When a Turkish criminal judgment contains the phrase “hükmün açıklanmasının geri bırakılmasına”, the first question of anyone reading it abroad is whether this is a conviction. A translation does not answer that question, and it should not need to: it avoids leading the reader to the wrong answer by keeping the two layers of the judgment apart and giving the institution its own name. The institution, usually abbreviated HAGB, is in Article 231 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CMK), and its paragraphs have been touched both by a Constitutional Court decision and by a statute. This page deals with the document; the conditions and effects of the institution are not set out here.
Not a separate document
A deferral is not written on a sheet of its own. The court establishes a judgment of conviction and, inside the same judgment, defers the pronouncement of that judgment. The document therefore carries the familiar parts of a criminal judgment: the court and the numbers, the words “In the name of the Turkish Nation”, the full identity of the accused, the reasoning and the operative part. What sets it apart from other judgments is the structure of that operative part, which is built in two layers and must be read in order.
The first layer: the sentence calculated
The operative part first works out the sentence in full: the basic penalty, the increases and reductions applied with their rates, and the resulting sentence, each step with the article it rests on. That chain is translated complete. A sentence of, say, one year and eight months of imprisonment is rendered even though the pronouncement of the judgment containing it has been deferred; leaving it out makes the document incomplete. It is not a sentence being served, and the English text does not present it as one. The distinction is preserved not by a comment from the translator but by the second layer and by the name of the institution. Rates, intermediate results and the units of years, months and days are not converted.
The second layer: the deferral paragraph
After the calculation comes a separate paragraph: that the pronouncement of the judgment established against the accused be deferred under Article 231(5). A paragraph placing the accused under a period of supervision follows, and any measures of probation are listed on separate lines. The paragraphs are rendered in the order and with the numbers the document gives them; the deferral is not appended to the last sentence of the calculation but stays in its own numbered paragraph. The period of supervision and the measures are carried over as written, and no end date is computed and inserted.
Why the word conviction is avoided
Under the current wording of Article 231(5), deferral of the pronouncement of the judgment means that, save for the provisions on confiscation, the judgment produces no legal consequence for the accused. For that reason the word “conviction” is not used on its own in the English version. An explanatory rendering such as “deferral of the pronouncement of the judgment” is used instead; it is a translator’s rendering, not a statutory equivalent. Because a phrase in the target language may remind the reader of an institution in their own system, such as a suspended sentence, the Turkish name is given in brackets at the first mention, and the abbreviation HAGB is rendered together with its full form.
The confiscation order stays outside
The reservation in Article 231(5) for the provisions on confiscation shows up in the structure of the document. Where the judgment has ordered an item or a value to be confiscated, that order is written as a paragraph of its own, outside the definition of a judgment producing no legal consequence. In English it keeps its number and stays separate, rather than dissolving into the deferral paragraph, so that the reader can see from the layout which paragraph belongs to the deferred judgment and which to the confiscation.
Two changes, and an older decision
The text of the Code on mevzuat.gov.tr carries two records for Article 231. The Constitutional Court annulled paragraphs 5 to 14 by its decision of 10 July 2025, E.2024/98, K.2025/149, with the annulment entering into force on 30 September 2026, and the same paragraphs were redrafted by Article 15 of Law No. 7589 of 16 July 2026. The paragraph references, the period of supervision and the notice of remedies in a given decision come from the text that applied on the day it was given, so an older decision is not updated to the newer wording. What the institution requires and produces today is a question for current legislation and for a lawyer, and a foreign authority asking whether a person has a conviction in Türkiye is asking a question the translation does not answer: no note such as “no conviction” is added to the document. Acte Tercüme translates judgments deferring the pronouncement of the judgment into English with their finality annotation where the file needs it.