Your file says fraud. TCK 158/1-f says the floor is four years.

Basic fraud is TCK 157: deceiving someone by fraudulent conduct and obtaining a benefit to that person's loss, or to another's. One to five years, plus a judicial fine of up to five thousand days. Very few online investment files are written there.

TCK 158 lists the circumstances that turn fraud into qualified fraud, and one of them decides most of these cases. Subparagraph (f) covers fraud committed by using information systems, banks or credit institutions as a tool. A trading dashboard that displays invented profits, a messaging app used to push the next deposit, a transfer into a Turkish account — any one of these puts the file inside (f). Subparagraph (l), added in 2016, covers presenting yourself as a public official or as an employee of a bank, an insurer or a credit institution, which is how the call-centre scripts are usually characterised.

The range for TCK 158/1 is three to ten years and a fine of up to five thousand days. Then comes the sentence that governs the whole file: for subparagraphs (e), (f), (j), (k) and (l), the lower limit of the prison term cannot be less than four years, and the judicial fine cannot be less than twice the benefit obtained from the offence.

Two subparagraphs do not produce two sentences. If both (f) and (l) are found, the court still sentences within one band, and the second qualifier tends to push the starting point higher inside it.

Under TCK 61 the court first fixes a base sentence inside the statutory band, weighing the means used, the value of the subject matter, the gravity of the loss caused and the degree of fault. Where more than one aggravating circumstance applies, increases are made before reductions. Only then do the general provisions run, in the order set out in TCK 61/5.

Two of them dominate investment fraud files.

TCK 158/3. If the offence is committed jointly by three or more persons, the sentence is increased by half. If it is committed within the framework of the activity of an organisation formed to commit offences, it is doubled. The difference between those two findings is the single largest number in the case, and it is decided on the same material — chat groups, payment routing, who recruited whom.

TCK 43. Where the same offence is committed against the same person at different times in execution of a single decision to offend, one sentence is imposed and increased by one quarter to three quarters. A victim who was walked through six deposits over two months is one chained offence, not six. Separate victims persuaded by separate acts are separate offences, counted separately even when tried in the same courtroom.

That is arithmetic, not a forecast. Every line is contestable, and the first two are where the argument is worth having. A determinate sentence produced by this process cannot exceed thirty years in total.

Three provisions move the figure down, and each is tied to something done or not done at a particular moment.

Repayment, and when it happens. TCK 168 applies to fraud. If the loss is made good in full — returned in kind or compensated — after the offence is complete but before prosecution begins, the sentence is reduced by up to two thirds. If the same money is repaid after prosecution has begun but before judgment, the reduction is up to one half. Partial repayment counts only with the victim's consent. The sum does not change; its value in the sentence roughly halves once the indictment is accepted.

The July 2026 amendment on accounts. A paragraph added to TCK 158 on 16 July 2026 by Law no. 7589 halves the sentence where a person's participation in fraud under TCK 157 or 158 was limited to handing over payment instruments such as a bank or credit card, or the information or means required to operate an account held at a bank, a brokerage house, a payment service provider or a crypto-asset service provider. That is the position of most people whose only act was to let an account be used; how such files are built is set out under money mule accounts.

Discretionary reduction. TCK 62 allows up to one sixth off, weighing the defendant's past, conduct after the act and the likely effect of the sentence on their future. Since 2022 the article expressly excludes formal conduct staged in the courtroom to influence the bench.

These matter because of two thresholds. A deferred verdict under CMK 231 and suspension under TCK 51 both require a sentence of two years or less. From a four-year floor neither is reachable on the base sentence alone; from four years, two thirds off under TCK 168 and then one sixth under TCK 62 produces roughly thirteen months, and both open. That is why the timing of repayment is discussed in the first week rather than the last.

The four-year figure does work long before any verdict.

Mediation closes. CMK 253 puts fraud under TCK 157 on the mediation list. It does not put TCK 158 there. The one route that ends a fraud file without a trial disappears the moment subparagraph (f) is written into the record.

Remand becomes proportionate. Qualified fraud is not in the CMK 100/3 catalogue of offences where a ground for detention may be presumed, so a concrete ground must be shown — usually flight risk. But CMK 100/1 forbids detention that is disproportionate to the importance of the case and the sentence expected. A sentence expected to start at four years makes that test easy to pass for someone with no registered address in Türkiye. The mechanics are set out under remand and bail.

Release is calculated from the final figure. Under the Execution Law no. 5275, a determinate sentence is generally served to the halfway point before conditional release. Where the conviction is for an offence committed within the activity of a criminal organisation, that proportion becomes two thirds. So the TCK 158/3 finding is counted twice: once when the sentence is set, and again when the release date is worked out. A foreign national sentenced to imprisonment is in any event referred to the Ministry of the Interior under TCK 59 for a deportation assessment once release is decided.

Sentence arithmetic is also one of the things an appeal is suited to: a subparagraph applied without its factual basis, an organisation finding resting on the same evidence as the joint-commission finding, TCK 43 used where separate victims required separate counts. The route is described under appeals.

None of this decides the earlier and larger question — whether what happened was fraud at all, or a commercial loss. That is dealt with under online investment fraud, alongside the wider framework for fraud charges and economic crime.