Near the end of almost every Turkish decision there is one sentence that decides how much time a party has left, and in translation it is the sentence most often flattened: the notice of remedies. It names the remedy that may be used, the period for using it, the authority it goes to and the form it takes. A reader abroad who receives the decision weeks later needs that line rendered exactly, and needs to know from what moment the period runs.
Where the requirement comes from
In criminal matters Article 34(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CMK) requires every decision of a judge or court, including any dissent, to be written with reasons, and dissents to be shown in the copies; Article 34(2) then requires decisions to state the remedy that may be resorted to, its period, the authority and the forms. In civil matters the requirement sits inside the list of the contents of a judgment: Article 297(1)(ç) of the Code of Civil Procedure (HMK) has the result of the judgment, the costs, the refund of any unused advance and any remedies with their period. Administrative procedure is drafted differently: the list of contents in Article 24 of Law No. 2577 contains no such item, so its absence from an administrative judgment is not by itself a defect.
Four elements in one line
The criminal wording asks for four things, and each of them is a separate piece of information: which remedy, how long, before whom, and in what form. A decision may say that an objection lies within a stated number of days before a named judgeship, or that an appeal lies before a named regional court. The authority is a named institution and is rendered descriptively with its Turkish name in brackets, the period is rendered in the unit the decision used, and the form, such as a petition submitted to the court that gave the decision, is kept. Where a criminal judgment states the same matters in its operative part, that statement stays where the court placed it.
Pronounced, or served
The starting point matters as much as the length. A civil judgment is given and pronounced at the hearing at which the proceedings end (HMK Article 294(2)), and pronouncement is in every case made by entering the result of the judgment in the minutes of the hearing and reading it out (Article 294(3)). Where, for compulsory reasons, only the result of the judgment was pronounced, the reasoned judgment must be written within one month of the date of pronouncement (Article 294(4)). Article 321(2) adds the condition that is easy to lose: in compulsory cases the judge may pronounce by having only a summary entered in the minutes, provided the reason for this is entered in the minutes as well, and the reasoned judgment must then be written and sent out for service within one month at the latest. In criminal matters a decision given in a party’s presence is explained to them and a copy given on request, while decisions open to a remedy are served on a party who could not attend, apart from those on protective measures; a detained party has the served decision read out and explained (CMK Article 35). A translation reproduces whichever starting point the decision names and does not substitute the other.
Kesin is not the same as final
Two Turkish words meet in this part of a document and both are often rendered as final. A decision described as kesin is one against which no remedy lies, so no period is running at all. A decision that has become final in the sense of kesinleşme has exhausted or outlived the remedies, which is a later event recorded elsewhere in the file. Where the notice line says the decision is kesin, the English version says that no remedy lies against it rather than that it has become final.
If the line is missing
Omitting the line has consequences the Code spells out. A person who has missed a period without fault may ask for restoration of the former state, and CMK Article 40(2) deems a person to be without fault where the right to resort to a remedy was not notified to them. The request goes, within two weeks of the removal of the obstacle, to the court that would have carried out the procedural steps (Article 41(1)); the court that would have decided the merits rules on it, acceptance is final, a refusal may be objected to, and the request does not stay execution although the court may postpone it (Article 42). So a decision arriving without a remedy line is itself a fact, and a translator does not repair it by adding a line the original does not have.
What a translation does with the line
Three habits keep this sentence safe. Periods stay in their own units, with no conversion and no calculated last date. A period that a later statute has changed is rendered as the decision prints it, since an older decision states the law of its own day. And the line stays in the same place and at the same length, neither promoted into a heading nor summarised as a note. Acte Tercüme translates Turkish decisions into English together with their notice of remedies and the entries recording pronouncement and service.