A parcel arrives with your name on it. Under Article 188 that is importation, not possession.

Article 188/1 of the Turkish Penal Code covers manufacturing, importing or exporting narcotic or stimulant substances without a licence or contrary to a licence. The sentence is twenty to thirty years' imprisonment, together with a judicial fine of two thousand to twenty thousand days. Article 188/3 covers the same substances inside the country: selling, offering for sale, giving to others, dispatching, transporting, storing, purchasing, accepting or possessing. That range is not less than ten years, with a fine of one thousand to twenty thousand days.

A posted parcel has crossed a border. That single fact is why the file opens on the first paragraph rather than the third, and why a few grams in a padded envelope and a kilo in a crate begin in the same place on the same page.

Article 191 is the outcome most people in this position are hoping for, and it is a real route: two to five years, and under 191/2 the prosecutor defers prosecution for five years, with supervision of at least one year under 191/3. That article is dealt with on the narcotics possession page. But 191 is written around buying, accepting, possessing or using for personal use. It says nothing about importing. Moving a posted parcel into that article is an argument about how the conduct is characterised, made early and on the whole record — not one that is won by pointing at the weight alone.

By the time anyone speaks to you, the packet has already been opened. Article 129 of the Code of Criminal Procedure sets out how that is supposed to happen. Items held by any postal organisation, public or private, that are suspected of constituting evidence may be seized by decision of a judge, or, where delay would be prejudicial, by order of the public prosecutor. The officers who carry out the seizure may not open the envelopes or packets themselves: the items are sealed in the presence of the postal staff and delivered immediately to the judge or prosecutor who gave the order.

There is an exception, and drug files sit inside it. Under 129/3, added in 2017 and enacted in 2018, packets may be opened by police officers on the prosecutor's instruction where the seizure concerns a listed offence. Article 188 is on that list, alongside Article 174 on dangerous substances, Articles 12 and 13 of Firearms Law no. 6136, and Articles 67 and 68 of Cultural Property Law no. 2863.

Two further paragraphs matter to you. Under 129/4, unless it would damage the purpose of the investigation, the measures taken are notified to the persons concerned. Under 129/5, parcels that are not opened, or that are opened and turn out not to need holding, are returned to the person entitled to them at once.

Once the substance has been identified, the parcel is often allowed to continue to the address under observation rather than simply disappearing. The delivery then becomes evidence in its own right: who was at the door, who signed for it, what was said, and where the parcel went next. This is the technique known as controlled delivery, and it explains why an arrest can follow within minutes of a courier leaving.

Accepting is one of the listed acts in 188/3. A signature is therefore not a formality, and neither is a doorstep explanation. What is said in the first ten minutes, in a language you are managing rather than speaking, becomes a fixed position that later has to be explained away. You are entitled to say that you will not give a statement until your defence lawyer is present, and to say nothing further.

Under Article 21/1, an offence requires intent, and intent is the knowing and willing realisation of the elements in the statutory definition. Under Article 30/1, a person who does not know the material elements of the offence at the time of the act does not act intentionally. Your name on a label is not, by itself, knowledge.

What decides the point is the material around the parcel: who created the order and from which account, how it was paid for, who checked the tracking and from what device, who chose the address, and whether the messages read as arranging a delivery or as a favour done blind. Addresses of shared flats, hostels, workplaces and short lets appear in these files regularly, and so do people whose details were used without them ever being asked.

Where the parcel was stopped matters as well. If it was seized at the border and never reached anyone, whether the importation was completed or only attempted is a live question. Under Article 35, a person who begins the execution of an offence with suitable acts but cannot complete it for reasons beyond his control is liable for attempt, and the sentence is reduced by one quarter to three quarters. On a base of twenty to thirty years, that reduction is measured in many years.

Under 188/6, the paragraphs above also apply to any substance whose production requires official permission, or whose sale depends on a prescription written by an authorised doctor, and which produces a narcotic or stimulant effect. Medication ordered online falls here. The difference is that for these substances the penalty may be reduced by up to half. Under 188/7, a substance used in production whose import or manufacture requires official permission carries not less than eight years and a fine of one thousand to twenty thousand days.

If the contents are not a controlled substance at all, but goods brought into the country outside the customs regime, the file is a customs one and is answered on entirely different provisions.

Which tier of Article 188 your file sits in, the multipliers that can be stacked on top of it, and what the prosecution actually has to prove are set out in full on the drug trafficking page.