This is what an online seller's terms have to say now.
Türkiye’s Distance Contracts Regulation changed on 1 January 2026, under the Regulation Amending the Distance Contracts Regulation published by the Ministry of Trade in the Official Gazette of 24 May 2025, No. 32909. Article 5 of that text sets the commencement date and Article 6 assigns execution to the Minister of Trade; there is no staged entry and no transitional clause inside the amending regulation. Four substantive changes were made: subparagraphs (g) and (k) of Article 5/1 were replaced, Article 12/5 was rewritten and a cross-reference in Article 12/4 deleted, Article 13/3 was repealed, and Article 15/1(i) was repealed.
That list, read on its own, is incomplete. The same date carried a second event, and the interaction between the two is what actually determines which clauses in a seller’s terms are now wrong.
Why 1 January 2026 Was a Double Event
A large package of amendments to the Regulation was published on 23 August 2022 (Official Gazette No. 31932). Parts of it took effect on 1 October 2022. But a defined subset never did. A regulation of 14 September 2022 deferred those provisions to 1 January 2024; then Provisional Article 1, added on 4 November 2023 and amended on 10 August 2024, suspended them until 1 January 2026 and provided in its second paragraph that, until that date, the versions in force before the 2022 amendment continued to apply.
The suspended set was specific: Article 5/1(g); the whole of Article 12; Article 12/A(7)(b); the word “four” inserted in Article 13/1 and the new Article 13/3; and subparagraphs (ı), (i), (j) and (k) added to Article 15/1.
So on 1 January 2026 two things happened at once. The suspension lapsed, bringing the 2022 package into application for the first time — and the 24 May 2025 amendment entered into force, rewriting parts of that same package. Two of the suspended provisions were repealed before they had ever applied to a single transaction.
| Provision | Position until 31 December 2025 | Position from 1 January 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Art. 5/1(g) — return carrier | Pre-2022 wording applied: name the carrier designated for returns | Same substance restored by the 2025 amendment |
| Art. 5/1(k) — dispute routes | Reference to the arbitration committee and the consumer court | Must also state that mediation precedes a court claim under Art. 73/A |
| Art. 12/1 — refund trigger | Fourteen days from arrival of the withdrawal notice | Fourteen days from handover to the designated carrier; from arrival at the seller if another carrier is used |
| Art. 12/5 — return costs | Pre-2022 rule: consumer not liable where the designated carrier is used | Same rule, plus a sentence allocating the cost to the intermediary on platforms |
| Art. 13/1 — return dispatch | Ten days to send the goods back | Fourteen days |
| Art. 13/3 — consumer pays return cost | Suspended, never applied | Repealed |
| Art. 15/1(i) — phones, tablets, computers | Suspended, never applied | Repealed |
| Art. 15/1(ı), (j), (k) | Suspended, never applied | In force from 1 January 2026, then annulled on 6 May 2026 |
Return Costs: The Rule That Did Not Change, and the One That Did
The 2022 package had added Article 13/3, under which a consumer would have been liable for the return cost — capped at the delivery cost — where the pre-contractual information had agreed it and stated the amount for return through the seller’s designated carrier. The same provision then carried its own exception: a consumer could not be held liable for return costs where the delivered goods were defective within Article 8 of Law No. 6502, and the return cost could be set off against the refund at the consumer’s request.
That provision was suspended for its entire life and repealed with effect from 1 January 2026. The consequence is that Article 12/5 governs alone, and its content is close to the rule that applied before 2022: where the goods go back through the carrier the seller designated under Article 5/1(g), the consumer cannot be held liable for return costs; where the seller designated no carrier in the pre-contractual information, no return charge at all may be demanded; and where the designated carrier has no branch in the consumer’s location, the seller must arrange collection without any additional charge.
The practical reading matters. This is not a new restriction that arrived in 2026 — it is the restriction that was already operating, kept in place after a three-year attempt to soften it lapsed. What genuinely is new is the closing sentence added in 2025: on contracts concluded through a platform, where the missing carrier information or the absent branch is attributable to the intermediary service provider, the cost and the obligation fall on the intermediary. Marketplace sellers and platform operators should reflect that allocation in the intermediation agreement rather than discovering it in a dispute, which is the kind of risk allocation that belongs in the commercial contracts governing the relationship. Where a platform responds to a returns dispute by suspending the store or holding back a payout, the seller’s position turns on that intermediation agreement and on the electronic commerce legislation rather than on this Regulation, which is a separate question from the one this note addresses.
Withdrawal Exclusions: Two Deletions and Three Annulments
The 2022 package added four exclusions to the list in Article 15/1. Their fate is now the most confusing part of the Regulation, and it is worth setting out plainly.
