When the bank writes 'karşılıksızdır' on it, the holder has a bank payment to collect, a ten-day enforcement route, a three-year limitation period and a criminal complaint that ends the moment the drawer pays with interest.
A supplier in Milan ships machinery to a company in Bursa and accepts three cheques, each dated a month apart, in place of a bank guarantee. The first is paid. The second comes back from the bank with a stamp on the reverse and a figure that is a fraction of the face value. The Turkish customer explains that a customer of its own has failed, asks for patience, and stops answering. The Italian supplier now holds a document that Turkish law treats with unusual seriousness: a cheque marked karşılıksızdır, “without cover”, is at once a bill of exchange enforceable without judgment, a claim against the bank for a statutory sum, and the basis of a criminal complaint that the drawer can end only by paying with interest.
This article explains what a foreign holder of a Turkish cheque can do once it bounces, following the current text of the Cheque Law No. 5941, the cheque provisions of the Turkish Commercial Code No. 6102 (“TCC”) and the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law No. 2004 (“EBL”). It begins with the presentation periods that decide whether any of the remedies exist, moves through the bank’s own liability, the enforcement route and the three-year limitation, and ends with the criminal complaint, the cheque ban and the effective-remorse rule that makes the complaint the most effective collection tool of all. The post-dated cheque, which Turkish business uses as an instrument of credit, has its own rule and its own deadline, and both are covered.
1. Presentation: The Periods in TCC Article 796 and the Post-Dated Cheque Until 2028
A cheque is payable at sight; any contrary statement on it is treated as unwritten (TCC Article 795(1)). Everything else about the holder’s rights depends on presenting the cheque to the drawee bank within the statutory period, because both the bank’s obligation and the holder’s recourse against the drawer and endorsers are tied to a presentation within that period. TCC Article 796 fixes the periods: a cheque payable in the place where it was drawn must be presented within ten days; a cheque payable elsewhere in Türkiye within one month; a cheque drawn in one country and payable in another within one month if the two places are on the same continent and within three months if they are not, the Article treating a European country and a Mediterranean-coast country as the same continent for this purpose. Under Article 796(3) each period starts on the day after the issue date written on the cheque.
Turkish commercial practice adds a complication that foreign creditors must understand before they accept a cheque at all. The ileri tarihli çek, the post-dated cheque, is a cheque whose written issue date is later than the day it is handed over; it functions as a promise to pay on that date. TCC Article 795(2) would ordinarily allow such a cheque to be presented and paid before its written date, but the Cheque Law suspends that rule. Under Provisional Article 3(5) of the Cheque Law, as most recently amended by Law No. 7566 of 4 December 2025, presenting a cheque for payment before the issue date written on it is ineffective until 31 December 2028. Article 3(8) draws the consequence: where a cheque presented before its written date is not paid, no legal proceedings may be taken on it, and a post-dated cheque can be enforced only if it is presented within the legal period counted from its written date and is then marked as unpaid. A foreign holder who presents early therefore obtains nothing, and the ten-day or one-month period has not even begun to run.
The practical rule is simple. Diarise the written issue date, present on or after it and within the period in Article 796, and present through a Turkish bank, because presentation to a clearing house counts as presentation (Cheque Law Article 8(3)) and the clearing route is how a foreign bank’s collection request reaches the drawee.
2. What the Bank Must Pay: Cheque Law Article 3
The Cheque Law makes the drawee bank a guarantor of part of every cheque leaf it issues. Under Article 3(3), for each cheque leaf presented within the period by a holder other than the drawer, the bank must pay a statutory amount even where the account contains nothing: the full statutory amount where there is no cover, or the amount needed to bring a partial cover up to the statutory figure, never exceeding the face value. The Article calls this an irrevocable non-cash credit agreement between the account holder and the bank concluded when the cheque book was delivered. The figure written in the statute is one thousand lira, but the same paragraph provides that it is redetermined every January by the Central Bank in the light of the annual change in the price indices and published in the Official Gazette; the current figure is therefore found in the Central Bank’s communiqué for the year of presentation, not in the Law. Under Article 3(9) the bank’s liability for this amount ends if the cheque is not presented within five years of the printing date shown on the leaf.
The bank’s endorsement follows the payment. Under Article 3(2) the karşılıksızdır record is made only for the part of the cheque the bank did not pay, after deducting its own statutory payment. Under Article 3(4) the holder is entitled, on request, to a record on the reverse of the cheque stating the date of presentation, the state of the account, the amount the bank paid under its own obligation and the name of the natural person presenting, signed by that person and by the bank officer; the unpaid balance is stated expressly, and if the holder refuses to sign, the record is not made. A holder who does not accept a partial payment, including the bank’s statutory amount, has the record made for the whole unpaid balance under Article 3(5), and the cheque is returned with the presentation date and the reason for non-payment written on it. Under Article 3(6) a holder who accepts a partial payment receives a certified copy of both sides of the cheque free of charge, and that copy is accepted by the enforcement offices and the courts as proof and as the basis of the complaint; the original is sent to the court or enforcement office on request.
