The two routes compared on forum, defendant, compulsory pre-step and time limits, the steps in order, the expert-report stage, and the procedural mistakes that end cases before the merits.
Whether a Turkish medical negligence claim is filed in the consumer court or in the administrative court turns on one fact: whether the treatment was given by a private provider or by a public hospital. A claim against a private hospital, clinic or physician is treated as a consumer dispute — the Consumer Protection Law No. 6502 expressly counts mandate (vekâlet) and works (eser) contracts among consumer transactions (art. 3(1)(l)), and the consumer courts have subject-matter jurisdiction over disputes arising from them (art. 73(1)) — and applying to a mediator before filing is a procedural pre-condition to suit (art. 73/A(1)). Treatment in a public hospital produces a full-remedy action (tam yargı davası) before the administrative courts under Article 2(1)(b) of the Administrative Procedure Law No. 2577 (İYUK); it must be preceded by a written application to the administration, made within one year of learning of the act and in any event within five years of the act (art. 13(1)); thirty days’ silence from the administration counts as a rejection; and the action is then filed within sixty days (arts. 13(1) and 7(1)). On that second route the individual doctor cannot be sued at all — the claim lies only against the administration.
This guide follows the two routes in sequence: the forum, the correct defendant, the compulsory pre-step, the deadlines, the evidence, and the procedural errors that end cases before any court looks at the medicine. It is a companion to the wider guide to medical malpractice law in Türkiye, which deals with what counts as malpractice, the standard of care and the burden of proof; the field as a whole is described on the firm’s health and medical law page.
Which route applies — private provider or public hospital?
The two tracks share almost nothing except the underlying medicine. They differ in the court, in the person who may be named as defendant, in the compulsory step that must be completed first, and in how the clock is counted.
| Private hospital, clinic or physician | Public hospital | |
|---|---|---|
| Legal characterisation | Consumer transaction — a contract concluded with a supplier acting for professional purposes (Law No. 6502, art. 3(1)(l)) | Administrative action (idari eylem) giving rise to a full-remedy action (İYUK art. 2(1)(b)) |
| Forum | Consumer court (Law No. 6502, art. 73(1)) | Administrative court |
| Correct defendant | The hospital and/or the physician | The administration only (Constitution art. 129/5; Law No. 657, art. 13) |
| Compulsory pre-step | Application to a mediator (Law No. 6502, art. 73/A(1)) | Written application to the administration (İYUK art. 13(1)) |
| How long the pre-step takes | Mediator concludes within three weeks, extendable once by at most one further week (Law No. 6325, art. 18/A(9)) | Thirty days’ silence counts as a rejection (İYUK art. 13(1)) |
| Deadline to file | Within the applicable limitation period, which is suspended while the mediation runs (Law No. 6325, art. 18/A(15)) | Sixty days from notification of the rejection, or from expiry of the thirty days (İYUK arts. 13(1), 7(1)) |
| Outer time limits | Depends on the characterisation of the relationship (TBK arts. 72, 146–147) | Application within one year of learning of the act and five years of the act (İYUK art. 13(1)) |
One qualification belongs with that table. The consumer-court characterisation rests on the contractual relationship between the patient and the provider. Where no such relationship exists, the claim is a tort claim under general provisions and is brought against the person at fault in the civil courts — the third row of the table in the pillar guide. How a personal-injury claim framed purely in tort against a private provider should be allocated between the consumer court and the general civil court is a question that is argued case by case, and it is settled on the pleaded basis of the claim rather than on a rule of thumb.
How does a claim against a private provider proceed?
The sequence is fixed by statute. The application is made to the mediation bureau at the place of the competent court under Article 18/A(4) of the Law on Mediation in Civil Disputes No. 6325, and the appointed mediator must conclude the application within three weeks of appointment, extendable in compulsory circumstances by at most one further week (art. 18/A(9)). The case is then filed in the consumer court with the original or a certified copy of the final minutes attached to the petition.
Four features of that step are frequently misunderstood:
- The clock stops. From the application to the mediation bureau until the date the final minutes are drawn up, limitation is suspended and any forfeiture (hak düşürücü) period does not run (art. 18/A(15)). The mediation month is therefore not taken out of the limitation period.
