The court defers the verdict under CMK 231 — should you let it stand?

Hükmün açıklanmasının geri bırakılması — HAGB in every Turkish courtroom — is neither a conviction nor an acquittal. Under CMK 231/5 a court that has tried the case and arrived at a sentence of two years or less of imprisonment, or at a judicial fine, may write the judgment and then not announce it. Apart from the provisions on confiscation, that judgment produces no legal consequence for you. The provisions on mediation are expressly reserved. Article 231 in its present form was amended by Law no. 7589 in July 2026.

Two words in that description carry the weight. Tried — the court has already decided the case went against you, and deferral is applied to a finding rather than instead of one. And may — it is the court's decision, not a negotiation. Consent was once a condition, and under CMK Geçici Madde 6 it survives only for deferral decisions given before 1 June 2024. For anything decided on or after that date, Article 231 sets no consent condition at all.

Under CMK 231/6, three things must all be true.

• No previous conviction for an intentional offence. There is no tolerance in the wording. Suspension under TCK 51/1 permits a prior conviction of up to three months of imprisonment for an intentional offence; Article 231 permits none at all, however short the earlier sentence was.
• The court must be satisfied you will not offend again, having regard to your personal characteristics and to your conduct and behaviour at the hearing. This is the discretionary limb, and the one that is actually argued.
• The loss caused to the victim or to the public must be repaired in full — by restitution, by restoration to the position before the offence, or by compensation.

The third is where foreign defendants most often agree to something they have not seen. It is a hard condition rather than a factor to be weighed: where a quantified loss stands unrepaired, deferral is unavailable however good the rest of the case looks. CMK 231/9 provides the alternative, allowing deferral on condition that you pay the loss off in monthly instalments across the supervision period. That is a five-year payment undertaking, put to you in Turkish at the end of a hearing. Establish what the claimed loss actually is before accepting a figure, and ask for it in writing.

One provision closes a door you might expect to stay open. Under CMK 231/7 the prison sentence inside a deferred judgment cannot itself be suspended, and where it is short-term — one year or less, under TCK 49/2 — it cannot be converted into an alternative sanction. The judgment sits intact, ready to be announced exactly as drafted.

Under CMK 231/8 a defendant whose judgment is deferred is placed under a supervision period of five years. Inside it, for a period the court fixes which may not exceed one year, you may be required to attend a training programme where you have no trade or profession; to work for a wage in a public body or under the supervision of another person practising the same trade, where you have one; or to stay away from certain places, to attend certain places, or to perform another obligation the court sets. No second deferral may be granted for an intentional offence during the five years, and the limitation period for the prosecution is suspended throughout.

Under CMK 231/10, five clean years — no intentional offence, compliance with the measures — and the deferred judgment is set aside and the case dismissed. Under CMK 231/11, an intentional offence or a breach of the obligations means the court announces the judgment; assessing the position of a defendant who could not meet the obligations, it may order that up to half the sentence not be executed, or suspend it, or convert it, entering a new conviction instead. Under CMK 231/13 the decision is entered in a system reserved for deferral decisions, usable only where a prosecutor, judge or court asks for it in connection with an investigation or prosecution.

Deferral is worth measuring against the outcome your own file would otherwise have reached, not against prison in the abstract.

Where the sentence figure is the whole battle, the work that produces deferral is done during the trial and not in an application afterwards: the classification of the act, whether an aggravating provision applies, and every reduction available. The three routes out of a prison sentence sit side by side in the note on suspended sentences and alternatives to prison.

Two things about deferral are genuinely valuable to a foreign national, and one thing commonly claimed for it is not true.

The deportation notification does not fire. Under TCK 59 a foreigner sentenced to imprisonment is reported to the Ministry of the Interior for assessment in connection with deportation once supervised execution or conditional release is ordered, and in every case once the sentence has been fully served. Law no. 6458 art. 54/1-a then lists foreigners assessed as falling within TCK 59 among those about whom a deportation decision is taken. Where no judgment is announced there is no sentence being executed, and neither step arises.

The judicial record stays clear of it. Law no. 5352 art. 4 is built around final convictions, a deferred judgment is not one, and CMK 231/13 places it in the reserved system instead. 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.

It 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 assessment stands on its own footing: it requires no conviction, and CMK 231/5 governs the criminal file rather than the migration authority's view of you. Five years of supervision will also outlast most residence permits and several renewals, and nothing in the criminal decision keeps a permit alive — see deportation and entry bans.

If, having read the reasoned decision, deferral is not the outcome you want, there is a route and a deadline. Under CMK 231/12 a deferral decision is challenged by istinaf, subject to CMK 272/3, which excludes among others judicial fines of 15,000 Turkish lira or less as the final figure, other than fines converted from imprisonment. Under CMK 273 the application is made within two weeks of service of the judgment together with its reasoning, and under CMK 275 an application made in time prevents the decision becoming final. Decisions given before 1 June 2024 keep the older itiraz route. What that examination reaches, and what it cannot, is set out in the note on istinaf and temyiz appeals.