In a Turkish criminal case the minutes of the hearing are the only admissible proof of how that hearing was conducted, and Article 222(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CMK) says so in one sentence: how the hearing was held, and whether it was held in accordance with the procedure and principles set out in the Law, can be proved only by the minutes, and only an allegation of forgery may be directed against them. For defence counsel abroad, for a consulate following a case or for a foreign complainant, this makes the minutes more important than any summary of the proceedings, and a translation of them is read line by line.
A heading of three lines
Article 220 keeps the heading short: the name of the court where the hearing was held, the dates of the sessions, and the names of the judge, the public prosecutor and the clerk. The plural in the second item is not an accident, since one set of minutes can carry several sessions held on different days, each opening with its own date. In English the session dates stay as separate dated blocks, because a statement made at the second session is not a statement made at the first.
Nine items in the body
Article 221(1) lists the contents in lettered items: the names of the accused, defence counsel, the intervening party, their counsel and legal representative, the expert, the interpreter and the technical adviser attending the sessions; the elements reflecting the course and the results of the hearing and showing that all the fundamental rules of the procedure were observed; the statements of the accused; witness statements; the explanations of experts and technical advisers; the documents read or whose reading was dispensed with; requests and, where refused, the reason for the refusal; the decisions given; and the judgment. The list is the skeleton of the document, and where a court prints its own headings the translation follows those headings while keeping the order of the items intact.
The interpreter has a line of its own
Among the persons named in item (a) is the interpreter. For a case with a foreign accused, that line is the only place in the file that records who interpreted at a given session, and it is copied exactly as printed, with the spelling of the name untouched. The interpreter at a hearing works orally; a written translation of the minutes produced afterwards is a different act by a different person, and it does not enter its own name into that field. Where an interpreter appears in one session and not in the next, the difference stays visible in the English text.
Read, refused, or dispensed with
Two items record what happened to material rather than what was said. Item (f) covers documents read out and documents whose reading was dispensed with, and the difference between the two is a procedural fact the reader may be looking for. Item (g) covers requests and, if one was refused, the reason. A refused request with its reason is translated as a pair, and a request granted without comment is not given a reason it does not have.
Statements are entered, not transcribed
The statements of the accused, of witnesses and of experts enter the minutes through the court, and the printed text is what the clerk wrote at the judge’s direction rather than a verbatim transcript of speech. That is why passages read like reported summaries with sudden shifts of tense. The English version keeps them as they are and does not smooth them into a script; where the minutes note that a passage was read back and confirmed, that note is part of the entry. Where the steps taken at the hearing were recorded by technical means, the recordings are converted into written minutes without delay (Article 219(1)), so the document in hand is again the written text, not the recording.
Signatures, and the judgment inside the minutes
The minutes are signed by the presiding judge or the judge and the clerk, and where the presiding judge has an excuse the most senior member signs (Article 219(1) and 219(2)). The last item in Article 221(1) is the judgment, so the result of the case is inside the minutes at the point where it was pronounced. A party may therefore hold two documents that both contain a result: the minutes of the last session, and the reasoned judgment written afterwards. The translation says which of the two it renders, and it does not describe the minutes as the judgment. Acte Tercüme translates the minutes of Turkish criminal hearings, including the session blocks and the entries on refused requests, into English.