Customs Seizure of Counterfeit Goods in Türkiye

Why the Border Is the Cheapest Place to Stop a Counterfeit

A counterfeit shipment is easiest to deal with while it is still one shipment. Once goods clear the border and disperse into wholesalers, marketplace sellers and a dozen small warehouses, every unit of enforcement spend buys less: separate defendants, separate evidence, separate proceedings.

Turkish law gives brand owners a border tool for exactly this situation. Article 57 of the Industrial Property Law No. 6769 (Sınai Mülkiyet Kanunu) provides that goods infringing an industrial property right are seized (el koyma) by the customs administration during import or export, on the application of the right holder or its representative. The procedural machinery — how the file is opened, how goods are held, how they may be destroyed — sits in the Customs Law No. 4458 and its implementing Customs Regulation (Gümrük Yönetmeliği).

Two limits are worth stating at the outset. Customs assesses suspicion, not infringement: an officer compares a consignment against what the right holder has told the system a genuine article looks like, and the question of infringement remains for a court. And the hold is short by design. The border buys a brand owner days, not months, and those days have to be spent in court rather than in internal approvals. Import and export compliance more broadly falls within our customs law practice, but the seizure itself is decided on industrial property grounds under our anti-counterfeiting and customs practice.

Two Things You Need in Place Before the Container Arrives

A right that is effective in Türkiye. The customs file is built on a registered right, most often a trademark (marka) registered with the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (TÜRKPATENT), whether through a national filing or an international registration designating Türkiye. Registered designs, patents and utility models can support an application as well. A foreign registration on its own cannot. Where the portfolio is not yet in place, that is the first project, and it is set out in the guide to trademark registration for foreign owners.

A live customs application. The border does not watch a brand because the brand is well known. It watches because the right holder has filed an application for customs surveillance with the customs administration, electronically, and has kept it current. A workable file contains more than registration certificates: the goods and packaging as they genuinely appear, the features that separate authentic articles from copies, authorised importers and manufacturing sites, the ports and routes where problems have been seen, and a named local contact reachable within hours rather than days. The application is granted for a limited period and lapses if it is not renewed, so renewal belongs in the same diary as trademark renewals.

One further point of housekeeping. A registration left unused for five years is exposed to cancellation, and an importer whose container has just been stopped has every incentive to look for that weakness; the five-year non-use rule explains how the exposure arises. Portfolio maintenance and border enforcement are two halves of the same intellectual property and trademark litigation programme, not separate budgets.

The Stop: Notification and the Ten Working Days That Follow

When customs identifies a suspect consignment it suspends release and notifies the right holder or its representative, together with the declarant (beyan sahibi) named on the customs declaration. From that notification the right holder has ten working days to obtain an interim measure from the competent court, in practice a preliminary injunction (ihtiyati tedbir). If nothing is produced, the administrative hold is lifted and the goods continue on their way. For perishable goods the period is three working days.

Four practical points decide most outcomes:

• The period runs in working days, but Turkish public holidays and religious holiday periods can consume most of a window. A notification arriving the day before a long bayram is a genuine emergency, not a routine instruction.
• The right holder is normally permitted to inspect the goods, photograph them and, within limits, take samples, so that the court petition rests on observation rather than assumption. What is learned this way belongs in the enforcement file, not in a commercial one.
• Verification comes before filing. Product codes, labels, authorised-distributor records and factory data should be checked first, because a genuine consignment stopped in error is a liability rather than a result.
• Whether the initial period can be extended, and on what showing, should be confirmed with the customs administration in the individual file rather than assumed from practice elsewhere.

Getting the Injunction: Which Court, and What It Requires

Jurisdiction lies with the civil courts for intellectual and industrial property rights (fikri ve sınai haklar hukuk mahkemesi), which exist as specialised courts in the largest cities; where they have not been established, designated civil courts of first instance hear these files. Interim relief is governed by Article 159 of Law No. 6769 read with the provisions on interim injunctions in the Code of Civil Procedure No. 6100 (Hukuk Muhakemeleri Kanunu).

The petition asks the court to keep the goods under seizure, to prohibit their release, and usually to bar their transfer or further movement. Three procedural traps recur:

• Security. Courts commonly condition an injunction on the applicant posting security (teminat) against loss if the measure proves unjustified. The amount is at the court’s discretion. Cash or a bank instrument has to be available quickly, often from abroad, inside the same ten-day window.
• Implementation. The applicant must request implementation of the injunction within one week of the decision; otherwise the order lapses of its own accord, even though it was obtained on time.
• The main action. Where the injunction was obtained before the substantive claim, the claim must follow within two weeks of the request for implementation, failing which the injunction again falls away.

