The Ballistics Report Says Your Blank-Firing Pistol Is a Firearm: the charge and the sentence range in Türkiye

When a blank-firing pistol is seized, the case does not turn on what you bought. It turns on what an expert finds after examining and test-firing the weapon. The question is narrow: has the barrel, the breech or the firing mechanism been altered so that the weapon can now discharge live ammunition? If the answer is yes, the report records that a weapon capable of firing blank or gas cartridges has been converted into a weapon subject to Law 6136, and every page of the file after that is written from that finding.

It is an expert finding, not a verdict, and CMK 67 gives you a route into it. CMK 67/4 sets out how copies of the report are provided to the suspect or defendant and defence counsel — handed over directly at the hearing, or sent by registered post with acknowledgement. Once the examination is complete, the parties must be given time to request a fresh expert examination or to state their objections, and where such a request is refused a reasoned decision must follow within three days (CMK 67/5). CMK 67/6 allows you to obtain a scientific opinion from an expert of your own choosing, and no additional time may be claimed on that ground alone.

Whether the weapon was lawfully found in the first place is a separate question, governed by the rules on searches and seizures in a Turkish investigation. The two arguments are distinct and are normally taken in that order: how it was found, then what it is.

Article 13/1 of Law 6136 names converted weapons in terms. It covers anyone who buys, carries or keeps firearms, their ammunition, their principal or ballistically significant parts, or a weapon that could fire blank or gas cartridges and has been converted into a weapon subject to that Law. The sentence is two to four years of imprisonment together with a judicial fine of 100 to 500 days. Under TCK 52/2 a day is valued at between 100 and 500 lira according to your means, so the fine attached to this band begins at 10,000 lira and, at the upper end of the aggravated band below, reaches 2,500,000 lira.

There is a lighter band in the same article, and it is the first thing most people reach for. Article 13/3 sets one to three years where a single firearm outside the categories listed in Article 12/4, with a customary number of cartridges, is kept at a home or workplace. It is written for an ordinary firearm, and Article 13/1 now names a converted blank-firing pistol in terms as the object of the two-to-four-year offence; a court that sentences a converted pistol under 13/3 is reading a reduced bracket into a paragraph that does not mention it. Keeping the weapon indoors, and having only one, does not move you into the lighter band.

Article 13/2 moves the other way: five to eight years and 500 to 5,000 days where the weapon is one of those described in Article 12/4 — rifles, fully automatic pistols, or pistols fitted with a scope, a silencer or a target-marking device — or where what was seized is grave in number or in nature.

Until late 2024 the person who altered the pistol and the person who merely bought it were sentenced under the same provision: the Court of Cassation applied Article 13/1 to defendants who had themselves modified a blank-firing pistol into a weapon capable of killing. Law no. 7533, enacted 21 November 2024 and in force on 30 November 2024, ended that.

A new sixth paragraph in Article 12 provides that altering the technical features of a weapon firing blank or gas cartridges, so as to turn it into a weapon subject to Law 6136, is treated as production outside Law 5201 and is punished under Article 12. Article 12/1 carries five to twelve years and 500 to 5,000 days. The same paragraph then reduces the sentence by one third to one half where the converted weapon is not grave in number or nature, which places a single converted pistol in a band running from two years and six months to eight years. Where two or more people act together, Article 12/2 sets eight to fifteen years and 1,000 to 10,000 days, and the reduction in the sixth paragraph applies there too: it is written against the sentence to be imposed under Article 12 as a whole, not against its first paragraph alone, so a single converted pistol taken by two people runs from four to ten years. Article 12/3 doubles the sentence where the act is committed within the activity of a criminal organisation.

The paragraph chosen also changes your position before the judge deciding on detention: CMK 100/3-b lists firearms trafficking under Article 12 of Law 6136 among the offences where a ground for detention may be presumed, and Article 13 is not on that list. If the act was committed before 30 November 2024, the day the amendment entered into force, TCK 7/2 requires the court to apply whichever law is more favourable to you.

Two ceilings decide whether a sentence in this area is actually served. TCK 51 allows a prison sentence of two years or less to be suspended. CMK 231/5 allows the court to defer announcement of the judgment where the sentence imposed is two years or less. TCK 62 permits a discretionary reduction of up to one sixth, so a sentence fixed at the Article 13/1 minimum of two years comes down to one year and eight months and falls inside both ceilings. That is why the choice between Article 13 and Article 12 is not academic: on the Article 12 route the lowest arithmetic outcome, two years and six months, sits above both.

Neither outcome is automatic. CMK 231/6 requires that you have no previous conviction for an intentional offence, that the court is satisfied you will not offend again, and that any damage caused has been made good; a deferral then brings a five-year supervision period under CMK 231/8. TCK 51 imposes its own conditions and a supervision period of one to three years. What each of them leaves on your record, and what it does not, is set out in the note on suspended sentences and deferral of judgment in Türkiye.

The weapon itself does not come back. TCK 54/4 requires confiscation of items whose production, possession, use, carrying, purchase or sale is itself an offence, and a converted blank-firing pistol is such an item whatever the outcome for you. For a foreign national the conviction reaches beyond the courtroom, into residence and travel, which is why this charge is best read alongside the wider picture of firearms and blade offences under Law 6136.