A lorry driver in a fatal accident, and the three things Türkiye holds.

A fatal collision on a Turkish transit corridor produces one criminal file and three separate custody questions. They are decided by different people, at different times, under different articles, and the answer to one does not answer the others.

The error that costs the most is treating this as one problem with one lawyer and one application. Your family, the operator whose plate is on the tractor and the consignee waiting for the pallets are asking three different offices three different questions, and each of those questions has to be put by someone entitled to put it.

Custody under CMK 91/1 cannot exceed twenty-four hours from the moment of apprehension, and the time needed to bring you before the nearest judge, which is excluded from that count, cannot itself exceed twelve hours. Causing death by negligence under TCK 85 is one of the offences named in CMK 91/4, which allows designated police chiefs to order custody in flagrante cases; in every version of the calculation you are before a judge within days, not weeks.

At that hearing the prosecutor asks for remand. TCK 85 is not in the catalogue at CMK 100/3, so no ground for detention is presumed in your favour or against you. The ground actually relied on is the first one in CMK 100/2 — concrete facts suggesting the suspect will flee. A driver whose licence, home, family, employer and next load are all in another country presents that argument in its strongest available form, and it is usually the only argument made.

What answers it is not a denial but a package. CMK 109/3 lists the obligations a judge can impose instead: not leaving the country (a), reporting at fixed intervals (b), not driving and surrendering the licence against receipt (d), depositing a sum fixed by the judge (f), and providing security for the victim's rights (h). Offering a specific combination of these at the first hearing is a different exercise from asking for release afterwards, and the practical difference between them is set out under remand and judicial control.

One paragraph of that article was written for people who drive for a living. Under CMK 109/5, the judge or the prosecutor may permit the person to continue using a vehicle in his professional occupation notwithstanding the driving prohibition in (d). It has to be asked for.

The tractor and trailer are held as evidence of how the collision happened: crush profile, braking, load distribution. They come back under CMK 131/1, which is satisfied where either the property is no longer needed for the investigation or the trial, or it is understood that it will not be subject to confiscation. The two limbs are alternatives, not cumulative conditions. The decision is made by the prosecutor, judge or court, on request or of their own motion, and a refusal is open to challenge. Nothing in the article makes it automatic, and nothing makes it quick.

The cargo is a separate matter and usually belongs to neither you nor the operator. CMK 132 is the article that governs it, and it contains the only fast route in this whole file:

• 132/1 — early disposal. Seized goods may be disposed of before the judgment becomes final where there is a danger of damage or of a substantial loss of value. For chilled, frozen or dated freight that condition is met within days.
• 132/3 — the owner is heard first. Before such a decision, the suspect, the accused or other interested persons who own the goods are heard, and the decision is notified to them. A cargo owner who never appears is not heard.
• 132/5 — release into safekeeping. The goods may be handed to the suspect, the accused or another person to be kept, on condition that they are surrendered immediately on demand, and that release may be made conditional on security.
• 132/6 — payment of market value. Where the goods no longer need to be kept as evidence, they may be delivered to the person concerned against immediate payment of their market value; any confiscation then attaches to the sum paid rather than to the goods.

Whoever wants the freight moved has to put that application in, with proof of ownership and of the perishability. Your defence lawyer is instructed for you, not for the consignee, and will not be treated as authorised to speak for a cargo owner he has never been retained by.

Two records are read out of the cab, and both were made before the collision.

The tachograph. KTK 49, rewritten on 12 February 2026 by Law no. 7574, prohibits using or allowing the use of a tachograph-equipped vehicle contrary to the driving-time rules. Exceeding the daily continuous driving time attracts a fine of 1,000 TL up to one hour and 3,000 TL beyond it; the daily total, 3,000 TL up to one hour, 5,000 TL from one to three hours and 10,000 TL at three hours or more; the weekly or two-weekly limit, 10,000 to 20,000 TL by band; a daily rest breach 3,000 TL, a weekly rest breach 5,000 TL. Where the driver is also the operator the figures double, and where he is not, the operator is fined at double on the plate.

Those sums are not the reason the card matters. Under TCK 22/3, a driver who foresaw the result but did not want it acts with conscious negligence, and the sentence for the negligent offence is increased by one third to one half. A tachograph record showing hours driven past the limit in the run-up to the collision is the most ordinary material a Turkish prosecutor has for making that argument, and it is in the file before your first statement.

The alcohol limit that applies to you is not the one you have read. Under KTK 48/3, examination is compulsory for any driver involved in an accident causing injury or death; refusal at the roadside means blood, saliva or urine samples are taken at a forensic institution or a Ministry of Health facility instead, CMK 75 applying with its fifth paragraph excluded. Under KTK 48/5 the lower threshold for vehicles other than private cars is 0.21 promille, not 0.50, carrying a 25,000 TL fine and withdrawal of the licence for six months expressly even where the act also constitutes an offence. Under KTK 48/7, a driver of a non-private vehicle above 0.20 promille who causes an accident is additionally subject to the Penal Code; above 1.00 promille, KTK 48/6 adds TCK 179/3, six months to two years. Refusing measurement is separately penalised under KTK 48/9 at 150,000 TL with the licence withheld for five years.

The trap is arithmetic done from the wrong number. A driver who stopped drinking the previous evening, and who is thinking of the 0.5 figure that applies at home or to cars here, is measuring himself against a limit that is not his.

Within a day or two of the collision the haulier will usually say that a lawyer is being sent. Read KTK 49/1 before accepting that. It obliges the operator, irrespective of whether he was the driver, to take the necessary measures and to carry out supervision so that the vehicle is not used contrary to the driving-time rules, and it exposes him to the same fines at double where the driver is not the operator. The operator therefore has a direct interest in a file that records a driver exceeding his hours against instructions. That is not an accusation against any particular firm; it is the structure of the liability, and it is the reason a single lawyer cannot properly hold both positions.

The same distinction runs through the rest of the file. The compulsory motor insurer answers to the operator and to the deceased's family. The consignee answers to the cargo owner. Only one person in the case is instructed to argue that you were not at fault, that the ground for detention is not made out, and that the exit ban should be varied — and that person has to be instructed by you or, if you are held, by your relatives from abroad. What they need to establish first, and how a power of attorney is signed at a consulate, is set out for families of a detainee.

This note deals only with what is specific to a lorry, a load and a foreign plate. The sentencing ranges under TCK 85, the way the expert report fixes fault, what a settlement with the family does and does not achieve, and the position on leaving the scene are set out on the main page on fatal road accidents in Türkiye, and the separate offence created by departure from the scene under KTK 81/3 is dealt with under leaving the scene of an accident.