Powers of attorney are the quiet cause of missed deadlines. A Turkish court file needs a power of attorney executed before a notary and, for documents originating abroad, apostilled and accompanied by sworn translation. Producing that document takes a foreign company days it no longer has once a container is already held, which is why it belongs in the pre-arrival file rather than the response.

Simplified Destruction: Ending the File Without a Judgment

The Customs Regulation provides a simplified destruction procedure (basitleştirilmiş imha usulü) allowing suspect goods to be destroyed under customs supervision without a court first ruling that they infringe. In outline it requires a written statement from the right holder that the goods are counterfeit, the consent of the declarant or holder of the goods — which in the ordinary case may be treated as given where no objection is raised within the period set — and the right holder’s undertaking to bear the costs. Samples are retained where evidence may be needed later.

The trade-off is straightforward. Simplified destruction is quick and comparatively inexpensive, and it removes the goods permanently. It produces no judgment, no damages award and no record that deters the next shipment, and it depends entirely on the counterparty choosing not to fight. Where the importer objects, or where the brand owner wants a decision it can rely on against a repeat offender, the court route cannot be avoided.

Because consent may not arrive inside the statutory window, the prudent course is to prepare the injunction petition in parallel and stand it down only once destruction has actually been agreed. Whether pursuing simplified destruction affects the running of the ten-working-day deadline is a point to confirm in the specific file rather than to rely on.

Costs, Storage and the Risk of Being Wrong

Border enforcement is not free to the right holder. Storage while the goods are held, the destruction itself, and any analysis or expert examination are generally at the applicant’s expense, and the customs application includes an undertaking to that effect. On bulky consignments — furniture, textiles in volume — storage can become the dominant cost of the exercise, which is an argument for deciding quickly rather than letting a file drift while headquarters deliberates.

The downside risk is more serious than the cost. If the consignment turns out to be genuine, the importer may pursue the right holder for the loss caused by the detention, and the security posted for the injunction exists precisely to answer such a claim. Two situations account for most errors. The first is goods made by a licensee or contract manufacturer whose arrangements the brand owner’s own records do not reflect. The second is genuine goods bought abroad and imported without the brand owner’s involvement, which is not counterfeiting at all. Turkish law follows national exhaustion (hakkın tükenmesi): the right is exhausted in respect of goods put on the market in Türkiye by the right holder or with its consent, so parallel imports can in principle be resisted. They remain a different case, with different evidence and a different commercial calculation, and describing them as counterfeits in a court petition costs credibility that is hard to recover.

What Comes After the Hold: Civil Claim, Criminal Complaint, or Both

An injunction only preserves the position. The substantive claim under Article 149 of Law No. 6769 can seek a determination of infringement, its cessation and removal, destruction of the goods and of the means used to produce them, compensation, and publication of the judgment.

Counterfeiting a registered trademark is also a criminal offence under Article 30 of Law No. 6769, investigated and prosecuted on the complaint of the right holder, with imprisonment and a judicial fine available on conviction. The criminal track brings investigative powers a civil claimant does not have. Which track to use, or whether to use both, depends on the objective: goods off the market, a judgment that can be shown to the next importer, or information about who stands behind the consignment.

Sometimes the stop reveals a different problem altogether: a local party holding a Turkish registration for the same or a similar sign and importing under cover of its own right. That changes the analysis, because the importer is no longer obviously an infringer. The response then runs through the registry rather than the port — opposition (itiraz) where the mark is still pending, on the grounds and within the deadlines that govern opposition proceedings, and cancellation where it is already registered, including the administrative route discussed in the note on the current administrative cancellation regime.

A Working Sequence, Not an Emergency Response

Before anything is stopped. Confirm that the Turkish registrations cover the goods actually shipped, including packaging and sub-brands. File or renew the customs application and calendar its expiry. Prepare the identification material an officer will actually use: photographs, security features, code structures, authorised factory list. Execute and apostille a power of attorney, and leave a scanned original with local counsel. Name one person reachable within a few hours, and a deputy.

Day of notification. Acknowledge, request inspection, and verify against distributor and production records the same day. Decide within two days whether the consignment is counterfeit, parallel-imported, or genuine.

The days that follow. Instruct the petition, arrange the security funds, and file well before the final working day, because security transfers and translations can each cost a day.

After the order. Request implementation within one week, file the substantive action within two weeks of that request, and inform customs so that the hold is maintained without a gap.

Or close it by agreement. Where the importer will consent, simplified destruction ends the matter sooner, and that choice is a commercial one made with the storage bill and the likelihood of repetition in view.

None of this functions well as a reaction. It functions as a standing programme, reviewed once a year alongside renewals, so that the ten working days are spent on the file rather than on assembling the paperwork that should already have existed.

---

Related Practice Areas

• Intellectual Property
• Trademark Registration & Litigation
• Patent Litigation
• Copyright & Anti-Piracy