If a machine you own, tooling you lent, or stock you shipped on consignment has been attached by a Turkish execution office for your customer’s unrelated debt, the seizure is not a mistake to be corrected by correspondence — it is a lawful provisional measure, and the only fast way to release the asset is the third-party ownership claim (istihkak iddiası) under Articles 96 to 99 of the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law (İİK, Law No. 2004). Two seven-day deadlines govern the outcome, both of them short, and the first one starts running from the moment you learn of the attachment, not from any document served on you.
What makes these cases turn is rarely the strength of the title. It is a single factual question recorded in the attachment minute: where the goods were physically standing when the officer arrived. That one fact determines which article applies, who must sue whom, and who carries the burden of proof.
1. Where the Goods Stood Decides Which Regime Applies
Turkish enforcement law splits the third-party ownership contest into two very different tracks, and the allocation of risk between them is stark.
| Factual position at seizure | Governing provision | Who must act | Deadline and sanction for inaction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goods in the debtor's own premises (warehouse, factory, showroom) | İİK Arts. 96, 97, 97/a | The owner (third party) raises the claim, then files the action | 7 days from actual awareness to raise the claim; the right is otherwise forfeited in that enforcement proceeding |
| Goods held jointly by the debtor and the third party | İİK Art. 97/a, sentence 2 | The owner — the statute deems the asset to be in the debtor's hands | Same as above; the presumption operates against the owner |
| Goods solely at the third party's premises | İİK Art. 99 | The creditor must sue the third party | 7 days given by the execution director; if no action is filed, the third party's claim is deemed accepted |
| Asset under a registered financial lease | Law No. 6361 Art. 28/2 | The execution officer, of its own motion | Assets kept outside the proceedings; 7 days to object, decided within one month |
Article 99 is the comfortable position, and it is rarely the one a foreign lessor is in. Its text is unambiguous: where the seized asset is not in the debtor’s hands but with a third party asserting ownership or another right in rem, the execution director gives the creditor seven days to file an ownership action, and if none is filed the third party’s claim is deemed accepted. It adds two protections in the same paragraph: the asset is not taken into custody if the third party accepts the role of custodian, and no sale may take place until an action filed in time is concluded. The same paragraph extends this regime to a seizure carried out in the third party’s absence, where an ownership claim is raised in that party’s favour.
A machine sitting in the debtor’s plant is the opposite case. Article 97/a states that whoever holds a movable is deemed its owner, and then removes the obvious workaround in the very next sentence: even where the debtor and a third party hold the movable together, the asset is deemed to be in the debtor’s hands. The presumption is procedural, not a transfer of title — but in the enforcement file it is what you must overcome.
2. When Do the Two Seven-Day Windows Start?
The first window sits in Article 96. Where the debtor points to an asset in its possession as belonging to someone else, or a third party asserts ownership or a pledge over it, the execution office enters this in the attachment and enforcement minutes and notifies both sides. It then gives the creditor and the debtor three days to state whether they object; silence counts as acceptance of the ownership claim. The sting is in the third paragraph: a debtor or third party who becomes aware of the attachment and does not raise an ownership claim within seven days of that awareness forfeits the right to assert it in that same enforcement proceeding. The provision then adds a presumption that cuts against overseas owners with local agents: persons living with the claimant and their business partners are deemed to have become aware of the attachment on the same date.
The second window sits in Article 97. If the creditor or debtor objects, the officer sends the file straight to the Enforcement Court (İcra Hukuk Mahkemesi), which decides — on the file or after a hearing — whether the enforcement continues or is stayed. From the pronouncement or service of that decision, the third party has seven days to file the ownership action, failing which it is deemed to have abandoned the claim against the creditor. A decision ordering the enforcement to continue is final.
There is a third route that foreign owners often need. Article 97, paragraph 9, covers the third party who was never given the opportunity to make an ownership claim at all — the classic case where the seizure happened at a warehouse with no representative of the owner present. That party may file the ownership action directly before the Enforcement Court within seven days of becoming aware of the attachment, in respect of the asset itself or, if it has already been sold and the proceeds not yet released, in respect of the proceeds. The same paragraph allows the court to rule urgently on a stay, and expressly permits it to do so without hearing the other side.
3. What Does “Convincing Evidence” Mean in Practice?
Article 97/a closes with the evidential rule that decides most of these files: the claimant must show how the asset was acquired and the legal and factual reasons and events requiring it to be in the debtor’s hands, and must prove them.