Subparagraph (i) covered contracts for mobile phones, smart watches, tablets and computers already delivered to the consumer. It was suspended throughout and repealed with effect from 1 January 2026. It never applied. A returns policy that excludes these categories is not describing Turkish law.
Subparagraphs (ı), (j) and (k) — respectively, movables subject to compulsory registration under the Highway Traffic Law No. 2918 together with unmanned aerial vehicles subject to registration; contracts concluded by live auction; and goods whose manual states that installation or assembly is carried out by the seller or authorised service where that installation has been performed — did come into force on 1 January 2026. The consolidated text of the Regulation then records that the Council of State annulled all three by a judgment dated 6 May 2026. Whether that judgment has become final is not recorded in the consolidated text, so the current status of the annulment should be checked before any of these three exclusions is relied on.
The long-standing exclusions in subparagraphs (a) to (h) are unaffected: goods and services whose price tracks financial-market fluctuations outside the seller’s control; bespoke goods; perishables; hygiene items whose protective packaging has been opened; goods that become commingled with others after delivery and cannot be separated; books, digital content and computer consumables supplied in physical form whose seal is broken; newspapers and periodicals outside a subscription; dated accommodation, goods transport, car hire, catering and leisure services; services performed instantly in electronic form and intangibles delivered instantly; and services begun with the consumer’s consent before the withdrawal period expires. Article 15/1 opens with the words “unless the parties agree otherwise”, so a seller remains free to grant a return right it is not obliged to give.
The Refund Clock Moved, and It Moved Toward the Seller
Not everything that took effect favours the consumer. Until 31 December 2025 the pre-2022 Article 12/1 applied: the seller had fourteen days from the date the withdrawal notice reached it to refund everything collected, including delivery costs. That obligation ran whether or not the goods had come back.
Article 12/1 in its current form re-times this. The fourteen days now run from the date the goods are delivered to the carrier named for returns in the pre-contractual information — and, where the consumer chooses a different carrier, only from the date the goods reach the seller. Two further triggers stay on the old model: withdrawal before delivery (Art. 12/2) and service contracts (Art. 12/3) both run fourteen days from the notice.
Article 12/4 keeps the mechanics: a single repayment, in a manner appropriate to the payment instrument the consumer used, at no cost or obligation to the consumer, and, where the payment was made by credit card, card-issuing institutions under Law No. 5464 are required to add the transferred amount to the cardholder’s available limit in one operation once it reaches them. The same paragraph makes the intermediary jointly and severally liable for that repayment where it collected the price and had not yet passed it to the seller. The deleted cross-reference in that paragraph was simply the pointer to the now-repealed Article 13/3.
What the Pre-Contractual Information Must Contain
Article 5/1 lists the mandatory items, Article 5/2 makes them an integral part of the contract that cannot be varied unless the parties expressly agree otherwise, and Article 5/6 places the burden of proving that the information was given on the seller or provider and on the intermediary service provider — reinforced at statute level by Article 48/2 of Consumer Protection Law No. 6502. Article 5/3 adds a sanction with immediate commercial effect: if the seller fails to disclose the additional costs under subparagraph (d), the consumer is not obliged to bear them.
Two delivery rules sit alongside the list and are the usual source of defects. Article 6/1 requires the information to be given in writing or on a durable medium, in at least twelve-point type, in comprehensible language, clearly and legibly. Article 6/2(a) requires that, for internet contracts, the items in subparagraphs (a), (d), (g) and (h) be shown together and separately, immediately before the consumer comes under a payment obligation — a screen requirement, not a terms-and-conditions requirement.
| Item | Source | Where it has to appear |
|---|---|---|
| Essential characteristics of the goods or service | Art. 5/1(a) | Pre-contractual form and the pre-payment screen |
| Identity, MERSİS or tax number of seller and intermediary | Art. 5/1(b) | Pre-contractual form |
| Total price including all taxes, plus delivery and other additional costs | Art. 5/1(d) | Pre-contractual form and the pre-payment screen |
| Withdrawal conditions, period, procedure and the designated return carrier | Art. 5/1(g) — replaced | Pre-contractual form and the pre-payment screen |
| Cases where the withdrawal right cannot be used | Art. 5/1(h) | Pre-contractual form and the pre-payment screen |
| Arbitration committee route and mediation before a court claim | Art. 5/1(k) — replaced | Pre-contractual form |
The new subparagraph (k) needs care. It requires the consumer to be told that applications may be made to the consumer arbitration committee, or to the consumer court subject to applying to a mediator before proceedings are issued under Article 73/A of Law No. 6502. But Article 73/A does not impose that condition universally: it expressly disapplies the mediation requirement for disputes falling within the arbitration committee’s jurisdiction, for objections to committee decisions, for the actions described in Articles 73/6 and 74, and for consumer disputes arising from the immovable itself. Article 68/1 in turn makes application to the committee compulsory below a monetary threshold and bars it above that threshold, with the figures revalued each calendar year under the Tax Procedure Law. A clause that tells every consumer to mediate first is as defective as one that omits mediation altogether.