Two further rules protect the holder. Under Article 3(7) a bank that delays paying a covered cheque, or delays paying its own statutory amount, owes the holder a delay penalty of three per thousand per day, in place of the ordinary statutory interest. And under Article 2(2), the drawer’s addresses known to the bank are given to the holder on request where the cheque is wholly or partly unpaid; a person resident abroad who opens a Turkish cheque account must have declared an address in Türkiye to the bank, which is the address a foreign creditor will use for service.
3. Proving Dishonour and Opening Recourse: TCC Article 808
The holder’s rights against the drawer and the endorsers are recourse rights, and TCC Article 808 makes them conditional on proof that the cheque was presented in time and was not paid. Three forms of proof are accepted: a formal protest; a dated statement written on the cheque by the drawee showing the day of presentation; or a dated statement by a clearing house that the cheque was delivered in time and not paid. The bank’s karşılıksızdır record under Cheque Law Article 3 is the second of these, which is why a foreign holder should insist on the record rather than accepting an informal refusal. Once dishonour is proved in one of those forms, the holder may proceed against the drawer, the endorsers and the other cheque debtors, who are liable to the holder jointly.
4. Enforcement Without a Judgment: EBL Article 168
Because a cheque is a bill of exchange, the holder does not need to sue first. The special enforcement procedure for bills of exchange begins with an enforcement request at the enforcement office accompanied by the original cheque, and under EBL Article 168 the enforcement officer, on seeing that the instrument is a bill of exchange and is due, immediately serves a payment order on the debtor with a copy of the cheque. The order contains the warnings the Article prescribes: that the debt and the enforcement costs must be paid within ten days into the enforcement office’s bank account; that a complaint that the instrument is not a bill of exchange must be made to the enforcement court within five days; that a claim that the signature is not the debtor’s must be raised by petition to the enforcement court within five days, failing which the signature is treated as the debtor’s, with a penalty of ten per cent of the claim if the denial proves unfounded; that an objection that the debt does not exist, has been paid, has been deferred or is time-barred, or that the office lacks jurisdiction, must likewise be raised with reasons within five days before the enforcement court; and that a declaration of assets must be made within ten days if there is no objection and no payment, on pain of coercive detention.
The five-day objection does not stop the enforcement by itself; the debtor must obtain a decision from the enforcement court accepting the objection, and the grounds are narrow. That is the reason the cheque route is faster than an ordinary claim: the debtor cannot simply deny the debt and force a trial. Where the holder chooses the bankruptcy track instead, EBL Article 171 provides a payment order with a five-day period after which the creditor may ask the commercial court for the debtor’s bankruptcy, a route worth considering against a company that has several bounced cheques in circulation.
A foreign holder enforces through a Turkish lawyer holding a power of attorney; the original cheque is lodged with the enforcement office, so the holder should keep the certified copy obtained from the bank. Where the drawer’s assets are at risk of disappearing before the payment order is served, the interim attachment described in our guide to freezing a debtor’s assets before judgment is available on the strength of the cheque.
5. The Clock: Three Years Under TCC Article 814
TCC Article 814(1) provides that the holder’s recourse rights against the endorsers, the drawer and the other cheque debtors are time-barred three years after the end of the presentation period. The period is short by the standards of a foreign creditor’s ordinary contract claim, and it runs from the end of the ten-day or one-month presentation window, not from the date of dishonour. A cheque drawn in Istanbul, payable in Istanbul and dated 1 March is presentable until 11 March; the holder’s recourse against the drawer and endorsers is time-barred on 11 March three years later. Under Article 814(2), where one cheque debtor has paid and seeks recourse against another, the three years run from the date of payment or from the date the cheque was claimed against him in court.
The three years are the outer limit for starting the enforcement proceeding or filing the action on the cheque. A creditor who lets them pass keeps whatever claim exists on the underlying contract, but loses the bill-of-exchange route, the joint liability of the endorsers and, in practice, most of the leverage. Under TCC Article 808 the recourse also presupposes a timely presentation; a cheque presented late is not a bill of exchange for recourse purposes at all.
