In a Turkish civil case the hearing minutes (duruşma tutanağı) are not a courtesy record. Article 156 of the Code of Civil Procedure (HMK) provides that the preliminary examination, the taking of evidence and the trial steps can be proven only by the minutes. A lawyer abroad who needs to know what happened at a hearing, who attended and what the court ordered reads the minutes, usually in translation. Article 154(3) lists what must always be written in them, and that list gives the document its structure.
Court, place, day and hour
Item (a) requires the name of the court and the place, day and hour at which the hearing opened. The heading usually adds the Docket (Merits) No. and the session number. Each is copied exactly, and the court’s name receives a descriptive English equivalent at its first mention with the Turkish name in brackets.
The bench, the parties and the interpreter
Item (b) requires the names of the judge, the clerk, the parties present and their counsel and legal representatives, any secondary intervener (fer’î müdahil) and the interpreter. The interpreter’s line matters in cross-border cases, because it shows that a party or witness was heard through an interpreter. The written translation leaves that line as recorded, and the translator who renders the minutes later does not insert their own name: the court made the record, not the translator. Item (c) states whether the hearing was public or held in private, a single word that is still translated.
Declarations read back and signed
Item (ç) covers the declarations with the heaviest consequences: admissions, the taking of an oath, consent to withdrawal of the action, waiver of the claim, acceptance of the claim, and settlement negotiations and their outcome. They are entered on condition that they are read to the person who made them and signed by that person. Entries such as “okundu, imzası alındı” (read out, signature taken) are therefore part of the legal content. They stay beside the declaration they belong to and are not dropped as formulae.
Summarised and dictated statements
Under item (d), statements of parties, witnesses, experts and specialists are recorded on condition that they are read back. The judge has statements entered through the clerk, in summary if necessary (Article 154(1)), and with the judge’s permission a party may dictate directly (Article 154(2)). A dictated statement often appears in the first person or in quotation marks, whereas a summary is in the third person. The English version preserves that difference; turning first-person words into reported speech would make a party’s own statement look like the court’s summary.
Documents, requests and decisions
Items (e) to (h) cover a summary of steps taken outside the hearing, the documents submitted, the parties’ requests concerning the examination of the case and matters other laws require to be recorded, the interlocutory decisions and the result of the judgment, and the manner in which the decision was pronounced. Documents referred to in the minutes count as annexes to them (Article 154(4)), so a request to translate the minutes should say whether the annexes are included. Interlocutory decisions usually close the minutes as numbered items, which keep their numbers in English.
Signatures, fingerprints and certified copies
The judge and the clerk sign the minutes at once (Article 155(1)). A person who cannot sign gives a fingerprint, and the minutes state which finger was used (Article 155(2)); an entry such as “left thumb” is translated as written. Copies bear the court seal and are certified as conforming to the original by the head of the registry (Article 158(1)), and that certification appears as a separate block in the translation. Where the minutes were signed electronically in UYAP, sealing does not apply (Registry Services Regulation, Article 5(13)), so an unsealed print-out is not treated as incomplete. Acte Tercüme translates Turkish civil hearing minutes into English, with their annexes where the file needs them.