Can You Leave Türkiye While an Injury Accident File Is Open?

An open file under Article 89 of the Turkish Penal Code — causing injury by negligence — does not by itself keep you in the country. Turkish law contains no general rule that a suspect must remain here while an investigation runs. What can keep you here is a separate written decision: a judicial control measure under Article 109/3(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which lists not leaving the country among the obligations a judge may impose instead of remand. If no judge has imposed it in your file, there is nothing for a border officer to act on.

So the question that matters is not whether your case is open. It is whether that decision exists, and whether anyone explained it to you. Foreign drivers are often released from the police station the same evening after a statement and a signature, with nothing further. Others are released the same evening under a judicial control order they did not follow, because it was read out in Turkish. The two situations look identical at the door of the station and entirely different at passport control. If your statement was taken without a proper interpreter, read what the interpreter rules require before you rely on what you think you signed.

Article 109/1 allows a judge to place a suspect under judicial control instead of ordering remand, where the grounds for remand in Article 100 are present. Article 109/2 goes further: the judicial control provisions may be applied even in cases where remand is prohibited outright. That matters here, because Article 100/4 forbids remand for offences whose upper limit does not exceed two years, other than intentional offences against bodily integrity — and the basic form of the injury offence sits exactly at that ceiling.

• Article 89/1 — pain, or impairment of health or of the capacity to perceive: four months to two years of imprisonment, or a judicial fine.
• Article 89/2 — consequences such as a bone fracture, a permanent scar on the face, permanent weakening of a sense or organ, or a life-threatening condition: the sentence set under 89/1 is increased by one half.
• Article 89/3 — an incurable illness or vegetative state, loss of the function of a sense or organ, loss of speech or of reproductive capacity: the sentence is doubled.
• Article 89/4 — where one act injures more than one person: nine months to five years.
• Article 22/3 — where you foresaw the outcome but did not want it (conscious negligence), the sentence is increased by one third to one half.

In a straightforward case, then, remand is not on the table and the exit ban is what remains. It is also not the only obligation on the list. Article 109/3(d) allows the judge to bar you from driving and to take your driving licence against a receipt; 109/3(b) requires periodic reporting to a named authority. Your passport is not on that list and is not taken from you — the restriction lives in the border records, which is why people discover it at the airport rather than in their pocket.

The measure is not open-ended. Under Article 110/A/1, judicial control in cases outside the assize court's jurisdiction lasts at most two years, extendable by one further year with stated reasons. Under Article 110/4, the file must be reviewed at intervals of no more than four months to decide whether the obligation should continue.

Even where you are free to go, leaving early can close the exits that would have ended the file. Under Article 89/5, investigation and prosecution of negligent injury depend on the complaint of the injured person — except where the act was committed with conscious negligence and falls outside the first paragraph. A withdrawn complaint in an ordinary case ends the matter. That withdrawal usually comes out of the mediation process rather than out of goodwill.

Negligent injury under Article 89 is listed in Article 253/1(b)(2) as an offence for which mediation must be attempted. The mechanics are short. Once the offer is made, you have seven days to answer or you are treated as having refused it (Article 253/4). The mediator must finish within thirty days of receiving the file, extendable twice by up to twenty days each (Article 253/12). If agreement is reached and you perform your undertaking in full at once, the prosecutor issues a decision not to prosecute (Article 253/19).

Article 253/6 is the paragraph to read before booking. Where the suspect, the injured party or their representative cannot be reached — expressly including because they are abroad, or are not at the address declared to the authorities — the investigation is concluded without any attempt at mediation. Flying home before the offer arrives can therefore remove the one route that ends an Article 89 file without a trial. Leaving an address of record and a lawyer holding a power of attorney is what keeps that route open, and it is the same step that matters if the file ever escalates: see what happens in the first hours after a Turkish arrest and how remand and release conditions are decided.

An exit ban is not permanent and does not require the trial to end first. Article 111/1 lets the suspect or the accused apply for it to be lifted; the prosecutor's opinion is taken, and the judge or court then decides within five days, applying Article 110/2. Article 111/2 makes every judicial control decision open to objection.

Article 110/2 is the more useful provision, because it offers three outcomes rather than one. The judge may remove the obligations wholly or in part, may replace one obligation with another, or may exempt you from a particular obligation temporarily. In practice that third option is what a foreign resident actually needs: permission to travel between defined dates, not the removal of the measure altogether. The applications that succeed are the concrete ones — dates, a return booking, an address in Türkiye, a lawyer authorised to accept service, and, where the court's concern is compensation, an offer under Article 109/3(f) or (h) to deposit a sum fixed by the judge as security.

If the request is refused, the objection deadline is two weeks from the day you learn of the decision (Article 268/1). Where the measure came from a criminal judgeship of peace, the objection is heard by the criminal court of first instance judge in that jurisdiction (Article 268/3(b)). The argument that persuades a judge to release you rests on the same material as the rest of the defence: the fault report, the medical report grading the injury, and your position in mediation. That wider picture is set out on our page on traffic accidents causing injury in Türkiye; if the restriction has already spread beyond this one file, see travel bans during a Turkish criminal case.