Effective remorse in a drug case, and the hour that decides what it is worth.

TCK 192 is headed etkin pişmanlık — effective remorse. It is not a plea agreement and there is nothing in it to negotiate. It is four conditions written into the Code. Where a condition is met a consequence follows; where it is not met, nothing follows, whatever was said and however it was meant.

Paragraph 1 belongs to the supply side of a file, TCK 188, where domestic supply starts at not less than ten years and manufacture, import or export runs from twenty to thirty years. Paragraphs 2 and 4 belong to the personal-use side, TCK 191, where the range is two to five years. Which paragraph you are reading is decided by which article the file is built on — and in most cases that is itself contested.

Paragraph 4 carries a sentence added in 2016: where a user comes forward for treatment in this way, the duty of public officials and health professionals to report an offence under Articles 279 and 280 does not arise. It exists so that asking for treatment is not itself the act that opens the file.

Read the words again. Before the official authorities have learned of it. Not before you were charged. Not before you were brought to the courthouse. Before they knew.

Nothing in paragraph 1 or paragraph 2 asks whether you are sorry. Regret, cooperation, a full and truthful account, a signed statement — none of these reopens a door that has already closed. It is closed by an event, and the event has usually happened before anyone speaks to you: a search that found the substance, a stop at the border, a delivery that was already being watched, a name already written into an investigation file.

Each paragraph ties the benefit to a result, not to willingness.

• Paragraph 1 requires both, and it requires success. The person must report the other accomplices and the places where the substances are hidden or manufactured, and the information provided must result in the accomplices being caught or the substance being seized. Information that leads nowhere does not meet the wording.
• Paragraph 2 is a lower bar, but a specific one. Three things are named: from whom, where and when the substance was obtained. The information must facilitate the offenders being caught or the substance being seized — facilitate, not guarantee.
• Paragraph 3 requires help that is voluntary. The words are service and help towards the offence coming to light and the perpetrator or other accomplices being caught. The size of the reduction is tied by the article itself to the nature of the help, which is why a name with nothing attached to it and a name with an address, a number and an account that checks out are not worth the same.

A nickname, a contact in a phone that leads nowhere, a description of a man on a street — this is often all a frightened person can actually give. It may be entirely true. Whether it meets the words of the article is a different question, and it is answered later, by a court, on the file as it then stands.

The reduction is one quarter to one half. It is applied to the sentence the court has otherwise arrived at, and on TCK 188 that is rarely the bare minimum: the article increases the penalty by half where the substance is heroin, cocaine, morphine, base morphine, synthetic cannabinoid, synthetic cathinone, synthetic opioid or amphetamine derivatives; by half where the conduct falling within the third paragraph is committed within two hundred metres of schools, dormitories, hospitals, barracks and places of worship; by half where three or more persons act together; and it doubles the penalty where the conduct is within the activity of an organisation established to commit crime.

Arithmetic makes the point better than adjectives. Ten years reduced by a quarter is seven years and six months. The same ten years reduced by a half is five years. Which end of that band a court chooses is not a formality — the article makes it depend on what the help actually was.

The larger prize is usually not the discount

Where a case built on TCK 188 or TCK 190 turns out at trial to fall exclusively within TCK 191 — possession or purchase for personal use — Article 191/8 requires the court to decide on suspension of the pronouncement of the judgment (hükmün açıklanmasının geri bırakılması) under that article. And where an investigation begins under 191, Article 191/2 requires deferral of the prosecution for five years. Under Article 191/3 the suspect is subject to supervised release (denetimli serbestlik) for at least one year, extendable by the prosecutor in six-month steps by up to two further years, and the prosecutor orders referral for testing at least twice a year. If the deferral period passes without breach, Article 191/7 requires a decision that there is no ground for prosecution.

Moving a file from 188 to 191 changes the outcome far more than a quarter off a supply sentence. That work is done with the material — quantity, packaging, money, messages, the search record, the laboratory report — not by answering questions faster.

Everything said in that room is also a statement about you.

