Postponement of Enforcement: Illness, Pregnancy, Child Care and Application Routes

Postponement of enforcement means that a final prison sentence is not carried out for a certain period, or that enforcement already begun is interrupted, on the grounds set out in the law. The conviction judgment does not disappear. Illness, pregnancy, the care of a sick or disabled child and the convict’s personal necessities are subject to different conditions. For this reason, it is not correct to evaluate every request under the same “postponement of enforcement” petition and the same time limit.[1]

Article 16 of Law No. 5275 regulates the convict’s health and the pregnancy and post-birth period; Article 16/A regulates the sick or disabled child of a female convict in certain circumstances; and Article 17 regulates postponement and interruption of enforcement at the convict’s own request. The success of an application depends on placing the facts under the correct provision and on explaining the conditions that provision requires with up-to-date documents.

Which institutions should postponement of enforcement not be confused with?

Suspension of the sentence under Turkish Penal Code (TCK) Article 51

The suspension of a prison sentence under TCK Article 51 is a separate institution, assessed when the conviction judgment is being rendered. Postponement of enforcement under Law No. 5275, by contrast, concerns grounds that arise at the stage of carrying out a final sentence. The competent authority, the conditions and the consequences that follow later are not the same.[1][2]

If a convict falls seriously ill afterwards, this does not automatically lead to the conviction being suspended under TCK Article 51. In such a case, deferral on health grounds or, if the conditions are met, another special enforcement route is examined.

Enforcement at home, judicial control and stay of enforcement

Enforcement at home under Article 110 of Law No. 5275 is a special manner of carrying out the sentence; it is not a postponement period in which the sentence is, in the general sense, not applied. The judicial control measure of not leaving the residence, which is applied during the trial, does not fall within the enforcement of a final sentence.[1] On this topic, the article on enforcement at home, on weekends and at night can also be consulted.

For the aspect of this distinction that concerns the trial stage, see objecting to house arrest and the judicial control measure of not leaving the residence. Postponement or stay of enforcement by a court under Article 17/A or Article 98 also rests on legal bases different from an application to the prosecutor’s office on health grounds. The effect on another person of a decision on a legal remedy given in favor of one of the persons tried together is a matter assessed separately under Article 17/A.

Deferral of enforcement on account of illness

Special provision on mental illness

According to Article 16/1, the enforcement of the sentence of a convict who is afflicted with mental illness is deferred, and the person is placed under protection and treatment in the health institution specified in TCK Article 57 until recovery. Time spent in this health institution is counted as time served in prison. Not every psychiatric complaint automatically falls within this legal category; the relevant medical assessment and the statutory procedure are required.[1][2] For details on the subject, see the article on health and the right to treatment in prison.

Article 18, which concerns the enforcement of sentences for mental disorders other than mental illness, is also a separate provision. These provisions cannot be used in place of one another before the nature of the diagnosis and the need for treatment have been determined.

Enforcement posing a definite danger to life

For other illnesses, the basic approach is that the sentence continues to be enforced in the sections of official health facilities reserved for convicts. Even under these conditions, if enforcement poses a definite danger to the convict’s life, enforcement is deferred under Article 16/2 until recovery.[1]

An application should not merely state the name of the illness or the existence of a serious diagnosis. The current stage of the illness, the conditions that the treatment requires, whether this treatment can be provided in the hospital or institution, and the effect of continuing enforcement on life should be explained. What is needed for the legal assessment is, besides the existence of the illness, the danger connected with enforcement.

Inability to live alone because of serious illness or disability

Article 16/6 regulates a different possibility. The sentence of a convict who, because of serious illness or disability, cannot live alone under the conditions of a penal institution, and who is assessed as not posing a serious and concrete danger to public safety, may be deferred until recovery through the statutory report procedure.[1]

Two elements are examined together here: the ability to carry on daily life under institutional conditions, and the concrete assessment of danger to society. Functional circumstances such as nutrition, personal care, mobility, use of medication and the need for continuous assistance should be made concrete. The disability rate alone, or the name of the offense alone, should not be presented as an automatic criterion that replaces the entire examination.

The definite danger to life in Article 16/2 and the inability to live alone in Article 16/6 are not the same condition. If both legal grounds are invoked in the application, the basis of each should be explained separately. If it is unclear which question the report answers, a request for clarification or a supplementary assessment is needed.

Medical report and decision procedure

Which report is taken as the basis?

Article 16/3 takes as its basis the report issued by the Council of Forensic Medicine (Adli Tıp Kurumu), or the report issued by the full-fledged hospital medical board designated by the Ministry of Justice and approved by the Council of Forensic Medicine. On the basis of this report, the decision is given by the Office of the Chief Public Prosecutor (Cumhuriyet Başsavcılığı) of the place where the sentence is being enforced.[1]

Private hospital records, discharge summaries (epikriz), tests and expert opinions may explain the medical ground of the application; however, they do not automatically replace the report procedure the law requires. These documents should be submitted for the competent assessment, and it should be requested that the current condition be examined and, if necessary, that the referral process be expedited.

