Public prosecution in a Turkish criminal case is opened by the indictment (iddianame), drawn up by the public prosecutor at the end of the investigation. When the suspect lives abroad, or a foreign company or victim is involved, it is one of the first documents a lawyer outside Türkiye reads. The Code of Criminal Procedure (CMK, Law No. 5271) fixes its contents in Article 170, and several parts carry details that a loose translation blurs.
Heading and addressee
The indictment opens with the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, the investigation number, the file number and the indictment number, and it is addressed to the competent court, typically an assize court or a criminal court of first instance (Article 170(3), opening words). Each number is copied exactly, since together they identify the file at every later stage. The claimant line often reads “K.H.”, short for kamu hukuku (public law); the translation spells it out instead of leaving an unexplained abbreviation.
The persons named
Items (a) to (g) cover the suspect, defence counsel, the deceased, victim or injured party, their representative, the informant where disclosure raises no concern, the complainant and the date of the complaint. The indictment names a suspect (şüpheli), the word Turkish procedure uses during the investigation; once prosecution begins, the person is the accused (sanık). Keeping “suspect” in the indictment and “accused” in later documents lets the reader follow the stage of the case.
Offence and provisions applied
Item (h) states the offence charged and the provisions to be applied, usually as references to the Turkish Criminal Code (TCK) with article, paragraph and sub-paragraph, in a notation such as “TCK 142/2-h, 43/1, 53”. The notation stays exactly as written. The translator spells out the abbreviation at its first mention but does not match the Turkish articles to offences in the reader’s own law; that reading belongs to the lawyer.
Place, time and custody
Item (i) asks for the place, date and time period of the offence. The time period is an element of its own, and an entry such as “at night” is kept, because in Turkish criminal law the time of an offence can affect how it is qualified. Item (k) states whether the suspect is detained and, if so, the dates and durations of custody and detention. Dates and durations are copied as written and never recalculated.
Evidence and the narrative
Item (j) lists the evidence. Article 170(4) then requires the events forming the offence to be explained in connection with the available evidence and, since a 2021 amendment, excludes information unrelated to those events and that evidence. The narrative is the prosecutor’s account, written in the prosecutor’s voice, and the translation keeps that voice rather than recasting it as neutral reporting.
The conclusion and the penalty sought
Article 170(5) has the conclusion set out the points in the suspect’s favour as well as those against, and Article 170(6) adds the penalties and security measures requested, with any measure against a legal person stated expressly. The favourable points remain the prosecution’s words; a translator does not move them into the voice of the defence. A penalty requested is not a penalty imposed, and the English verbs keep that difference visible.
Naming the document in English
“Indictment” is the usual English rendering, and it serves well with a translator’s note on its basis: the document the public prosecutor files under CMK Article 170 to open the public prosecution. A term the reader knows from their own procedure brings that procedure with it, and the note keeps the Turkish document from being read as something it is not. The court examines the indictment within fifteen days and may return it only on the grounds listed in Article 174(1), and not because of the legal characterisation of the offence (Article 174(2)); one not returned in time is deemed accepted (Article 174(3)).
What the Code says about translation
The CMK contains no article providing that a suspect who does not speak Turkish receives the indictment in a written translation. Article 202 provides for an interpreter appointed by the court, through whom the essential points of the prosecution and the defence at the hearing are interpreted. A written English translation of an indictment serves counsel or the person concerned for their own use, or proceedings outside Türkiye. Acte Tercüme translates Turkish indictments into English in full, with every number, reference and date as in the original.