An attachment record (haciz tutanağı) is the sheet an enforcement officer writes at the place where goods are attached, and it is the document a creditor or debtor abroad is sent when something has actually been taken. It is not a court decision and carries no reasoning, yet it decides practical questions: which goods were caught, at what hour, at what appraised value, and who said the goods were theirs. Article 102 of the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law (İİK) fixes its core, and Article 41 of the Regulation on that Law adds the rest.
What Article 102 asks for
For movable property a record is drawn up at the place of the attachment stating the names of the creditor and the debtor, the amount of the claim, the day and hour at which the attachment was made, the goods attached and the values appraised for them, and any claims of third parties; it is signed by the officer carrying it out. Where the property is immovable, the office notifies the attachment to the registry concerned under Article 91, and the record drawn up on the spot sets out the kind and nature of the immovable, its boundaries and its necessary qualities. Where goods had already been the subject of a precautionary attachment, the record notes the right of that earlier holder to participate, and where attachable goods are insufficient or absent, that too is recorded.
A longer list in the Regulation
Article 41 of the Regulation turns the record into a form with named fields: the parties, the amount, the date and hour, where and in whose presence the attachment was made, the goods and their appraised values, the name, capacity and address of any custodian with the fee fixed for him or the reason none was fixed, the claims of the debtor and of third parties, the name, profession and address of an appraising expert with the fee fixed, the participation of other creditors and any additional attachments made for that reason, and for an immovable its kind, nature, boundaries and value. The record is Form 19 among the printed forms enforcement offices are obliged to use. Field names are rendered as labels in the translation, and an empty field stays visible as an empty field rather than disappearing.
The hour, the place and the presence
Three entries do work that a summary destroys. The hour separates two attachments made on the same day and can decide who comes first. The place shows where the goods were found, which is not necessarily the address on the enforcement papers. The line naming those present shows whether the debtor, a representative or a caretaker stood there, and whether a police officer or a locksmith attended. The bottom of the record carries the signatures of the officer, the creditor or the creditor’s representative and the debtor or his representative, and a missing signature is an entry in itself.
Values are appraised, not converted
The value beside each item is an appraisal made for the purposes of the enforcement, sometimes by the officer and sometimes by an expert. In English the figure stays as written, in Turkish lira, with no conversion and no rounding, and the word used for it says what it is, an appraised value rather than a price or a market value. Descriptions of goods are copied with their serial numbers, plates, models and quantities, since the same list will be checked against the goods at the sale.
Three days to say something
Article 103 sets a short clock. Where neither the creditor nor the debtor, nor anyone authorised to receive documents on their behalf, was present while the record was drawn up, the absent party is invited to the enforcement office to examine the record and state any objections within three days; where an authorised person was present, a copy of the record is handed to that person and no separate notice is given. The invitation is a form of its own, Form 22, which repeats the three-day warning (Regulation, Article 45). Article 104 adds that the participation of new creditors and the additional attachments made for it are noted at the foot of the record, and that each participating creditor may obtain a full copy. A translation renders the three days as three days and does not work out the last date.
When the record becomes a certificate
The record has a second life that surprises readers used to a bare inventory. Under Article 105, where no attachable property is found, it has the effect of the certificate of insolvency provided for in Article 143, and where the appraised goods turn out to be insufficient it serves as a provisional certificate of insolvency and gives the creditor the rights set out in Article 277. A single line reading that no attachable property was found is therefore one of the strongest lines in the file, and it is translated in full rather than noted as a nil return. Acte Tercüme translates Turkish attachment records, the invitations sent with them and third-party claims into English.