- Non-attendance is expensive — but not for the consumer. A party that fails to attend the first meeting without a valid excuse is recorded in the final minutes and, even if it later wins the case wholly or in part, bears half of the litigation costs the other side would otherwise have had to pay; and only half of the attorney’s fee calculated under the Minimum Attorney Fee Tariff is awarded in its favour (art. 18/A(11), second sentence as amended by Law No. 7531 of 7 November 2024). Where neither party attends, each bears its own costs. On the consumer track the sanction runs one way only: Article 73/A(2) of Law No. 6502 provides that Article 18/A(11) is not applied against the consumer, so it bites the provider rather than the patient.
- The consumer’s mediation fee is met from the State budget. Where the mediation ends because the parties could not be reached, because a party did not attend, or because the parties agreed or failed to agree, the mediation fee payable by the consumer is met from the Ministry of Justice budget, capped at the two-hour figure in Part One of the Mediation Fee Tariff (Law No. 6502, art. 73/A(3)); if the subsequent case is decided in the consumer’s favour, that fee is collected from the defendant and recorded as budget revenue (art. 73/A(4)).
- The claimant pays no court fee. Actions brought before the consumer courts by consumers, by consumer organisations and by the Ministry are exempt from the fees regulated in the Fees Act No. 492 (art. 73(2)).
Venue is also more flexible than most claimants expect: a consumer action may be brought in the consumer court of the place where the consumer resides, in addition to the ordinary venues (art. 73(5)). This matters where the treatment was given far from home.
One threshold sits underneath all of this. Under Article 68(1) of Law No. 6502, application to the consumer arbitration committee (tüketici hakem heyeti) is compulsory for disputes below a monetary threshold, and disputes above it cannot be brought before the committee at all. That line runs through the mediation rule as well, and in the direction opposite to the one usually assumed: because disputes within the committee’s remit are excepted from compulsory mediation by Article 73/A(1)(a), it is the disputes above the threshold — which most malpractice claims are — that must go to a mediator first. The threshold is increased each calendar year by the revaluation rate under repeated Article 298 of the Tax Procedure Law No. 213 (art. 68(4)); for the 2026 calendar year it is 186,000 TL, set by the communiqué published in the Official Gazette of 23 December 2025, No. 33116. It is a jurisdictional line for consumer disputes generally, not a cap or a benchmark for a malpractice claim, and it changes every 1 January.
The general framework of the compulsory-mediation regime, and where else in Turkish law it applies, is set out in the guide to mandatory mediation in Turkish law.
How does a claim against a public hospital proceed?
Here the pre-step is not mediation and the two are not interchangeable. Article 13(1) of İYUK requires those whose rights have been infringed by administrative actions (idari eylem, as distinct from an administrative act), before bringing an administrative case, to apply to the relevant administration and request that their rights be met — within one year of the date they learned of the action by written notification or otherwise, and in any event within five years of the action itself.
What happens next is where the sequence is most often misread:
- If the administration rejects the request in whole or in part, the litigation period runs from the day following notification of that decision (İYUK art. 7(2)(a)).
- If the administration does not answer within thirty days, the request is treated as rejected and the litigation period runs from the expiry of those thirty days (art. 13(1)).
- The litigation period itself is sixty days before the Danıştay and the administrative courts, where no different period is prescribed by a special law (art. 7(1)).
The thirty days and the sixty days are two different periods doing two different jobs — thirty for the administration’s silence, sixty for the claimant’s filing. The thirty is also the newer of the two figures: the silence period in Article 13(1) was itself sixty days until it was reduced to thirty by Law No. 7331 of 8 July 2021, which is why older material still gives sixty and why the two numbers are so often merged. The action itself is the tam yargı davası of Article 2(1)(b): an action brought by those whose personal rights are directly injured by administrative actions and acts.
Who may be sued, and who may not
The fifth paragraph of Article 129 of the Constitution provides that compensation actions arising from faults committed by civil servants and other public officials while exercising their powers may be brought only against the administration, subject to the administration’s right of recourse against them. Article 13 of the Civil Servants Act No. 657 says the same in statutory form: persons who suffer loss in connection with duties governed by public law sue the institution, not the personnel performing those duties.