If the report is incomplete or outdated, instead of framing the objection merely as “the report is wrong,” it should be shown which new medical finding has not been assessed. The relevant field of specialty, the change in treatment, and matters such as an increase in mobility or care needs can be explained with concrete documents. The medical content is assessed by the competent health experts; the legal application establishes the link between that assessment and the statutory criterion.

Obligations and monitoring after deferral

The deferral decision is notified to the convict and the convict’s legal representative, with the obligations specified. The place where the person will be staying is reported to the prosecutor’s office. The state of health is re-examined at the intervals stated in the report; if no period is stated, at one-year intervals. According to the result, a decision is made on whether the deferral will continue.[1]

For this reason, a decision given on account of illness is not an indefinite and unsupervised exemption from enforcement. Failure to comply with the notification and other obligations may lead to the decision being lifted. However, the basis for a violation of obligations or for an assessment of recovery should also be made concrete; and the appropriate judicial route should be used against a lifting decision.

Enforcement during pregnancy and the post-birth period

The general period is eighteen months from birth

Under Article 16/4, enforcement of the prison sentence of women who are pregnant, or whose birth took place no more than one year and six months ago, is deferred. If the child dies or is given to someone other than the mother, the sentence is enforced once two months have passed from birth. Because the start of the period is the date of birth, the birth record and documents on the child’s care situation are important.[1]

This protection cannot be generalized as “release for the same period for all women who have a child.” The period and exceptions stated in the law must be examined. If the child is seriously ill or disabled, Article 16/A may additionally come into play; the conditions of these two regimes should not be confused.

What are the statutory exceptions?

Article 16/4 does not apply to those who became pregnant after entering a closed penal institution and who have more than six years remaining until their conditional release, nor to those considered dangerous because of their acts and attitudes. The law provides for the enforcement of the relevant period for these persons in suitable places within the institution.[1]

In applying the exception, the time of becoming pregnant, entry into the institution, the time remaining until conditional release and the dangerousness assessment must be determined separately. Merely stating the total amount of the sentence does not complete this examination.

Female convict with a sick or disabled child

Scope of Article 16/A

Article 16/A may apply to a female convict who has been sentenced to imprisonment totaling ten years or less, even if enforcement has begun, or whose judicial fine has been converted to imprisonment during enforcement. The child under eighteen must be in need of care because of disability or be seriously ill, and the convict must be assessed as not posing a serious and concrete danger to public safety.[1]

The provision is not a general care postponement with the same scope for every parent. The law’s conditions on the female convict, the child’s age, state of health and the sentence limit are separately examined in the specific file. The child’s state of health is also determined under the procedure in Article 16/3.

Period, extension and obligations

The prosecutor’s office may give a postponement decision of up to one year. A maximum of four extensions is possible, each not exceeding six months. The total of three years, if all the maximum periods are used, is not a right granted automatically at the outset. At each extension, the continuing conditions are assessed; the statute of limitations does not run during the postponement.[1]

The convict is made subject to at least one of the obligations of not leaving a specified area of residence, regularly reporting to specified places, or depositing security appropriate to her economic situation. In addition, an obligation not to leave the country is imposed. The decision is lifted if the purpose of the postponement or the obligations are violated, if a public prosecution is opened for an intentional offense, or if the child recovers.

Postponement and interruption of enforcement at the convict’s request

Three-year and five-year sentence limits

Article 17/1 provides the possibility of postponement, at the request of a convict who appears on being summoned, for prison sentences of three years or less for intentional offenses and five years or less for negligent offenses. The postponement, which depends on the assessment of the Office of the Chief Public Prosecutor, may be applied no more than twice, each time for no more than one year.[1]

The obligation that begins with the notification of the summons must be followed separately. Article 19 provides for an arrest warrant to be issued against a convict who does not come within ten days of the summons, who flees, or who raises suspicion that he or she will flee. The filing of a postponement petition does not by itself remove the obligation to respond to the summons unless a favorable decision exists.

Interruption where enforcement has begun

Article 17/4 allows enforcement already begun to be interrupted in compelling and highly urgent cases within the same sentence limits. Completion of higher education; the inability to run the family business or farming activity because of the death or continuing illness of relatives; the need for care of the spouse or child because of continuing illness or invalidity; and the convict’s need for continuing treatment are among the examples listed in the law.[1]

Each interruption may not exceed one year and may be applied at most twice. Acceptance may be made conditional on security or another condition. Workload or family difficulty alone is not an automatic ground for acceptance; the necessity, the urgency, the time needed and why the alternatives are inadequate should be explained with documents.

