The company sent one lawyer for everyone: why a shared defence collapses after a betting raid

Article 152 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is a single sentence: the defence of more than one suspect or accused whose interests are consistent with one another may be entrusted to the same defence counsel. Read it the other way round and the limit appears. Where the interests are not consistent, the shared instruction does not hold — and consistency is measured by what each defence has to establish, not by whether the people involved are on good terms.

The Advocacy Act states the duty from the lawyer's side. Under Article 38(b) of Law 1136, a lawyer must refuse instructions where he has already acted for, or given an opinion to, a party with opposing interests in the same matter, and that obligation expressly extends to his partners and to the lawyers working in his office. A firm that already advises the company is therefore not free to take in every employee from the same raid simply because the company is paying the fee.

An investigation under Law 7258 is not one charge shared by everyone in the room. Article 5 sets out separate paragraphs with separate ranges, and the file is decided by which one attaches to each individual. Providing access from Türkiye to games operated abroad carries four to six years. Operating, or providing the place or facility, carries three to five years. Intermediating in the transfer of money carries three to five years. Encouraging people to play carries one to three years. That is three years of difference at the lower end alone, before TCK 39 is reached, which halves the sentence for aiding and caps it at eight years.

That spread is what makes a shared defence unstable. Moving yourself down the list means moving the conduct somewhere else — to a panel you never had access to, an instruction you were given, a decision taken above you. The person you move it to is in the next interview room, with the same lawyer.

None of these positions is dishonest. They are simply incompatible, and one lawyer cannot advance all three. The same structure recurs across economic crime files where a company and its staff are investigated together.

Confidentiality is not the weak point. Under Article 36 of the Advocacy Act a lawyer is forbidden from disclosing what he learns through the retainer; he may testify only with the client's consent, and even then he may decline, and declining carries no civil or criminal liability. What you tell the company's lawyer will not be repeated to the prosecutor.

The difficulty runs the other way. He will say nothing — and he will also not say, on your behalf, the one thing that helps you, because saying it damages another client. He reaches the custody suite having spoken to the company first, with a view of the office settled before he met you.

It shows first in the detention argument

Offences under Law 7258 are not in the catalogue at CMK 100(3). Remand therefore has to be justified on the general grounds in CMK 100(1) and (2): strong suspicion resting on concrete evidence, together with a risk of flight or of interference with evidence. For a foreign national, the ground actually argued is flight. Answering it is individual work — your address, your residence or work permit, how long you have lived here, who is here with you, whether your passport is already in the file. A lawyer speaking for an entire office argues none of that for you. What the alternative looks like is set out under remand, judicial control and release.

The window is short and it is real. Custody runs for twenty-four hours from the moment of arrest under CMK 91(1), excluding the time needed to bring you before the nearest judge, which cannot itself exceed twelve hours. Where an offence is committed collectively — and a raid on an office normally is — the prosecutor may extend custody in writing, by one day at a time, up to three days, under CMK 91(3). Hours, not weeks; but enough to change counsel before a statement is taken.

• No lawyer appears automatically. Under CMK 150(3), counsel is assigned without a request only where the offence carries a lower limit of more than five years. The highest lower limit in Article 5 is four years. So you have to ask, under CMK 150(1) — and under CMK 147(1)(c) the officer taking your statement must tell you that you may choose your own, and that the bar will appoint one if you cannot.
• You can meet a lawyer without signing anything. CMK 154(1) allows you to meet counsel at any time, where what is said cannot be overheard, without a power of attorney. The twenty-four-hour restriction in CMK 154(2) covers a listed group of offences that does not include Law 7258.
• More than one lawyer may attend. CMK 149(2) permits up to three lawyers to be present when a statement is taken during the investigation. The company's lawyer being in the room does not keep yours out of it.
• Custody itself can be challenged. Under CMK 91(5) you, your counsel, your spouse or a blood relative of the first or second degree may apply to the magistrate for immediate release, decided on the papers within twenty-four hours.

What the first hours decide more broadly is set out in arrested in Türkiye. The offence structure itself, paragraph by paragraph, is on the page for illegal betting and gambling offences.