That bar is specific to public officials. It does not apply to a physician practising in a private hospital or on their own account, who may be named alongside the institution on the private track.
There is a rescue provision worth knowing about, because wrong-forum filings are common. Where a full-remedy action was brought before a non-competent judicial (adli) court and dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, the Article 13(1) preliminary application is not required for the administrative action subsequently brought (İYUK art. 13(2)). More generally, where a case within the jurisdiction of the administrative courts was filed before a judicial court and dismissed on jurisdiction grounds, it may be brought before the competent court within thirty days of that decision becoming final, and the date of the original application is treated as the date of application to the administrative court (art. 9(1)); even after those thirty days, the action may still be brought if the ordinary litigation period has not expired (art. 9(2)).
Evidence: the file first, the expert report second
Whichever route applies, the documentary record is assembled before anything else — the complete medical file, imaging, operative and nursing notes, prescriptions, discharge summary and the signed informed-consent form. Those documents are what the expert stage will be run on.
In civil proceedings the court decides to obtain an expert’s vote and opinion, on a party’s request or of its own motion, where resolving the dispute requires special or technical knowledge outside law; an expert may not be used for matters resolvable by general knowledge or experience or by the legal knowledge required of judicial office (HMK art. 266(1)). The court normally appoints a single expert but may appoint a panel of an odd number, giving express reasons (art. 267(1)).
The Council of Forensic Medicine (Adli Tıp Kurumu) sits inside that framework rather than above it. Its organisation, duties and boards are set out in the first chapter of Presidential Decree No. 4; the corresponding articles of Law No. 2659 appear as repealed in the official consolidated text. Article 2 establishes the Institution under the Ministry of Justice to act as expert witness in judicial matters, and Article 3(1)(a) limits its scientific and technical opinions to matters referred by courts, judgeships and public prosecutors’ offices and, in fields the Institution itself considers appropriate, by public institutions. A private party cannot commission a report from it.
Two details are worth setting out precisely:
- Which board reports. The Institution has eleven specialist boards (art. 8(1)). Under Article 17(2)(f), as amended on 10 October 2024, the Seventh Forensic Medicine Specialist Board reports on medical malpractice matters not resulting in death; under Article 17(2)(g) the Eighth Board reports on malpractice matters resulting in death.
- How an adverse report is contested. The Forensic Medicine Upper Boards examine and decide finally on matters a court or prosecutor’s office has found insufficiently persuasive in scope, stating its reasons; on matters a specialist board could not decide unanimously; on contradictions between different specialist boards or between a board and a specialist department; and on contradictions between a specialist board’s report and a collegiate report given by a health institution outside the Institution (art. 16(1)).
Where the criminal track and the Professional Liability Board fit
The criminal side runs separately from the compensation claim and does not replace it. Since Supplementary Article 18 was inserted into Law No. 3359 by Law No. 7406 of 12 May 2022, investigations into medical procedures relating to examination, diagnosis and treatment are subject to Law No. 4483 on the Prosecution of Civil Servants, and permission to investigate is granted by the Professional Liability Board (Mesleki Sorumluluk Kurulu) established within the Ministry of Health.
Two points correct a common misreading. First, the permission regime is not limited to the public sector: the first paragraph covers physicians, dentists and other health professionals working in public or private health institutions and in foundation universities, excluding only those subject to the investigation procedure in Article 53 of the Higher Education Law. Second, it does not shield anyone from criminal liability — it decides whether an investigation may proceed, within periods that are those of Article 7 of Law No. 4483 applied doubled (so sixty days, extendable once by up to thirty), and Board decisions may be objected to before the Ankara Regional Administrative Court.
The Board’s other function is the recourse decision, and that one is confined to the public side: for health professionals in public institutions and State universities, whether the administration will exercise recourse against the individual for compensation it has already paid, and in what amount, is decided by the Board within one year, having regard to whether the person acted contrary to the requirements of the duty and to the degree of fault; for State-university staff the relevant university takes the final decision within six months (second paragraph, as amended by Law No. 7496 of 21 February 2024).