The exceptions in Article 17 cannot be carried over to other routes

Persons convicted of terrorism, of offenses committed within the framework of organizational activities, and of offenses against sexual inviolability; those to whom the enforcement regime specific to repeat offenders is applied; and those sentenced to disciplinary or coercive imprisonment are outside the scope of Article 17.[1]

These limitations do not mean that a request based on Article 16 on health grounds will also be rejected automatically. For example, the route of postponement at personal request may be closed to a repeat-offender convict; even so, a state of health that poses a definite danger to life must be examined under its own statutory criteria.

What do the actual Constitutional Court decisions highlight?

The constitutional consequence of delay in the Murat Karabulut decision

In the decision of the Second Section of the Constitutional Court (Anayasa Mahkemesi) in Murat Karabulut, Application No: 2013/2754, February 18, 2016, the deficiencies and delays in the health assessment process initiated for a convict with cancer were addressed. The report and document procedures between the hospital and the Council of Forensic Medicine could not be completed in about seven months; the convict died during this period. The Court held that the prohibition of treatment incompatible with human dignity had been violated.[4]

The basic outcome of the decision is not that every serious illness requires direct release. It is the responsibility of the competent institutions to carry out the assessment with reasonable speed and care in the face of a known serious clinical picture. The right to life complaint in the same decision, on the other hand, was found inadmissible because of non-exhaustion of remedies. The finding of a violation and the part found inadmissible should be kept apart.

Current medical data and the application route in the Turan Çabuk decision

In the decision of the Second Section of the Constitutional Court in Turan Çabuk, Application No: 2021/36319, June 25, 2025, the report submitted was found to relate to the need for post-surgery care and the problem of distance within the hospital. The Court regarded this part as manifestly ill-founded on the ground that the file did not contain sufficient medical data confirming the alleged danger to life. The separate complaint about institutional conditions led to a finding of non-exhaustion of remedies because it had not first been taken to the enforcement judgeship.[5]

The fact that the lower-court decisions relied on the offense exception in Article 17 cannot be read as the Constitutional Court prohibiting a health application under Article 16 in all terrorism convictions. The Constitutional Court’s own inadmissibility reasoning concerns medical data and application routes. For this reason, along with current health documents, the application should include records showing that the complaint about conditions of detention was also raised before the correct authority.

Application file and review of a rejection decision

Linking the facts, the report, the law and the request

The legal ground should be stated clearly in the application. If there is more than one ground, each may be explained with its own conditions. The matching below increases the verifiability of the file:

If there is a rapid deterioration in health, its dates and the new documents should be submitted without delay. Instead of merely waiting for the final decision, it may also be expressly requested that a concrete delay in referral or report procedures be remedied. The date of the application, the registration of the papers and the replies given should be kept.

Complaint, objection and individual application

A complaint to the enforcement judgeship is possible against the prosecutor’s office’s decision on enforcement. The time limit is 15 days from learning of it and in any case 30 days from the act. An objection to the decision of the enforcement judge is made to the relevant High Criminal Court (Ağır Ceza Mahkemesi) within two weeks from notification. A complaint does not by itself stop enforcement; the interim-protection conditions of Law No. 4675 should be invoked with concrete reasons.[3]

An individual application is considered after the effective ordinary remedies have been properly used. For each of the different complaints concerning health and conditions of detention, it should be shown which route was taken. At this stage, the individual application to the Constitutional Court in a criminal case and the Constitutional Court’s 30-day application period should be considered together. A claim of urgency is explained with the current risk and documents; filing an application does not by itself result in release.

For details related to the subject, you may also look at our articles on objecting to the sentence calculation sheet (müddetname) and correcting the enforcement calculation, conditions of and applications for supervised release (denetimli serbestlik) and enforcement of multiple sentences and their aggregation (içtima).

Medical chronology and urgency in a health application

An old diagnosis must be distinguished from the current enforcement condition

A serious diagnosis made years ago does not take the place of the current clinical condition. Likewise, if a person whom an old report stated could remain in the institution later deteriorates markedly, this should not be disregarded by relying on the first report. The application should set out the date of diagnosis, the stages of treatment, the latest hospital admission, the change in care needs and the most recent specialist assessment. The Turan Çabuk decision shows the importance of showing in the file the medical basis of the danger alleged.[5]

When a medical chronology is prepared, the legal conclusion should not be presented as if it had been added to the medical document afterwards. The clinical finding written in the report should be kept apart from the legal request that the attorney or the applicant ties to that finding. For example, if the report shows only difficulty in walking, a statement such as “danger to life is certain,” which is not in the report, cannot be conveyed as if it were the result of the report. It may be explained that an additional assessment by the competent board is needed.

How is delay made concrete?