Enforcement, Records and the Adjacent Obligations
Article 77/1(a) of Law No. 6502 applies an administrative fine for breaching, among others, paragraphs 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 of Article 48 — assessed for each transaction or contract in which the breach is established. The amount stated in the statute is a nominal figure that is revalued annually, so the current level must be read from the relevant year’s revaluation; the mechanism, not the number, is what should drive the compliance decision, because a single defective checkout template reproduces the breach across every order.
The evidential architecture follows from that. Article 7 provides that a contract is deemed not to have been concluded where the seller does not secure the consumer’s confirmation of receipt of the pre-contractual information; Article 8/1 provides that the consumer is not bound by the order where the seller fails to state clearly, immediately before confirmation, that the order carries a payment obligation. Article 20/1 requires the information and documents relating to each transaction to be retained for three years, and Article 12/A(5) imposes the same three-year retention on intermediary service providers. Those logs are personal data in the hands of the seller, which is why retention design belongs with the seller’s wider personal data protection obligations under Law No. 6698, whose Article 10 sets out what the privacy notice must tell the data subject.
Sellers should also keep the electronic commerce layer in view. Law No. 6563 defines the Electronic Commerce Information System (ETBİS) as the Ministry’s system for registering service providers and intermediary service providers and collecting e-commerce data, and its Article 3 imposes its own pre-contractual information duties on the service provider — identifying information kept current, the technical steps to conclude the contract, whether the contract text will be stored and remain accessible, the technical means for correcting input errors, and the applicable privacy rules. These sit on top of, not instead of, the Regulation’s requirements, and both belong in the same review as the rest of a trader’s commercial law compliance file, alongside the withdrawal, conformity and arbitration-committee duties dealt with on our consumer law compliance page. Where the goods arrive from abroad before they are sold online, the customs and clearance layer described in our note on importing goods into Türkiye has to be reconciled with the thirty-day delivery ceiling in Article 16/1, which allows no longer period for stock that has not cleared — and Article 16/4 states expressly that goods being out of stock is not treated as impossibility of performance.
A 2026 Judgment Sitting Above the Regulation
The Regulation’s parent provision is Article 48 of Law No. 6502, and the consolidated text of that Law now records a Constitutional Court judgment dated 12 February 2026, published in the Official Gazette of 2 June 2026, whose effect is deferred. Article 48/5, which obliges intermediary service providers to keep open a channel for consumers’ requests and notifications, is not affected by it.
It annulled the phrase “and 11” within Article 48/6(d), the subparagraph making an intermediary that collects the price jointly and severally liable for delivery and withdrawal obligations. The annulment takes effect nine months after publication, on 2 March 2027. The same judgment also annulled the first paragraph of Article 9 of Law No. 6563 (the provision under which an e-commerce intermediary is not liable for unlawful matters concerning content supplied by the seller) as regards consumer contracts, with effect from the same date. The words removed from Article 48/6(d) were themselves a cross-reference to Article 11 of Law No. 6502, the consumer’s optional rights over defective goods; deleting them takes those rights out of the carve-out, so the intermediary’s joint and several liability widens rather than narrows.
The judgment does not change anything a seller must do today, and nothing has yet replaced the annulled words. It does mean that the statutory foundation of part of the platform liability regime, including Article 12/A of the Regulation, which is built on Article 48, is scheduled to change in 2027. Contract terms with marketplaces that were drafted around the current allocation of liability should be diarised for review well before that date rather than renewed automatically.
What This Means for a Document Review
The revision that the current text requires is narrow, but it is precise. The return-carrier clause has to name a carrier or accept that no return charge can be made. The dispute-resolution paragraph has to describe both the arbitration committee route and the mediation condition, with its statutory exceptions. The refund workflow has to distinguish three different starting points rather than one. The checkout screen has to carry four specified items immediately before payment. Categories that a 2022-era template excludes from withdrawal — phones, tablets, computers, and now the three annulled subparagraphs — have to come back into the returns flow.
Two adjacent files belong on the same desk. Where the pressure comes from the platform rather than the consumer — a store suspended, a listing removed, a payout held — the seller’s position is governed by Law No. 6563 and is set out in marketplace seller rights in Türkiye. And where the goods have to come back for safety reasons rather than because a consumer withdrew, the withdrawal right is the wrong instrument entirely; the obligations then arise under Law No. 7223 on product recall.
Anything in a seller’s terms that was written against the 2022 text and never re-checked is describing a regime that, in material part, has never been in force.
