Drug offences in Türkiye, and where the line is drawn.

The Turkish Penal Code separates use and possession for personal use (TCK 191) from manufacture and supply — production, import, export, sale, offering for sale, transport or storage for supply (TCK 188). The difference in exposure between them is very large.

Where a case sits is not decided by what you say it is. It is inferred from the file: quantity, how the substance was divided or packaged, money and scales found with it, messages on a phone, movement patterns, and what was said in the first statement.

This page deals with the personal use side. If the file alleges supply — selling, transporting, storing, purchasing for supply or possession for supply — the article, the sentence ranges and the multipliers are set out on the drug trafficking page.

Why the first statement matters so much here

An account given without counsel — "it was for a friend", "I was holding it for someone" — is routinely read as evidence of supply rather than use. It is one of the few situations where a well-meant explanation can move a file from one article to the other.

• The lawfulness of the search. Whether there was a decision or written order where one was required, whether the scope was respected, and whether the record reflects what happened.
• The chain of custody of the substance and the expert report on it.
• The characterisation. Whether the material genuinely supports supply, or only possession.
• Digital evidence. How a phone was accessed and what the extraction actually shows in context.
• Personal circumstances relevant to the deferral route where the file is a use case.

One warning specific to this area

For drug manufacture and trafficking committed within an organisation, CMK 154/2 allows the right to meet counsel in custody to be restricted for twenty-four hours by a judge's decision, and only on the public prosecutor's request. The same provision states that no statement may be taken during that period. If you are told you cannot see a lawyer yet, that is precisely the period in which you should not be answering questions about the allegation either.

TCK 191 sets a penalty of two to five years' imprisonment for buying, accepting or possessing narcotic or stimulant substances for personal use, or using them. That is the headline — but it is not usually what happens first.

Deferral of prosecution

In an investigation opened under this article, the Code provides that a decision deferring the opening of a public prosecution for five years is made, and expressly without requiring the conditions that normally apply to deferral under CMK 171. The prosecutor warns the suspect what will follow if the obligations are breached.

During the deferral, a probation measure of at least one year applies. It can be extended in six-month steps by up to two further years. Treatment may be imposed where it is considered necessary, and the prosecutor orders the suspect to be sent for testing at least twice a year to establish whether substances have been used.

If the period passes without breach, the file ends with a decision of no grounds for prosecution. If the person persistently fails to comply, or buys, accepts, possesses or uses again, the prosecution opens — and once that has happened, a fresh deferral is not available for a repeat of the same offence.

Two further provisions worth knowing

Where a prosecution has been brought under TCK 188 or 190 and it emerges at trial that the conduct falls exclusively within TCK 191, the court applies this article and defers announcement of the verdict. And where the conduct took place in a public or publicly accessible place lying within two hundred metres of the boundary of schools, dormitories, hospitals, barracks, places of worship and similar premises — the perimeter wall, fencing or similar marker, where one exists — the penalty is increased by half (TCK 191/10). Proximity alone does not trigger it: the place where the conduct occurred must itself be public or open to the public, so the same conduct inside a private home a hundred and fifty metres from a school falls outside the increase.

Two things routinely surprise people. First, a drug file frequently comes with a travel restriction under judicial control, so leaving the country is no longer a personal decision. Second, an outcome in a criminal file can carry separate administrative consequences for residence and entry that are decided in a different process with different deadlines.

These run in parallel. Handling only the criminal file and discovering the administrative one later is the most common and most expensive mistake in this area.