As the Murat Karabulut decision shows, the continuation of administrative procedures in a serious health condition may not, by itself, mean that sufficient care has been shown. However, not every wait produces the same legal consequence. The length of the delay, the course of the illness, the nature of the missing procedure and the knowledge of the competent authorities should be explained together. Documenting the concrete stages, instead of a statement that “the procedures took very long,” also determines which procedure is being asked to be expedited.[4]

The treatment request and the postponement request can be pursued together

While deferral of enforcement is being assessed, the need for access to current treatment continues. Meeting the need for necessary examinations, medication, referral to hospital or daily care should not be turned into a single matter that waits for the outcome of the postponement request. A concrete deficiency in access to health services should be explained separately to the competent administrative and judicial authorities. In the Turan Çabuk decision, the treatment of the complaint about conditions of detention from the standpoint of a separate application route is important for this distinction.[5]

Follow-up file after a postponement decision

When a favorable decision is given, the address to be notified, the checks, the time for renewing the report and any other obligations should be extracted from the text of the decision. New circumstances, such as a change of the hospital where treatment is received or a need for admission, should be notified to the relevant authority in time. Which notification is required is determined according to the provision applied and the content of the decision. Keeping the health documents up to date matters not only for the initial request but also for assessing whether the deferral will continue.[1]

In files concerning pregnancy, the post-birth period and child care under Article 16/A as well, the starting points of the periods should be kept apart. The date of birth, the date of the first postponement and the start of the extension decision do not have to be the same date. In the application, the statutory maximum period and the period given in the concrete decision should be shown separately; it should not be assumed that the whole of the maximum period is used automatically. Changes in the child’s state of health and care are assessed separately, within the conditions of the relevant provision.

Conclusion

In the postponement of enforcement, the first matter is to determine correctly which legal ground exists. Health, pregnancy, the care of a child and personal request are subject to different thresholds, periods and assessments. An effective file does not consist of a petition that merely attaches a report; it connects the situation the report shows to the statutory condition, documents the delay, and presents the concrete request for a decision to the correct authority. Having a rejection decision reviewed in time is also an inseparable part of this protection.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Does every illness secure postponement of enforcement?

No. The relevant criterion in Article 16 and the report procedure are required. The relationship of the illness to enforcement, the danger to life, or the inability to live alone in the institution must be made concrete.

Is a private hospital report sufficient on its own?

It does not replace the competent report procedure that the law provides. However, it may be submitted for the competent assessment as a supporting record showing the current clinical condition.

Who decides on account of illness?

On the basis of the statutory report under Article 16 of the Law, the Office of the Chief Public Prosecutor of the place where the sentence is being enforced decides. Judicial review of a rejection or lifting decision is separately available.

How long is the postponement period after birth?

The general rule is one year and six months from birth. The child’s death or being given to someone else, and the exceptions in Article 16/5, are examined separately.

Is a convict with a sick child automatically given three years?

No. The initial period under Article 16/A is at most one year; if the conditions continue, up to four extensions, each of up to six months, are possible.

How many times can postponement at the convict’s request be made?

Article 17 of the Law provides for at most two times, each not exceeding one year. The sentence limits, compliance with the summons and the exceptions apply separately.

Does a postponement petition remove the obligation to respond to the summons?

No. Unless a favorable decision exists, the application alone does not stop the summons or the enforcement obligation. The notification and the statutory time limit must be followed.

Can a repeat offender or a convict of a terrorism offense not make a health application?

The exceptions in Article 17 of the Law cannot be automatically carried over to the health examination under Article 16. The application is assessed under the correct provision and that provision’s own conditions.

Is time spent in a health institution on account of mental illness counted?

The period of protection and treatment in the health institution under Article 16/1 is counted as time served in prison. This special provision cannot be generalized to all postponement periods.

What time limits apply against a rejection decision?

For a complaint against the prosecutor’s office’s act on enforcement, limits of 15 days from learning and 30 days from the act apply; for an objection to the enforcement judge’s decision, two weeks from notification.

Sources and legal bases

1. Law No. 5275 on the Execution of Sentences and Security Measures, in particular Arts. 16, 16/A, 17, 17/A, 18, 19, 98 and 110.
2. Law No. 5237, Turkish Penal Code, Arts. 51 and 57.
3. Law No. 4675 on Enforcement Judgeships, Arts. 4–6.
4. Constitutional Court, Murat Karabulut, Application No: 2013/2754, February 18, 2016, in particular §§67–87 and the operative part. Violation of the prohibition of treatment incompatible with human dignity; non-exhaustion of remedies as regards the right to life.
5. Constitutional Court, Turan Çabuk, Application No: 2021/36319, June 25, 2025, in particular §§11–18 and the operative part. Insufficiency of medical data and non-exhaustion of remedies as regards the separate complaint.