Neither function is a patient remedy. Patients do not apply to the Board, and no application to it is a condition of any compensation claim. Where the same facts also found a criminal complaint, that proceeds under general criminal law rules alongside — not instead of — the civil or administrative action.
How long is there to sue?
The compensation deadline depends on how the claim is framed, and the periods are not interchangeable:
- Tort. Under Article 72 of the Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098, a compensation claim is time-barred two years after the injured party learned of both the damage and the person liable, and in any event ten years after the act. Where the compensation arises from an act requiring punishment for which the criminal laws prescribe a longer period, that longer period applies.
- Contract. Article 146 gives a ten-year period unless the law provides otherwise — and it does. Article 147(5) subjects claims arising from a mandate (vekâlet) contract to five years, and Article 147(6) subjects claims arising from a works (eser) contract to five years except where the contractor failed to perform, or to perform properly, through gross fault. Since the private hospital or physician relationship is characterised as a mandate contract — or, for some procedures, a works contract — the applicable period genuinely turns on characterisation and must be confirmed on the facts. Ten years is not a safe default, and Article 148 prevents these periods being varied by agreement.
- Administrative. The one-year and five-year windows for the preliminary application, and the sixty days to file, are set out above.
The procedural mistakes that end cases before the merits
Turkish courts examine procedural pre-conditions of their own motion at every stage of the proceedings, and the parties may raise a deficiency at any time (HMK art. 115). Where the deficiency is curable the court must first grant a definite period to cure it — but Article 114(2) preserves the pre-condition provisions of other laws, and the mediation regime contains a harsher rule of its own. The recurring failures:
- Filing without having applied to a mediator at all. Where that emerges, the court dismisses the action on procedural grounds without taking any step (Law No. 6325, art. 18/A(2)). No period is given to put it right and the petition is not even served on the defendant.
- Completing mediation but not attaching the final minutes. This is the different case, and it is curable: the court sends a notice granting a definite period of one week, and only if the minutes are still not produced is the case dismissed on procedural grounds without service. The two situations are easily confused; they are not the same.
- Naming the public-hospital doctor as defendant. The claim lies against the administration alone.
- Going straight to the administrative court. Without the Article 13 written application there is nothing for the sixty-day period to run from.
- Reading the thirty days as sixty. Thirty days is the administration’s silence; sixty is the period to file. Waiting sixty days for an answer and then counting a further sixty is how a well-founded claim expires.
- Not attending the first mediation meeting. The costs consequence in Article 18/A(11) follows a party even into a case it goes on to win — though on the consumer track it cannot be applied against the consumer (Law No. 6502, art. 73/A(2)).
- Treating the Professional Liability Board as a step in the compensation claim. It is not one.
Who ultimately bears the cost
Compulsory insurance sits behind both routes without changing who is sued. Supplementary Article 12 of Law No. 1219 requires physicians, dentists and specialists working in public health institutions to insure against damages claimed from them for medical malpractice and against recourse by their own institutions, with half the premium met from the revolving fund or the institution’s budget; those in private institutions or independent practice must hold professional financial liability insurance, the policy being taken out by the institution for its employees, with half of that premium paid by the professional and half by the employer — and the employer’s half may not be deducted, under any name or in any manner, from the professional’s salary or other financial entitlements.
On the public side the loop closes at the end: after the administration has paid compensation awarded in a final judgment, it steps into the place of the insured health professional and claims the compensation — including the attorney’s fee and litigation costs it has paid — from that professional’s insurer, in proportion to fault and within the limits of the policy (Law No. 3359, Supplementary Article 18, third paragraph, added in 2024).
The texts of every law cited here, as consolidated and in force, are published on the Presidency’s official legislation database, Mevzuat Bilgi Sistemi.
Read together, the two routes make one thing plain: in Turkish malpractice litigation the procedural questions are decided before the medical ones, and they are decided quickly. Cases that never reach an expert report are rarely lost on the medicine — they are lost because the forum was chosen from the wrong premise, because the compulsory pre-step was skipped or completed in the wrong order, or because thirty days and sixty days were read as one period instead of two.
