Unlawful Occupation of Your Turkish Property: Two Separate Actions — Prevention of Interference and Ecrimisil

Getting the property back and getting paid for the occupation are two different claims, decided on different tests, and a third, faster administrative route closes 60 days after you learn of the occupation.

If someone is living in your Turkish property without a contract, you cannot remove them yourself and there is no single “eviction” action to file. Turkish law splits the problem in two: an action under Article 683/2 of Civil Code No. 4721 to get the property back, and a separate money claim, ecrimisil, for what the occupation was worth. Running alongside them is a third, faster route that most non-resident owners discover too late: an administrative application to the district governor under Law No. 3091, which closes sixty days after you learn of the occupation. The position below is as at September 2026, and it concerns occupation without any contractual relationship — where a tenancy exists, the analysis belongs to Türkiye’s rent regulations instead.

What the owner can actually ask for

Article 683/1 states the content of ownership: the owner may use, benefit from and dispose of the thing as he wishes within the limits of the legal order. The operative sentence is the second paragraph, and it contains two distinct actions — the owner may bring an action of recovery (istihkak) against a person wrongfully holding the property, and may also sue for the prevention of any unlawful interference (el atmanın önlenmesi). Which of the two fits depends on the facts: total occupation of a flat or a plot is a matter of recovery of possession; a neighbour’s wall, a stored container or a fence over the boundary is interference. In pleading practice the two are routinely combined and joined with the money claim, which is why files are titled el atmanın önlenmesi ve ecrimisil.

What the owner cannot do is act alone. Article 981 allows a possessor to repel dispossession or attack by force and, for immovables, to keep possession by driving out the person seizing it. The same article’s next sentence limits it: the possessor must refrain from using force beyond what the situation justifies. That is a defence for the moment of the intrusion, not a licence to clear a property that has been occupied for months. Where the owner was actually dispossessed, the possessory actions in Articles 982 and 983 are also available — but Article 982 lets the defendant refuse return if he immediately proves a superior right, and Article 984 extinguishes the right of action two months after the possessor learns of the act and its author, and one year after the act in any event. That is a forfeiture period, not a limitation period, and it is short.

The sixty-day administrative route

Law No. 3091 exists precisely for the situation this article describes: it protects possession, through the administration, without waiting for a court. Under Article 2 the provincial governor decides in a central district and the kaymakam elsewhere; the decision orders the interference removed and the immovable delivered back to the possessor on site. Article 3 gives the right of application to the possessor. Article 6 requires the investigation to be completed and decided within fifteen days, and Article 9 requires the enforcement officer to carry the decision out within five days of receiving it. Additional Article 1 makes it compulsory to open locked and closed premises, by force if necessary, and Additional Article 2 governs the removal and, if unclaimed, the sale of the occupier’s belongings. Article 18 exempts the whole procedure from tax, charge and fee.

Three limits decide whether the route is realistically open. First, timing: Article 4 requires the application within sixty days of learning of the interference and bars it altogether one year after it occurred — the exemption from time limits in the second paragraph applies to State-held and public-benefit land, not to private property. Second, scope: Article 5 allows an application that plainly falls outside the law to be rejected without any site investigation. Third, and most often missed, Article 14 provides that the law does not apply at all where the dispute between the parties is already the subject of a court case or an interim measure — filing first can therefore close this door. And under Article 7 the decision is final subject to administrative-court review, and must itself state that anyone claiming a superior right over the property has to go to court; Article 10 sends the removed occupier to the ordinary courts for anything he planted, built or altered.

The court action, and how the judgment is carried out

Jurisdiction is straightforward. Under Article 2 of Civil Procedure Law No. 6100 the civil court of first instance (asliye hukuk mahkemesi) hears property claims unless another court is designated, and under Article 12 the court where the immovable is situated has exclusive venue for actions concerning rights in rem and for actions concerning possession of the immovable. The ecrimisil claim is a money claim, but where it is joined to the removal action it is heard in that same court. Proof follows Article 190: the owner establishes title from the land registry and establishes that the defendant is in occupation without a right; the defendant carries the burden of the right he asserts.

Where there is a risk that the position on the ground will change, Article 389 allows an interim measure where a change in the existing situation would make the right significantly harder or impossible to obtain, or where delay would cause a disadvantage or serious harm — and Article 390 requires it to be sought from the court competent on the merits before the case is filed, and from the trial court afterwards. It is worth being blunt about what this is not: an interim measure is a holding instrument, and possession is restored by a judgment, not by the measure.

Enforcement is where owners abroad most often underestimate the timetable. A judgment for the vacation and delivery of an immovable is not self-executing. Under Article 26 of Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law No. 2004 the file goes to the enforcement office, which serves an enforcement order requiring delivery within seven days; if the debtor is occupying the property and does not comply, the judgment is executed by force. The third paragraph is the one that protects the result: a debtor who re-enters property already delivered to the creditor without lawful cause is removed by force again, without any need for a fresh judgment. Belongings inside the property that are not covered by the judgment are handed to the debtor or a relative, and otherwise stored and, if unclaimed within five or thirty days depending on location, sold with the court’s authorisation.

