0.50 or 1.00 Promille in Türkiye — the point drink-driving stops being a fine and becomes a criminal case

Türkiye does not have one drink-driving offence with a number attached to it. It has an administrative violation in the Highway Traffic Code (Law no. 2918, Article 48) and a separate criminal offence in the Penal Code (Article 179/3). They are decided by different bodies, and neither waits for the other. What the reading decides is which of them you are in.

The two low figures are not a misprint. The fifth paragraph of Article 48 puts the floor for vehicles other than private cars at 0.21 promille; the seventh, which deals with accidents, uses 0.20 for the same group. Both stand in the text as enacted.

This is the ordinary roadside case: a private car, a reading of 0.60 or 0.80, no collision, nobody hurt. Article 48 creates no criminal offence for it. What follows is a 25,000 Turkish lira administrative fine and the licence withheld for six months (KTK 48, fifth paragraph).

Five words in that paragraph matter. The fine is imposed even if the act constitutes an offence — the Traffic Code saying in terms that the administrative sanction is not an alternative to prosecution and does not absorb it. Most people read the ticket as the end of the matter. It was not drafted to be.

Repetition moves the figures sharply, and the count runs backwards from the date of the last violation, not forward from the first. Within five years, a second withdrawal brings 50,000 lira and two years without a licence; a third or any further one, 150,000 lira and five years on each occasion (KTK 48/5).

Above 1.00 promille, the sixth paragraph of Article 48 provides that the third paragraph of Article 179 of the Penal Code applies in addition. That article punishes a person who drives although not in a condition to operate the vehicle safely — through the effect of alcohol or a narcotic substance, or for any other reason — with six months to two years' imprisonment.

Two things follow, and they cut in both directions. The offence is not defined by a number: the reading is evidence going to the question of unfitness, not the offence itself. A file can therefore be opened at 0.90 promille on an officer's observations, the tutanak and camera footage, with the sixth paragraph never engaged. And a reading above 1.00 does not end the argument either: how the sample was taken, on what device, and what interval sat between driving and measurement are questions the file still has to answer.

The neighbouring paragraph is sometimes the charge instead. Article 179/2 punishes operating a vehicle in a manner dangerous to the life, health or property of others, with four months to two years.

An accident does not add a line to the drink-driving file. It moves you into a different one. Under the seventh paragraph of Article 48, a driver over 0.50 promille in a private car — or over 0.20 in any other vehicle — who causes an accident has the relevant provisions of the Penal Code applied in addition. The 1.00 figure does not appear in that paragraph at all.

Which provision depends on what happened to the other people. Negligent injury under Article 89/1 carries four months to two years' imprisonment or a judicial fine, increased by half for the injuries listed in the second paragraph, such as a bone fracture, and doubled for the graver outcomes in the third. Where more than one person is injured, the range is nine months to five years (TCK 89/4). The procedure from there is on injury caused by a traffic accident.

Negligent injury is normally a complaint offence, and a complaint can be withdrawn. The exception matters in an alcohol file: where the act is committed with conscious negligence, no complaint is required, except for basic injury under the first paragraph (TCK 89/5). Where someone has died, Article 85 carries two to six years, and two to fifteen where more than one person died.

Conviction for a negligent offence arising from breach of the care the traffic order requires also allows the criminal court to withdraw the licence for three months to three years (TCK 53/6) — a period that begins only after the sentence has been served.

Six months to two years is a range, not a sentence. Four things can happen to a figure inside it. Each has conditions examined on the file, and none is automatic.

• Seri muhakeme (CMK 250). TCK 179/3 is expressly listed in CMK 250/1, and where prosecution is not deferred this procedure is applied. The prosecutor fixes a base sentence and then reduces it by half (CMK 250/4); TCK 50 and TCK 51 may be applied to what is left, and CMK 231 by analogy (CMK 250/5 and 250/6). It requires the suspect to accept the offer in the presence of defence counsel.
• Suspension. A sentence of two years or less may be suspended where there is no previous conviction of more than three months' imprisonment for an intentional offence and the court forms the view that no further offence will be committed. A supervision period of one to three years follows and cannot be shorter than the sentence (TCK 51).
• Deferral of the verdict. Where the sentence is two years or less, the court may defer announcement of the judgment: no previous conviction for an intentional offence, the court's assessment of the defendant, and full compensation of the damage caused. The supervision period is five years (CMK 231). What each route leaves behind is set out on suspended sentences and HAGB.
• Conversion. A sentence of one year or less is a short-term sentence (TCK 49/2) and may be converted — to a judicial fine, or to an alternative sanction, among them withdrawal of the relevant licences for half to one times the length of the sentence (TCK 50).

For a foreign national the question behind all three is the same: what is left on paper, and what a check in another country will show. That is dealt with on criminal records in Türkiye; the licence process, refusal of the test and drugs at the wheel are on drink and drug driving.