Legal Glossary

Capacity to be a party (taraf ehliyeti) is a person’s ability to be a claimant or respondent in a civil action. It is the procedural-law counterpart of the capacity to hold rights under civil law. Natural persons and legal entities recognized by law have capacity to be a party; special provisions may allow certain communities to be a party to a limited extent.

The capital market is the market in which capital market instruments such as shares and debt instruments are issued and traded and in which savings are channeled through these instruments to companies and other issuers. Capital Markets Law No. 6362 does not define the market itself; it regulates the instruments, issuers, brokerage firms, exchanges and the powers of the Capital Markets Board (SPK). The purpose of the Law is to ensure that the market functions in a reliable, transparent and fair manner and that investors are protected.

Compensation is the redress of the loss suffered by a person, usually by the payment of money, by the person who is legally held responsible for it. Liability mostly arises from a tort (Article 49 et seq. of the Turkish Code of Obligations) or from breach of contract (Article 112 et seq.); in certain cases provided by law, lawful conduct may also require compensation. Pecuniary damages cover the reduction in assets and the loss of earnings, while non-pecuniary damages compensate for the non-material harm arising from injury to bodily integrity or to a personality right.

Compliance (uyum) is the term for the whole of the policies, controls and appointments aimed at ensuring that an institution carries out its activities in accordance with the legislation in force, regulatory decisions and its internal rules. Turkish law has no general statutory definition applicable to all companies. The most detailed regulation is in the field of combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism: Law No. 5549 and the Regulation on the Compliance Program impose on the listed obliged entities the obligation to establish a compliance program and appoint a compliance officer.

A composition with creditors (konkordato) is a judicial procedure that allows a debtor who cannot pay its debts when they fall due, or is in danger of being unable to pay them, to restructure those debts through a plan that mostly offers creditors extended maturities or reductions. The plan becomes binding if it is accepted by the majority of creditors required by law and confirmed by the court (tasdik). It is regulated in Articles 285 et seq. of the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law (İİK). The process runs under the supervision of a composition commissioner appointed by the court; during the moratorium (mühlet) granted by the court, enforcement proceedings are, as a rule, suspended. The aim is mostly to avoid a probable bankruptcy.

A consumer transaction (tüketici işlemi) is a contract or legal act concluded between a consumer and a natural or legal person acting for commercial or professional purposes. What is decisive is not the name of the transaction but the status of the parties and the purpose for which the goods or services are acquired. Provisions specific to consumers on jurisdiction, applications, mediation and protection may apply.

A contract is a legal transaction formed by the mutual and corresponding declarations of intent of the parties. The parties may freely determine the content of a contract within the limits of the law. Contracts that violate mandatory provisions of law, morality, public order or personality rights, or whose subject matter is impossible, are null and void under Article 27 of the Turkish Code of Obligations (TBK); partial invalidity is assessed separately.

A contractual penalty (ceza koşulu) is a predetermined performance that the debtor undertakes to pay if the obligation is not performed at all or is not performed properly. To claim a valid contractual penalty, it is not necessary that damage has occurred; this institution secures performance. Its type, its relationship to the principal obligation, fault, excessiveness and special commercial-law provisions are examined in the specific case.

A court-appointed expert is a person who gives the court an opinion on matters whose resolution requires special or technical knowledge outside the law. The expert does not take the judge’s place, cannot make legal characterizations and cannot decide the outcome of the dispute. The report is evaluated by the court together with the other evidence.

Credit is the provision of money or purchasing power to a person for a certain period on the basis of an assurance that it will be repaid, or the assumption of a payment obligation in that person’s favor. Banking Law Art. 48 treats, in addition to cash credit, non-cash transactions such as letters of guarantee, suretyship and aval as credit. In private law, the basis of monetary credit is most often a consumption loan agreement; for credit granted to consumers, the special rules of the Consumer Protection Law also apply.

A crypto-asset is an intangible asset that can be created and stored electronically by means of a distributed ledger (for example, blockchain) or a similar technology, is distributed over digital networks and can represent a value or a right. The definition was added to the Capital Markets Law in 2024 by Law No. 7518. Crypto-asset service providers are subject to the permit and supervision of the Capital Markets Board; under the Central Bank’s regulation, crypto-assets cannot be used directly or indirectly in payments.

Cybercrime is a general term for offenses directed at information systems and the data in them, or committed by using information systems as a tool. The Turkish Penal Code has no separate offense type under this name; the core provisions are Articles 243–245/A of Law No. 5237 in the section “Offenses in the Field of Information Technology.” Theft and fraud committed by using information systems, in turn, are punished more severely as aggravated forms of the offenses of theft and fraud.