• Naming a supplier is admitting possession. Saying where you got it says that you had it. If your position is that the substance was not yours — that it was in a shared room, a shared car, a bag someone else packed — an account of how you obtained it removes that position permanently.
• The account fixes your role. Quantity, price, how often, for whom: these are exactly the facts that decide whether the file stays at TCK 191 or is written up under TCK 188.
• A promise made to you is not a promise the law recognises. CMK 148/2 states that an unlawful benefit may not be promised during questioning. No officer decides what TCK 192 gives you. A prosecutor asks; a court decides, at the end.

One protection that is easy to miss

Under CMK 148/4, a statement taken by law enforcement without a defence lawyer present cannot form the basis of a judgment unless it is confirmed by the suspect or defendant before a judge or a court. That is not a licence to speak carelessly and disown it later — a withdrawn statement still shapes what the investigation goes looking for. It is a reason to understand precisely what a statement taken without counsel is and is not.

What this page cannot tell you

It cannot tell you whether to speak. That depends on what the authorities already have, on what you can actually give, on what your real position in the file is, and on what naming a person means for you and for people close to you outside the courtroom. No page answers that, and it should not be answered alone, in a language you do not speak, at three in the morning.

The clock you are being asked to answer inside

Under CMK 91, custody may not exceed twenty-four hours from the moment of apprehension, excluding the time required for transfer to the nearest judge or court, which may not exceed twelve hours. For offences committed collectively, the prosecutor may extend custody in writing by no more than one day at a time, for three days. TCK 188 is also among the offences listed in CMK 91/4, where in cases of catching in the act designated law enforcement chiefs may order custody of up to twenty-four hours, or forty-eight hours during collective offences, with the person brought before a judge within forty-eight hours, or four days for offences committed collectively. The pressure to give a name is highest inside that window.

Counsel is not optional on a supply file

CMK 150/3 requires a defence lawyer to be appointed without any request from you where the offence carries a lower limit of more than five years' imprisonment. TCK 188 is such an offence. TCK 191, with its range of two to five years, is not — so the person facing the lesser charge is the one who has to ask.

Interpretation

CMK 202 requires an interpreter appointed by the court where a defendant or victim does not know Turkish well enough to explain themselves, and paragraph 3 extends this to a suspect heard during the investigation, with the interpreter appointed by the judge or the prosecutor. What is interpreted is described as the essential points. An account of who supplied you turns on distinctions — sold, gave, kept for, was holding for someone — that do not survive approximate interpretation. Have the record read back before you sign it.

Your consulate

Under CMK 95/2, where the person apprehended or taken into custody is a foreign national, the position is notified to the consulate of the state of which they are a national unless they object in writing. A consulate does not defend you and does not intervene in the file. It can confirm where you are, which is frequently the one thing your family abroad cannot establish.

Leaving the country, and being made to leave it

A prohibition on leaving Türkiye is one of the listed obligations of judicial control under CMK 109/3(a); measures for treatment of dependency on narcotic, stimulant or volatile substances, including admission to hospital, are another, under CMK 109/3(e). Separately, TCK 59 provides that a foreign national sentenced to imprisonment is reported immediately to the Ministry of the Interior — after a decision on execution under supervised release or on conditional release, and in any event once the sentence is completed — so that deportation can be considered. Article 54 of Law no. 6458 lists those in respect of whom a deportation decision is taken, including foreigners assessed as constituting a threat to public order, public security or public health. A reduction under TCK 192/3 shortens a sentence. It decides none of this.

• Which article the file is really about. Whether the material supports supply under TCK 188 at all, or possession for personal use under TCK 191. This has the largest effect on the outcome, and effective remorse is not a substitute for it.
• What the authorities knew, and when. The threshold in 192/1 and 192/2 is a matter of record: the tip, the surveillance authorisation, the delivery, the first entry in the investigation file. If the door was still open when you spoke, that is shown from documents, not from recollection.
• What was actually said, and how it was written down. The statement record, whether counsel was present, whether an interpreter was present and what was interpreted, and whether the matters in CMK 147 were put to you — including that saying nothing about the allegation is a legal right.
• Whether the help produced what the article requires. If an arrest or a seizure followed from what you gave, it belongs in the file with the documents that prove it, not as an assertion at the hearing.
• The nature of the help, argued deliberately. Paragraph 3 hands the court a band between one quarter and one half. That band is argued for, with what was given and what it produced.
• The search, the seizure and the laboratory report, which determine the sentence any reduction will be applied to.