Leaving an accident scene in Türkiye: when a fine becomes a criminal file.

KTK 81 sets out what everyone involved in a traffic accident must do: stop without creating a further hazard, leave the scene as it is where there is death, injury or damage, give identity and insurance details on request, notify the competent officers, and not leave before they arrive or without their permission. The offence is the failure to perform those duties, and nothing in the article turns on fault.

Its third paragraph was replaced on 12 February 2026 by article 27 of Law no. 7574, and it splits in two. Outside the agreement case in KTK 81/2, a driver who leaves the scene of a material-damage, injury or fatal accident without the police's permission and other than out of necessity — or who does not comply with the preservation duty in KTK 81/1-b — is fined 46,000 lira. That is an administrative penalty, imposed without a trial. In accidents involving injury or death, the same departure carries one to three years' imprisonment, imposed by a court, and the driving licence is withdrawn for two years by the officials listed in KTK 6. It is not handed back until every administrative fine issued under the Highway Traffic Code has been collected in full.

TCK 98 comes from somewhere else. It sits in the Criminal Code, in the chapter on breach of the duties of protection, supervision, help and notification. It is not a driving provision, it is not addressed to drivers, and it does not ask who caused the accident. It asks whether there was a person at that scene who could not look after themselves, and what you did about it.

TCK 98/1 punishes the person who, faced with someone unable to look after themselves by reason of age, illness or injury or for any other reason, does not help so far as the circumstances allow, or does not report the situation to the relevant authorities immediately. The sentence is up to one year's imprisonment or a judicial fine. Where the person dies because that duty was not performed, TCK 98/2 raises it to one to three years.

Three features of that wording decide most files.

• It is drafted in the alternative. Helping as far as you could, or reporting immediately — the question is whether either was done. A driver who cannot move an injured person but makes the emergency call has performed the second limb. A driver who does neither has not.
• The timing word carries weight. The report must be made derhal, immediately. A call placed from the next district twenty minutes later is a fact the file will examine. The time stamp on the 112 or 155 record is often the only evidence that the duty was performed at all, which is why the number you called and the minute you called it matter more than what you later say you intended.
• It binds a person, not a driver. The subject of the article is kişi. A passenger, a following driver who stopped, someone who came out of a shop — all are inside it. KTK 82 makes the parallel point in the traffic code: drivers merely passing an accident site must take first-aid measures at the site, notify the nearest police or health institution, and, where the authorities ask, carry the injured to the nearest hospital.

TCK 98 is not the same as abandonment under TCK 97, which carries three months to two years and requires that you were already under a duty of protection and supervision towards the person. A stranger at a roadside is not that. Road cases are TCK 98 cases.

In an injury or fatal case the two provisions usually arrive together, and the second is then a smaller part of a larger file. They come apart more often than drivers expect.

The written record in KTK 81/2 is the one lawful way to leave, and it never covered an injury. KTK 83 says the same thing from the other end: in a damage-only accident where the parties agree, no judicial prosecution follows where the act does not constitute another offence. That qualification is the whole point. A passenger who goes to hospital that night with a neck complaint retrospectively removes the exemption from a departure that felt agreed at the roadside, and the medical report fixing the degree of injury then decides which paragraph of TCK 89 the collision itself falls under.

Neither provision turns on fault. You can be the driver who was hit, on a road you had priority on, and still be inside both. Where someone died, TCK 98/2 also requires a causal link — the death must follow from the failure to help or report, not merely from the impact — which is a different question from the one asked about the collision in a fatal accident file.

The two charges end in different ways, and this is where the distinction stops being academic.

TCK 98/1 can end without a prosecution. It is one of the offences expressly brought inside önödeme — payment in advance — by TCK 75/6. The prosecutor notifies a sum fixed under TCK 75/1; if it is paid together with the investigation costs within ten days, no public prosecution is opened. On a request made within those same ten days the prosecutor may allow three equal monthly instalments, and a missed instalment voids the arrangement and the investigation resumes. Payment does not affect civil claims, restitution or confiscation (TCK 75/5), and committing the same listed offence again within five years puts the route out of reach for that offence (TCK 75/6). Where a different önödeme offence is committed within five years of a decision given on payment, the route stays open but the sum offered is increased by half (TCK 75/1).

TCK 98/2 has no such exit. Only the first paragraph is listed in TCK 75/6. Where the person died, the file goes to court.

The KTK 81/3 imprisonment has no exit of that kind at all. It is not an önödeme offence and it does not depend on a complaint, so there is nobody with the power to withdraw it, and settling with the injured person does not close it. What remains is the sentence: a term of one year or less is a short-term prison sentence under TCK 49/2 and may be converted under TCK 50, and suspension and deferral of the verdict are argued at the end of the trial rather than at the start.

Which of these you are actually facing is not answered by describing the collision. It is answered by the officers' record, the medical report, the call logs and what was written down as your first statement. The duties themselves, the licence withdrawal and what a summons weeks later means are set out on leaving the scene of an accident in Türkiye.