by the requesting Party, except where incompatible with the law of the requested Party (Article 27(3)). Those paragraphs contain no language rule either, so the reference in Article 25(4) to the law of the requested Party is what remains.
With Council of Europe States: the 1959 Convention
Between Türkiye and France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg or Germany, the applicable multilateral assistance treaty is the 1959 European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters, whose Article 16 makes translation a matter for declarations. Türkiye has no Article 16 declaration in the Council of Europe records, while Switzerland, Luxembourg and Germany do, and France and Belgium do not. For a cybercrime request the target language is read from that record, State by State, and not from the Budapest Convention.
The United States and Canada
The Budapest Convention also works with two States that are outside the 1959 Convention: it entered into force for the United States on 1 January 2007 and for Canada on 1 November 2015. Between Türkiye and the United States the applicable treaty is the 1979 agreement on extradition and mutual assistance in criminal matters, whose Article 40 has requests and all supporting documents drawn up in the language of the requesting Party and accompanied by faithful and complete translations into the language of the requested Party, while the translation of records, statements and documents obtained in response is left to the requesting Party. For Canada, Article 25(4) points to the treaty applied between the two States or to the law of the requested Party.
Türkiye’s authorities, and urgent requests
Türkiye designated the Ministry of Justice as the central authority responsible for sending and answering requests for mutual assistance, executing them or transmitting them to the competent authorities (Article 27(2)(c)), and named the same Ministry for extradition and provisional arrest (Article 24(7)(a)). The 24/7 point of contact under Article 35 is the cybercrime department of the Turkish national police, named in the Council of Europe record as the Turkish National Police, Department of Cybercrime, in Ankara. In urgent cases a request may be made by expedited means of communication such as fax or email, with formal confirmation to follow where the requested Party requires it (Article 25(3)). Some States use their contact point declaration to state a working language: Morocco names Arabic and French, Monaco French and English.
No protocol, no separate rule
The Council of Europe records contain no signature or ratification by Türkiye for the Second Additional Protocol of 2022 (CETS 224). In a file involving Türkiye the language question therefore stays with Article 25(4) of the main Convention and with the assistance treaty behind it. Acte Tercüme translates requests, judicial decisions and their annexes on this route into Turkish for authorities in Türkiye, and Turkish requests and their annexes into English or French.