Turkish civil procedure has two levels of appeal. The first, istinaf, is heard by a regional court of appeal (bölge adliye mahkemesi); the second, temyiz, is brought against the regional court’s decision before the Court of Cassation (Yargıtay). English has one everyday word, “appeal”, for both, and a translation that uses it without a qualifier leaves the reader unsure which stage the file has reached. This page concerns the first stage and the petition that opens it, whose contents are listed in Article 342(2) of the Code of Civil Procedure (HMK).
Naming the stage in English
“Istinaf appeal” or “appeal to the regional court of appeal” keeps the stage visible, and the document can be introduced as a “petition of appeal (istinaf dilekçesi)”. The Turkish word earns its place in brackets because the same file may later hold a temyiz petition, which has different contents and goes to a different court. Whatever rendering is chosen at the first mention, every later document in the file uses it unchanged.
A heading with two courts
The petition may be lodged with the first-instance court that gave the decision or with a court at another place, and the person lodging it receives a receipt free of charge (Article 343(1)). The heading therefore often names two authorities: the court receiving the petition and the civil chamber of the regional court of appeal to which the file will go. Both stay in the translation, in their original order. Keeping only the regional court would hide where the petition was actually filed, and court numbers and city names are never altered.
Two roles for each party
Item (a) asks for each party’s role in the case, name, surname, Turkish identity number and address; item (b) for legal representatives and counsel. A party therefore appears with two labels at once, for example “istinaf eden (davacı)”, the appellant who was the claimant at first instance. English carries both as “appellant (claimant)” and “respondent (defendant)”. Dropping the bracketed role forces the reader to work out from the summary who sued whom.
The decision appealed and the date of service
Item (c) identifies the decision by court, date and number, which in practice means the Docket (Merits) No. and the Decision No. in year and sequence form. Item (ç) gives the date on which the decision was served on the appellant. That date is there because of the time limit: istinaf is brought within two weeks, counted as a rule from service of the judgment on each party (Article 345). The translation copies the date and does not compute a last day, since a deadline added by the translator would be a statement the petition never made.
Summary, grounds, relief and signature
Items (d), (e) and (f) are the summary of the decision, the grounds of appeal with their reasoning, and the relief sought. The summary reports what the first-instance court decided; the grounds explain why that is contested. They are separate headings in Turkish and stay separate in English. Grounds are often numbered and may be cited by number in the other side’s response, so the numbering stays, quotations from the judgment keep their quotation marks, and the relief sought keeps its order and scope. Item (g) is the signature; a petition created in UYAP with a secure electronic signature is not sent again on paper (Article 445(2)), and its electronic signature entry is rendered as such.
Gaps, copies and appeal thresholds
The Code does not attach the same consequence to every gap: a petition that identifies the appellant, bears a signature and sufficiently identifies the decision is not rejected because other elements are missing (Article 342(3)). A translation neither fills such gaps nor sharpens a vague date. Copies are attached for each opposing party (Article 342(1)); they repeat one text, so one text is translated. Which decisions can be appealed at all is governed by Article 341, whose monetary thresholds are revalued every year under Additional Article 1, and a threshold quoted in the petition stays exactly as written. Acte Tercüme translates istinaf petitions and their annexes into English, and English-language exhibits into Turkish.