Accept HAGB or Push for an Acquittal? what changed when HAGB became appealable

Deferral of the announcement of the judgment — hükmün açıklanmasının geri bırakılması, universally shortened to HAGB — used to require the defendant to say yes. It no longer does. The consent condition was abolished by Law no. 7499 of 2 March 2024, with effect from 1 June 2024. Article 231 of the Code of Criminal Procedure in its present form, most recently re-enacted by Law no. 7589 of 16 July 2026, carries no consent condition. CMK Geçici Madde 6 preserves the old rule for deferral decisions given before 1 June 2024; for anything given on or after that date, a court can place you under supervision in a case you wanted fought to a verdict, and it does not need your agreement to do it.

The second change is the way out. A deferral decision was formerly challenged by itiraz. Under CMK 231/12 it is now challenged by istinaf — appeal to the bölge adliye mahkemesi — subject to CMK 272/3, and the decision is examined for procedural and substantive unlawfulness. Those last words carry the weight. A review that reaches substance is a review that can reach the finding underneath the deferral, not only the boxes the court ticked on the way to it.

So the question in front of you is not whether to accept HAGB. It is whether to appeal against it, on a clock you did not start.

Under CMK 231/5, apart from the provisions on confiscation, a deferred judgment produces no legal consequence for the defendant. That sentence is true and it is also the reason people stop reading. What sits behind it is a five-year relationship with the Turkish justice system.

CMK 231/8 places you under a supervision period of five years. Within it the court may impose supervised release measures for a period it fixes, not exceeding one year. No further deferral may be granted for an intentional offence during those five years. And the limitation period for the prosecution is suspended for the whole of them — nothing is quietly running down in the background while you wait.

CMK 231/7 is the provision that decides most of these files. The prison sentence inside a deferred judgment cannot itself be suspended under TCK 51, and where it is short-term it cannot be converted into an alternative sanction under TCK 50. The judgment sits intact, written and ready. Those doors reopen only under CMK 231/11, and only after a breach: when the court announces the judgment it may assess the position of a defendant who could not meet the obligations and order that up to half the sentence not be executed, or suspend it, or convert it.

Read the two together and the arithmetic is plain. Deferral is the better outcome where the alternative was an announced prison sentence. It is the worse outcome where the alternative was an acquittal, or a fine you would have paid and finished with.

Under CMK 273, an application for istinaf is made within two weeks of the date on which the judgment together with its reasoning was served, by lodging a petition with the court that gave the judgment or by making a declaration to the clerk, which is recorded and confirmed by the judge. For a detained defendant CMK 263 provides its own route for making that declaration from the institution.

Service of the reasoned judgment, not the announcement in court. There is usually a gap between the two, sometimes a long one. That gap is the only time you will have to read what the court actually found, establish what loss was said to be repaired under CMK 231/6-c, and decide. It is working time, not waiting time. How the period is calculated, what an appeal is built from, and what happens if the first-instance court rejects the petition under CMK 276 — which leaves a further two weeks to apply to the regional court from service of that rejection — is set out in the note on istinaf and temyiz appeals.

Check first whether the route exists. CMK 231/12 makes the istinaf appeal subject to CMK 272/3, which excludes from istinaf, among others, convictions to a judicial fine of 15,000 Turkish lira or less as the final figure, other than fines converted from imprisonment. A deferral can be granted in respect of a judicial fine as well as a prison sentence of two years or less, so where the deferred judgment is a small fine the exclusion has to be looked at before anything else is drafted.

Be equally clear about what an appeal is. It asks for the decision to be examined for unlawfulness. It is not a request for a better deferral, and it is not a form of consent withdrawn late. What follows an examination is not within your control, and a file where the sentence figure was the whole battle and the battle was won is a file where an appeal has little to gain and a settled position to lose.

Everything above concerns the criminal file. For a foreign national there is a second file, and it runs on its own timetable.

Five years under CMK 231/8 will outlast most residence permits and several renewals. A deferred judgment is not immigration protection: under Law no. 6458 art. 54/1-d a deportation decision is taken about a foreigner assessed as constituting a threat to public order, public security or public health. That is an administrative assessment, it does not require a conviction, and CMK 231/5 governs the criminal file rather than the migration authority's view of you. Under art. 9/3 an entry ban runs for up to five years, extendable by up to ten years more where there is a serious threat to public order or public security.

What deferral does remove is the notification under TCK 59, by which a foreigner sentenced to imprisonment is reported to the Ministry of the Interior for assessment of deportation once supervised execution or conditional release is ordered, and in every case once the sentence has been fully served. Where the judgment is never announced there is no sentence being executed and that trigger does not arise. It is a real difference, and it is a reason to think hard before appealing away a deferral in a file that would otherwise end in an announced prison sentence.

On the record, the position is narrower than it is often described. Law no. 5352 art. 4 lists what is entered in the judicial record for citizens and foreigners alike, and deferral decisions are not on that list; under CMK 231/13 they go into a system reserved for them, usable only where a prosecutor, judge or court asks for them in connection with an investigation or prosecution. What a foreign authority sees, and how it treats what it sees, is governed by its own rules — see the note on the Turkish criminal record.

One route avoids the choice altogether. For offences within its scope, uzlaştırma requires none of the CMK 231 conditions: under CMK 254, where the offence turns out at trial to fall within the mediation scheme the file is sent to the mediation office, and where the defendant performs in a single payment the court dismisses the case. Against that, and against suspension under TCK 51 and conversion under TCK 50, the deferral has to be compared rather than accepted on its label — which is what the page on suspended sentences and HAGB sets out side by side.