6. The Criminal Complaint, the Cheque Ban and the Person Liable: Cheque Law Article 5
Article 5(1) of the Cheque Law, as re-enacted in 2016, provides that the person who causes a cheque to be marked as unpaid on presentation within the legal period counted from its written issue date is punished, on the holder’s complaint, for each cheque, with a judicial fine of up to 1,500 days; the fine may not be less than the unpaid amount of the cheque. The court also imposes a ban on drawing cheques and opening cheque accounts, or orders the continuation of an existing ban, and during the trial imposes the ban of its own motion as a protective measure. The ban applies to the account holder, natural or legal person, to those who drew cheques on the company’s behalf and, where the cheque was drawn on behalf of a company, to the members of the management body and the officers registered in the trade register. The case is heard by the enforcement court under the procedure of EBL Articles 347 to 353, and may be brought where the cheque was presented, where the account was opened, or where the account holder or the complainant is domiciled.
Article 5(2) identifies the person liable. The person obliged to keep the cover in the account is the account holder; where the account holder is a company, it is the member of the management body charged with the company’s financial affairs or, where no such designation has been made, the natural person or persons who make up the management body. Persons banned under Article 5(1) may not serve on the management bodies of capital companies during the ban, though existing terms of office run to their end. Under Article 5(10) the offence is excluded from pre-payment, reconciliation and the deferral of the announcement of the judgment; under Article 5(11) a judicial fine imposed under Article 5(1) that is not paid is converted directly into imprisonment, without the community-service stage that ordinarily precedes it under the enforcement rules.
For a foreign creditor the complaint is a document, not a court appearance. It is filed through counsel with the cheque or the certified copy, and the drawer learns of it through the enforcement court. Its value lies less in the fine, which goes to the Treasury, than in the ban and in Article 6.
7. Effective Remorse: Payment With Interest Ends the Case (Cheque Law Article 6)
Article 6(1) provides that where the person pays the unpaid amount of the cheque in full, together with default interest at the rate applicable to commercial transactions under Law No. 3095, running from the date of the cheque’s presentation within the legal period counted from its written date, the court orders the dismissal of the case during the trial or, after a conviction has become final, the removal of the judgment with all its consequences; the lifting of the cheque ban is reported to the trade register system and the Risk Centre and published. Article 6(2) gives the same effect to the holder’s withdrawal of the complaint. Article 6(3) allows a convicted person to apply for the lifting of the ban three years after the sentence has been fully served and, in any event, ten years after the ban was imposed.
The combination explains why Turkish debtors settle bounced cheques with foreign creditors more readily than they settle invoices. The complaint puts the drawer, or the responsible officer of the drawer company, on the path to a fine that cannot be less than the face value, a ban that shuts the company out of the cheque system that Turkish trade runs on, and imprisonment if the fine is not paid; Article 6 offers a single exit, which is to pay the creditor with commercial default interest. A creditor who withdraws the complaint as part of a settlement should do so only against cleared funds, because the withdrawal is irrevocable in its effect.
| Step | Provision | Period | Runs from | Consequence of missing it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Presentation to the drawee bank | TCC 796 | 10 days / 1 month / 3 months | The day after the written issue date | No bank payment, no recourse, no complaint; a post-dated cheque presented early is ineffective until 31 December 2028 (Cheque Law Prov. Art. 3(5), Art. 3(8)) |
| Bank’s statutory payment per leaf | Cheque Law 3(3), 3(9) | On presentation; liability ends 5 years after the printing date | Presentation | Delay penalty of 3 per thousand per day against the bank (Art. 3(7)) |
| Record of non-payment | Cheque Law 3(4)-(6); TCC 808 | At presentation | Presentation | Without a record, protest or clearing-house statement, no recourse |
| Payment order | EBL 168 | Debtor pays within 10 days, objects within 5 days | Service of the payment order | Enforcement continues; 10% penalty for an unfounded denial of signature |
| Limitation of recourse | TCC 814(1) | 3 years | End of the presentation period | Bill-of-exchange claims against drawer and endorsers time-barred |
| Criminal complaint | Cheque Law 5; TCK 73 | Within the complaint period after learning of the act and the offender | Dishonour | No prosecution; the ban is not imposed |
| Effective remorse | Cheque Law 6 | Any time before or after judgment | Payment with commercial default interest from the date of presentation within the legal period | Case dismissed or conviction removed; ban lifted |
8. A Foreign Holder’s Sequence
The order of operations for a creditor abroad is fixed by the periods above. Confirm the written issue date and present the cheque through a Turkish bank on or after that date and within the Article 796 period; do not present a post-dated cheque early. Obtain the bank’s record on the reverse, its statutory payment and the certified copy of both sides. Sign a power of attorney for a Turkish lawyer, who lodges the original with the enforcement office and obtains the EBL Article 168 payment order, adding an interim attachment where the drawer’s accounts are at risk. File the complaint under Cheque Law Article 5 within the complaint period, naming the account holder and, for a company, its registered officers. Diarise the three-year limit in TCC Article 814 from the end of the presentation period. And settle, if the drawer offers to settle, on the terms Article 6 already prescribes: the unpaid amount plus commercial default interest, against cleared funds, before the complaint is withdrawn.