Ecrimisil: what the occupation costs the occupier

Ecrimisil is not rent and is not calculated as rent arrears. Its statutory basis is Article 995: the possessor who is not in good faith must pay compensation for the damage caused to the rightful person by the wrongful withholding and for the fruits obtained, or negligently not obtained. The mirror provision explains why good faith is the fighting issue — Article 993 provides that a possessor who uses or benefits from a thing in good faith, in a manner consistent with his presumed right, owes no compensation on that account. Article 995 also has its own limits: the mala fide possessor may recover only expenses that were necessary for the rightful person as well, and is liable only for damage caused by his fault for as long as he does not know to whom the property must be returned.

The Civil Code does not use the word ecrimisil and sets no formula for the amount; the measure is the one in Article 995 itself, the damage caused by the wrongful withholding and the fruits obtained or negligently not obtained. Because the occupier never agreed to pay anything, the claim is not one for rent under a contract, and the figure has to be built from evidence. Two consequences follow that matter in practice. Quantum is expert work: under Article 266 of Law No. 6100 the court obtains an expert opinion where the question calls for special or technical knowledge, which the use value of a flat or a plot does, and a site inspection and comparable lease agreements for similar properties are the usual material for that report. And under Article 26 the judge is bound by the claimant’s requests and cannot award more than was asked, so a figure pleaded too low cannot be corrected by the court on its own; because the amount is known only once the report is in, the way the claim is framed at the outset is what keeps the recovery intact.

One procedural change from 2026 affects how the figure is pleaded. Article 107 of Law No. 6100, the action for an indeterminate claim, was repealed with effect from 31 July 2026, and a new fourth paragraph was added to Article 109: where only part of a claim is sued for, the subject of the claim may be increased once, free of the prohibition on expanding the claim, until the end of the examination phase, and limitation is treated as interrupted from the date of the action for the increased part as well. For a claim whose amount depends on an expert report — which ecrimisil always does — that paragraph is now the mechanism that keeps the door open.

The criminal side, and what it does not achieve

Two offences are commonly in play. Article 154 of Criminal Code No. 5237 punishes a person who, without any right, occupies another’s immovable in whole or in part as if he were the owner, alters or damages its boundaries, or prevents the rightful person from benefiting from it even in part, with six months to three years’ imprisonment and a judicial fine of up to a thousand days — on the complaint of the injured party. Article 116 punishes entering a dwelling against the occupant’s will or refusing to leave after entering with consent, again on complaint, with six months to two years, rising to one to three years where force or threat is used or the act is committed at night; the equivalent for business premises is six months to one year or a judicial fine. Law No. 3091 adds its own offence in Article 15: a second interference with the same immovable, where the property was not delivered by a court judgment, carries three months to one year for private property, increased where the act is committed by an armed person, by several people, or by people combining to share or use the property.

A criminal complaint is a real instrument, and the file it generates is often the cleanest evidence of the start date of the occupation. It is not, however, a route to possession: the criminal court does not order the property vacated, and it does not fix ecrimisil. Where the occupation rests on a forged authority, a purported sale or a person letting property he does not own, the file overlaps with the patterns set out in our guide to real estate fraud in Türkiye, and the documents should be secured before anyone is approached.

Running the case from outside Türkiye

None of this requires the owner to be in the country, which is why it is one of the more manageable disputes to conduct remotely. Three points make the difference.

The power of attorney. Under Article 76 of Law No. 6100 a lawyer must file the original of a power of attorney drawn up or certified by a notary, or a copy certified by the lawyer. Executed abroad, that normally means a Turkish consulate, or a notary in the country of residence with an apostille and a sworn Turkish translation. Article 74 then matters for scope: without express authority, an attorney cannot settle, cannot fully amend the claim, cannot resort to alternative dispute resolution, cannot waive the claim or an appeal, and cannot accept the opponent’s claim. Those powers are worth deciding on deliberately rather than by default.

Evidence, secured early. Article 400 allows a party to have facts established for a case not yet filed, by site inspection, expert examination or the taking of witness statements, where the evidence would otherwise be lost or become significantly harder to present. Article 401 lets the request go to the court competent on the merits or to the magistrates’ court where the thing to be inspected is located, and expressly preserves findings of fact made by notaries under Notaries Law No. 1512. For an owner who visits twice a year, this is what turns “the property looked occupied” into a dated, recorded fact.

Cost. Under Article 326 the litigation costs are as a rule borne by the party against whom judgment is given, and are apportioned according to the degree of success where each side partly succeeds. That is the mechanism through which court fees and expert costs are recovered — a mechanism, not a guarantee, since it depends on the outcome and on the defendant’s solvency.

Two boundaries close the picture. This article is about occupation without any contractual relationship; it does not address property held in co-ownership or through an undivided estate, where a different body of rules governs what one co-owner may claim from another. And it assumes the title is clean — where it is not, the questions come earlier, and the framework is in our guide to buying property in Türkiye as a foreigner. Owners who want the registry position, the occupation date and the available routes assessed together can do so through our real estate practice; the single most useful step, in almost every one of these files, is establishing the start date of the occupation before another year of it passes.