The lorry belongs to a company abroad. Its owner has thirty days, and has to claim it separately.

Two different laws can be holding the vehicle, and both of them single out foreign registration. Where the file is run under Law no. 5607, section 10(2) provides that a seized vehicle is detained by the authority that ordered the seizure where the case falls within section 13(1)(a), where it is not registered on a register in Türkiye, or where it is used again in a smuggling offence while the investigation or prosecution continues. Where the file is run under Article 188 of the Penal Code, additional section 2 of Law no. 2313 does the same work: the seized vehicle is not returned to its owner where it is used again in the same offence during the case, where it is not registered on a register in Türkiye, where it was seized with a significant quantity or value of narcotic or stimulant substance, or where it has special fittings facilitating commission of the offence.

Note what neither provision asks. Neither asks whether the owner knew anything. Neither asks what proportion of the load the substance was. A lorry plated in Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania or Iran is held because of where it is plated.

Both texts then give the same single way out, and the same length of period — but not the same starting day. Under section 10(2) of Law 5607 the owner delivers a security equal to the value of the vehicle within thirty days of the date of detention; under additional section 2 of Law 2313 it is within thirty days of the date of seizure, because the narcotics regime has no separate detention step and its clock therefore starts earlier. Deliver the security and the vehicle is returned; otherwise it is liquidated without waiting for the outcome of the investigation and the prosecution. Which of the two laws is running the file is read off the seizure record and the indictment — the offences themselves are set out on the customs smuggling page and the trafficking page. The choice changes the article. It does not change the calendar.

This is where foreign owners lose time, and occasionally lose the vehicle after having found the money. The security is not paid into a court account, and it is not paid to the same body in both regimes.

The figure is the same in both: section 10(5) of Law 5607 and additional section 2(3) of Law 2313 define it identically. For land vehicles it is the kasko value; for sea vehicles the value forming the basis of hull and machinery insurance; for uninsured vehicles and for air and rail vehicles the market value. A lorry insured in another country has no Turkish kasko value, so the calculation falls onto market value — an estimate produced quickly, capable of being too high, and open to being challenged rather than simply paid.

Under section 11(1) of Law 5607 the vehicle is handed to the customs administration under a record showing quantity, kind, make, type, model and serial number. That record is the only description of the vehicle's condition on the day it left your driver's hands, and every later argument about damage is fought on it.

The owner cannot be represented until a Turkish lawyer holds a valid power of attorney, and that chain — corporate signature, apostille, courier, sworn translation, Turkish notary — is the part that consumes the thirty days. It should be started on the day the detention is notified, not on the day the criminal case is understood.

• Title on paper. The registration document, and where the operator is not the registered keeper, the lease, hire or finance agreement. The identity of the owner decides who may claim, and it is frequently not the company whose name is on the curtain.
• Corporate authority. An extract from the company register abroad showing who is entitled to sign for the company, apostilled and translated.
• The transport file. CMR or consignment note, the customer's instructions, the loading and sealing records, the driver's employment record, tachograph and GPS data. This is the material that supports the owner's own position, separately from anything the driver says.
• The seizure and detention records. The date on the detention record is the date the thirty days run from, and it is not always the date of the stop.

Nothing on this list is unusual for a haulage business. All of it is slow to obtain across a border, and none of it stops the period running while it is being obtained.

Two routes exist and they run at the same time as the security question. Under CMK 131(1), where seized property is no longer needed for the investigation or prosecution, or where it is understood that it will not be subject to confiscation, its return is ordered by the public prosecutor, the judge or the court, of their own motion or on application — and a refusal of that application can be objected to. Under CMK 268(1) an objection is made within two weeks of the day the person concerned learns of the decision, by petition to the authority that gave it; that authority corrects its own decision if it agrees, and otherwise sends the file to the reviewing authority within three days at most.

The second route is the separate confiscation hearing. Where confiscation or return has not been decided together with the merits, CMK 256 opens a procedure of its own, and CMK 257(1) requires the decisions in that procedure to be given at a hearing. CMK 257(2) provides that persons holding rights over the property are also summoned to it and may exercise the rights the accused has; CMK 257(3) provides that failure to attend neither postpones the proceedings nor prevents the judgment being given; and CMK 258 gives those persons their own right of appeal (istinaf) against it. That is the sentence foreign owners are caught by: a company that ignores a summons it received in a language it does not read is not protected by its absence.

The vehicle is defended on different material from the driver, and the arguments do not run together. Under TCK 54(1) property used in the commission of an intentional offence is confiscated provided it does not belong to third parties acting in good faith, and where a limited real right has been established over the property in favour of a good-faith third party, the confiscation order is made subject to that right — which is what a finance house or lessor stands on. Under TCK 54(6), where several people own property jointly, only the share of the person who participated in the offence is confiscated. Under TCK 54(3), confiscation need not be ordered where it would produce consequences heavier than the offence itself and would therefore be inequitable.

Where the file is run under Law 5607, section 13(1) narrows this for vehicles. Confiscation of a means of transport knowingly used in carrying smuggled goods requires one of three conditions: a specially prepared concealed compartment; the goods forming all or the predominant part of the load, or their carriage requiring that vehicle; or the goods being among substances prohibited from entering or leaving Türkiye or harmful to public or environmental health. They are alternatives. Arguing that a few kilograms in a twenty-tonne load cannot be the predominant part answers the second and leaves the third untouched, because goods prohibited from entering or leaving Türkiye fall within it whatever the quantity. Where the load was narcotics, section 13(1) is not the test at all: the vehicle is governed by additional section 2 of Law 2313 and confiscation by TCK 54.

Where the consignment was allowed to run before the stop, the file will also carry the record of a controlled delivery, and what the vehicle did while it was being watched becomes the owner's material as much as the driver's. How the two tracks — the driver's case and the vehicle's — are run alongside each other is set out on the seized vehicle page.