A müzekkere is the official letter a court or prosecutor’s office sends to another body to carry out a decision: the land registry is asked for a record, a bank for information, an institution is told of a measure. Foreign readers usually find it in a copy of the case file, right behind the decision it implements. The first question for the English rendering is whether the letter is itself a decision. It is not.
Where the word lives
The word belongs to registry rules and enforcement law rather than to the procedural codes; it does not appear in the text of the HMK or the CMK. For criminal courts, the Registry Services Regulation keeps müzekkereler written to other bodies because of an interlocutory decision, and the replies to them, out of the correspondence register and records them only in the dispatch register (Article 157(3)). In civil courts, carrying out interlocutory decisions and chasing müzekkereler that have received no reply fall to the court clerk, and the postal and dispatch steps that get them to their addressees fall to the court usher (Article 169(4)(b), (4)(g) and (5)(e)). The registry manager writes the müzekkereler needed to collect court fees (Article 206(1)). In enforcement law, once an immovable has been sold at auction, a müzekkere goes to the land registry to register it in the buyer’s name (İİK Article 135).
Why “warrant” and “writ” mislead
Dictionaries and translation memories often offer “warrant” or “writ”. Both name a command: a warrant usually authorises an arrest or a search, and a writ is a formal order a court addresses to a person or an officer. The Turkish müzekkere is not the order; it transmits one. What commands is the interlocutory decision behind it. Even for arrest, the CMK uses its own term, yakalama emri, not müzekkere (Article 98). A rendering built on a command word gives the letter a force it does not have, and a reader abroad may look for a remedy against it that belongs to the decision instead.
The suggested rendering
The suggested rendering describes the function: “letter from the court to [name of the body] (müzekkere)”. Where the heading names the addressee, the phrase takes it in, for example “letter from the court to the Land Registry Office”. A letter asking for court fees to be collected becomes “letter requesting collection of court fees”, with its legal basis and items left as they stand in the text. The Turkish word in brackets at the first mention lets the reader match the translation to other papers in the file.
Memorandum, note and the follow-up letter
A literal approach produces “memorandum” or “note”. An English reader hears in those words an internal note or a text agreed between two parties, not an official letter from one authority to another that expects an answer. Tekit belongs to the same family: it is the second letter sent when the first went unanswered, and “reminder” or “follow-up letter” renders it. Where an interlocutory decision and the müzekkere that carries it out are translated together, they are labelled as two documents, “interlocutory decision” and “letter from the court”, each with its own date and number.