That sentence places a heavy burden on the claimant. The first paragraph of the same article treats whoever holds a movable asset as its owner and puts the burden of rebutting that presumption on the person who contests it. The third party therefore has to show two things together: the legal basis on which it acquired the asset, and the reason the asset was in the debtor’s possession. Mutually corroborating documents do this work: proforma invoice, certificate of origin, letter of credit, customs entry declaration, transport documents and the payment trail, read together with the lease or consignment agreement. An isolated indicator will rarely establish both elements on its own.
The presumption also has a limit that works in the owner’s favour, and it sits in the wording of the statute itself: the presumption operates in favour of whoever holds the asset (Art. 97/a/1), so the question whether the asset was actually in the debtor’s hands at the time of seizure has to be asked separately. Where an address was leased to a third party before the debt arose, and the third party’s own trading activity there predates the debt, those facts can be used to show that the goods were in the third party’s hands rather than the debtor’s; the court assesses them on the facts of the case. This is why the attachment minute, the lease of the premises, utility accounts and tax registrations at that address are often more useful than the title documents themselves.
For companies whose Turkish exposure runs through distributors and warehouse-keepers, the same evidential logic applies at the front end. Import files assembled properly at entry — the documentation set out in the guide to importing goods into Türkiye — are precisely the corroborating chain an Enforcement Court expects to see years later, and reconstructing them after a seizure is far harder than retaining them.
4. Custody, Stay of Enforcement, and the Price of Getting It Wrong
A seizure and a removal are two different events. Under İİK Art. 88/2, movables seized at a third party’s premises are left with that third party as custodian where they accept the role, and the sentences added to Art. 97/a in 2021 extend the same relief to jointly held assets. The next sentence sets the exception: once the Enforcement Court orders the enforcement to continue under Art. 97/1, the asset may then be taken into custody. Accepting custody is therefore usually the right first move — it keeps a production line intact while the legal question is argued.
A stay of the enforcement is a separate application with its own economics. If a stay is granted, security is taken from the claimant under İİK Art. 36, in a type and amount the court assesses according to the nature of the evidence. The court must refuse the stay where there are serious grounds to accept that the action is being abused merely to postpone the sale. And if a stay was granted and the action is then dismissed, İİK Art. 97/13 requires the claimant to pay the creditor not less than 20% of the sum whose recovery was delayed. The mirror sanction exists too: where the ownership claim succeeds and the objecting creditor or debtor is found to have acted in bad faith, Art. 97/15 requires an indemnity of not less than 15% of the value of the seized goods.
Timing works differently on the creditor’s side. Under İİK Art. 106 the creditor has one year from the attachment to request the sale, and payment of the valuation and sale costs in advance is mandatory. Article 97/8 suspends those periods while the ownership action is pending. Ownership actions themselves are heard under the simplified procedure and, by the closing paragraph of Art. 97, are to be dealt with quickly and ahead of other cases. Owners who want the broader enforcement picture — how the underlying attachment arose in the first place — will find it in the overview of debt collection and enforcement in Turkey.
5. Financial Leases: a Different and Much Stronger Regime
If the asset is on a financial lease governed by Law No. 6361, the contest largely disappears. Article 23/1 states that ownership of the leased asset belongs to the lessor, and Article 28/2 instructs the execution officer, where enforcement proceedings are brought against the lessee, to decide that the leased assets are kept outside the proceedings. That decision may be objected to within seven days, and Art. 28/3 requires the Enforcement Court to decide the objection within one month at the latest.
The protection is built on registration. Article 22 requires lease agreements over movables with their own special register to be registered there, and agreements over movables without one to be registered in the special register kept by the Association of Financial Institutions. That register is public and, in the words of Art. 22/3, nobody may claim ignorance of an entry in it. Article 22/5 then closes the circle: after registration or annotation, third parties’ acquisitions of rights in rem over the leased asset cannot be asserted against the lessor. Cross-border structures are covered as well — Art. 21 provides that financial lease agreements made from abroad are registered by the Association.
Two limits matter before relying on this. First, Art. 3/d defines the lessor narrowly: participation banks, development and investment banks, and financial leasing companies. A foreign manufacturer renting out its own machine is not a lessor in this sense. Second, Art. 2/3 states that the financial-leasing provisions of the Law do not apply to operating leases carried out by leasing companies. An ordinary equipment rental therefore falls back to the İİK Arts. 96-99 contest described above — which is precisely why the choice of financing structure at the contracting stage, a drafting question that belongs to commercial contract work, determines the recovery position years later.
