Turkish law allows a creditor to start enforcement without first obtaining a judgment (ilamsız takip). The creditor files an enforcement request (takip talebi) with an enforcement office (icra dairesi), and the debtor then receives a payment order (ödeme emri). For a debtor abroad, or a foreign parent company, it is often the first Turkish document in the matter, and it is easy to underestimate: it looks like a form, yet three of its five statutory items are warnings tied to a time limit. Article 60 of the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law (İİK) fixes its contents.
The form number
Enforcement documents are printed forms. Article 19 of the İİK Regulation numbers them: the general payment order is Form 7 (Örnek 7), the payment order for ordinary rent and produce lease claims is Form 13, and the payment order in attachment proceedings based on cheques, bills of exchange and promissory notes is Form 10. The printed form number stays in the translation, because it identifies the type of proceedings more reliably than any English title. Form 10 differs exactly where it matters most: ten days to pay, and five days to object before the enforcement court rather than the enforcement office (Article 168).
Item 1: entries from the enforcement request
The first item carries over the entries Article 58 requires in the request: creditor, counsel, identity or tax number, domicile, debtor, amount, the document or cause of the debt and the route of enforcement chosen. A creditor living abroad gives a domicile in Türkiye, failing which the place of the enforcement office counts as its domicile (Article 58(1)). One entry is deliberately excluded: the bank account number of the creditor or counsel. The account printed on the order belongs to the enforcement office, and an English label presenting it as the creditor’s account would misdescribe where payment goes.
The amount block
Under Article 58(3) the amount is stated in Turkish currency, with the interest and the day from which it runs; for a foreign-currency claim, the request states the exchange rate of which date the claim is based on. Principal, accrued interest, the start date and the type of interest appear on separate lines. Figures are not converted and no rate is added. A phrase fixing the rate at a particular date has legal consequences and is rendered word for word, and two different types of interest remain two different English terms.
Items 2 and 3: pay or object
Item 2 orders payment of the debt and costs within seven days into the enforcement office’s account, or the provision of security where the debt is an obligation to give security. Item 3 bundles three warnings. A debtor who denies the signature on the document relied on must say so separately and expressly within the same seven days, or the document is deemed, for the enforcement proceedings, to have been issued by the debtor. A debtor who denies the signature must attend the hearing before the enforcement court, or the objection is provisionally removed. Any objection to all or part of the debt, or to the creditor’s right to enforce, is raised within the same period, counted from service of the order (Article 62(1)). Each warning becomes a sentence of its own in English.
Item 4: declaring assets
If no objection is raised, the debtor must declare assets within the seven days under Article 74. The warning names two distinct sanctions: coercive detention (hapisle tazyik) for failing to declare, and a separate punishment of imprisonment for failing to declare or for declaring falsely. English keeps two different words for them. The passage is identical on every form, but it is a statutory warning and loses none of its force in translation.
Item 5, copies and annexes
The last item states that enforcement will continue if the debt is neither paid nor contested. The order is made out in two copies, and where they differ the debtor’s copy prevails (Article 60); for enforcement documents signed with a secure electronic signature, the rules on multiple copies and sealing do not apply (Article 8/a), so a single unsealed UYAP print-out is complete. The translation states which copy it was made from. Where the enforcement relies on a document, a certified copy of it is attached to the order (Article 61) and translated as a separate document. Acte Tercüme translates Turkish payment orders and their annexes into English for debtors and their advisers abroad.