When a Turkish court document has been served, the proof of that step is a separate sheet called the service record (tebliğ mazbatası), and a reader abroad usually wants one thing from it: the date, because periods for answering, objecting or appealing run from it. The record is not a receipt the sender drafts. Its contents are fixed by Article 23 of the Service Law (Law No. 7201) and repeated with more detail in Article 35 of the Regulation on the Implementation of that Law, and every line of it belongs in the translation.
Nine items the Law requires
Article 23 lists what the record contains: the name of the authority issuing the service; the name, surname and address of the party requesting it; the same particulars of the person to be served; the subject of the service; to whom it was handed and, if to someone other than the addressee, that person’s name, surname, address and capacity to receive it; where and when it was made; the steps taken where the situation in Article 21 arose, with the reason given for absence or refusal; a record of service made to the address in the address registration system; and the signature of whoever received the document together with the name, surname and signature of the serving officer. Article 35 of the Regulation follows the same order in lettered sub-paragraphs. In English the items keep their numbering, and none of them is folded into prose.
The date, and the hour beside it
Article 35(1)(e) of the Regulation asks for the date of service, the hour and the place. Two of those three are often overlooked. The hour is part of the entry and is carried over as written, and the place is the address at which the officer stood, which is not always the address printed on the envelope. Dates are reproduced in full, and a day and month order is not converted without a note, since a record dated the fourth day of a month can otherwise be read as April.
Handed to someone other than the addressee
Turkish service does not require the document to reach the addressee in person. Where it was handed to someone else, the record names that person and states that they were capable of receiving it, which under Article 34 of the Regulation means apparently not under eighteen and not obviously lacking capacity. For a legal person, Article 21 of the Regulation allows service on a permanently employed officer or employee where those authorised to receive it are absent, and where even they are absent the record says so. A translation that reduces all of this to “served on the company” removes the fact the receiving reader needs.
When nobody was at the address
Article 21 of the Service Law covers the case where neither the addressee nor anyone who could receive the document is at the address, or where receipt is refused: the document is left against signature with the neighbourhood headman, a member of the council of elders or a police officer, and a notice giving the address of the recipient is affixed to the door of the building. The date of affixing counts as the date of service. Article 30 of the Regulation adds that the officer asks the neighbours, the building manager, the caretaker, the headman or the police about the reason for absence, writes their statements into the record and has them signed, and signs the entry himself if they refuse. These handwritten statements are translated as statements, with the speaker named, and not summarised as a finding of the officer.
Signature, fingerprint and the officer’s line
The closing block holds the signature of the person who received the document, with their capacity, and the name, surname and signature of the serving officer. Where the recipient cannot write enough to sign, Article 24 of the Law and Article 37 of the Regulation provide for a thumbprint taken in the presence of a witness, and the record states which hand and which finger was used and why. Those lines look like clerical detail and are exactly what a challenge to the service later turns on, so the English version marks each signature, stamp and print in brackets at its place instead of collapsing them into one word.
The envelope, the form and what a reader abroad checks
The record is printed on the envelope itself: Article 73 of the Regulation has the documents placed in an envelope bearing a service record, prepared according to the specimen in its annex, and the enforcement regulation lists the same envelope among its own forms. Two situations produce no record at all, because handing a document over at a hearing or at the registry against signature, or between counsel against receipt, counts as service without one (Regulation, Articles 58 and 61). One further provision decides many disputes: under Article 32 of the Law, service not made in accordance with the procedure is nevertheless valid if the addressee became aware of it, and the date the addressee states is then deemed the date of service. A translation therefore renders the entries and leaves the counting of periods to counsel. Acte Tercüme translates Turkish service records, the documents served with them and their annexes into English, with every entry in the position it occupies on the sheet.