6. Consignment Stock and Retention of Title: the Weakest Position
Consignment is the hardest scenario, because the whole arrangement is built on handing possession to the distributor. Turkish property law starts from TMK Art. 763: transfer of ownership of a movable requires transfer of possession. Article 985 presumes the possessor of a movable to be its owner, and Article 988 protects a good-faith acquirer from a person entrusted with possession (emin sıfatıyla zilyet) even where that person had no authority to dispose. The commercial risk of consignment is therefore structural, not accidental.
Retention of title does not fix it unless it is perfected in Turkish form. Under TMK Art. 764 a retention-of-title clause is valid only if the agreement is made in official form and registered in the special register of the notary at the transferee’s place of residence. The next sentence adds a further exclusion for livestock sales. A retention-of-title clause in a foreign-law supply contract, never registered in Türkiye, will not by itself displace the possession presumption in an enforcement file. Why that registration is almost never made, and what a foreign supplier can use instead, is set out in retention of title in Türkiye.
One more claimant may be ahead of you. Under TBK Art. 336 a landlord of immovable property has a lien over movables found on the premises that serve their furnishing or use, securing one year’s accrued and six months’ current rent. Article 337 contains the protection for goods owners — third parties’ rights over goods that the landlord knew or should have known did not belong to the tenant rank ahead of the lien — and the following paragraph adds that a landlord who learns during the lease that the goods are not the tenant’s, and does not terminate for the earliest termination date, loses the lien over them. Written notice to the warehouse landlord that the stock is yours is therefore not a formality; it is the fact that later decides priority.
Read across the contracting structures, the differences in outcome are stark.
| How the asset was placed with the Turkish party | Governing provision | Position when the debtor is seized |
|---|---|---|
| Financial lease registered under Law No. 6361 | Arts. 22, 23/1, 28/2 | Execution officer keeps the asset outside the proceedings; 7 days to object, decided within one month |
| Operating lease written by a leasing company | Art. 2/3 excludes it from the leasing regime | Falls back to the İİK Arts. 96-99 contest |
| Equipment rented out by a foreign manufacturer itself | Art. 3/d — not a lessor within the Law | Falls back to the İİK Arts. 96-99 contest |
| Sale with retention of title | TMK Art. 764 | Effective only if made in official form and entered in the notary's special register at the transferee's residence |
| Consignment stock, possession handed over | TMK Arts. 763, 985, 988 | Possession presumption plus the risk of good-faith acquisition from a person entrusted with possession — the weakest position |
Where an asset must be preserved outside the enforcement file — for instance in a parallel contractual dispute with the distributor — the general injunction regime applies: HMK Art. 389 requires a risk that the right will become significantly harder or impossible to obtain, or a serious prejudice from delay; Art. 390/3 requires the applicant to show approximate justification; Art. 392/1 requires security unless the claim rests on an official document or other conclusive evidence; and Art. 393/1 causes the injunction to lapse automatically if its enforcement is not requested within one week of pronouncement or service. These are the tools that sit alongside, not instead of, the enforcement-court route, and they belong to the commercial litigation and arbitration side of the file.
7. The Practical Ordering of the First Week
Three things are worth doing before any substantive argument is drafted. Obtain the attachment minute and read where the goods stood and who was present, because that single line allocates the burden of proof between Art. 97 and Art. 99. Check whether the execution officer classified the position correctly — an incorrect classification is an act of the execution office, and İİK Art. 16 allows a complaint to the Enforcement Court within seven days of learning of it, with no time limit at all where a right is simply not being exercised or is left pending without cause. And decide early whether to accept custody, because keeping the asset in place is often worth more than a stay that carries a 20% downside.
Two commercial settings produce these files repeatedly. The first is a distribution or agency relationship in which the supplier’s stock sits on the distributor’s premises — the same relationship that generates the register dispute described in when your Turkish distributor registers your trademark. The second is an attachment that sweeps up prototypes, moulds or documentation carrying confidential information, where possession and confidentiality have to be argued together; the confidentiality half is set out in trade secret protection in Türkiye. Both settings belong to the same body of work — third-party rights and retention of title — which starts from the position of the owner of the goods rather than that of the creditor.
Statutory texts referred to above are published by the Turkish Official Gazette: the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law No. 2004, the Turkish Civil Code No. 4721, the Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098, the Code of Civil Procedure No. 6100, and Law No. 6361 on financial leasing, factoring, financing and savings financing companies.
This article describes the statutory framework in general terms and is not legal advice on any particular seizure; deadlines under İİK Arts. 96, 97 and 99 run from facts that must be established file by file.
