Posted From the UK, Seized in Türkiye: is the sender or the recipient charged?

TCK 8/1 decides most of this. Turkish law applies to offences committed in Türkiye, and an offence is treated as committed here where the act is carried out here wholly or in part, or where the result occurs here. A parcel posted in the United Kingdom and opened at a sorting centre in Istanbul satisfies that on its face.

A second route does not depend on TCK 8 at all. TCK 13/1-e lists the manufacture and trafficking of narcotic or stimulant substances under Article 188, and facilitating their use under Article 190, among the offences to which Turkish law applies when they are committed abroad, by a Turkish national or by a foreigner. TCK 13/2 attaches a condition: for those offences, prosecution in Türkiye depends on a request by the Minister of Justice.

Article 11 of Law no. 4208 adds that a controlled delivery does not remove the jurisdiction of the Turkish courts, and that jurisdiction belongs to the court of the place where the delivery was terminated. None of this means the sender will be tried. It means the file may name him.

Presence is the whole difference. CMK 244/1 defines an absent accused, gaip, as one whose whereabouts are unknown, or who is abroad and cannot be brought before the competent court. Under CMK 244/2 no hearing is opened against him; the court confines itself to obtaining and preserving evidence.

Where the person abroad is treated as deliberately out of reach, CMK 247/1 calls him a fugitive, kaçak. CMK 247/2 sets out the steps: publication in a newspaper and posting at the known address, a warning that the measures in Article 248 may follow, and a decision that the person is a fugitive if he does not come forward within fifteen days. Since the amendment of 16 July 2026, CMK 247/3 allows proceedings against a fugitive accused, but where he has not previously been interrogated no conviction may be entered. Article 188 appears at CMK 248/2-a-8, so property, rights and receivables he holds in Türkiye may be seized to compel his appearance.

The practical effect is unglamorous. The sender is named, letters of request go out, and the file continues against the person who was standing at the door with identification in hand. That person is remanded, indicted and tried on the ordinary timetable. Nothing waits for the sender.

Which paragraph of Article 188 the file uses depends on whose conduct is being described. TCK 188/1 covers manufacturing, importing or exporting without licence. TCK 188/3 covers selling, dispatching, transporting, storing, purchasing, accepting or possessing within the country. Both can appear in one parcel file, attached to different people, and the contest is over which of them attaches to you.

The last row is why the sender matters to the recipient. Where the file counts a sender, an intermediary and a recipient as three persons acting together, the increase under TCK 188/5 falls on the person in the room, not on the ones abroad. TCK 188/4-a adds a further half where the substance is heroin, cocaine, morphine, base morphine, synthetic cannabinoid, synthetic cathinone, synthetic opioid, or amphetamine and their derivatives.

The boundary between TCK 37/1 co-perpetration, TCK 38/1 instigation and TCK 39/1 assistance is where most parcel defences actually live. A person who lent an address is argued at that boundary, and the eight-year ceiling in TCK 39/1 exists only on one side of it. The structure of the offence itself is set out under drug trafficking.

Two mechanisms exist, and both are slower than the case in front of you.

Extradition. Under Article 22/1 of Law no. 6706 the Turkish judicial authorities may request the return of a person who is abroad and against whom an arrest or detention order has been issued. Article 22/2 sets the threshold: an offence carrying an upper limit of one year or more, or, for final convictions, a sentence of at least four months. Article 22/3 lets the Central Authority decline to forward the request, including where extradition would be clearly disproportionate to the time to be served. What the requested State does with a request that is sent is governed by its own law, and the procedure at this end is set out under extradition.

Transfer of the prosecution. Article 24/1-a of Law no. 6706 allows an investigation or prosecution in Türkiye to be transferred to a foreign State where the suspect cannot be produced here because he is a national of that State. For senders this is often the realistic route, and it is a decision for the authorities, not for a defendant.

Naming the sender. TCK 192/1 removes the penalty entirely where a participant, before the authorities have learned of the offence, tells them who the other participants are and where the substances are kept, and the information leads to arrests or to seizure. In a controlled delivery the authorities already know, which usually closes that paragraph. TCK 192/3 remains: where a person voluntarily helps to expose the offence and to catch the perpetrator or other participants after it is known, the sentence is reduced by one quarter to one half, according to the nature of the assistance. What that paragraph actually asks for is treated under effective remorse.

When it is not a drug case. If the parcel held ordinary goods brought in without customs procedure rather than narcotics, the file is a customs matter, and Article 3/1 of Law no. 5607 provides one to five years and a judicial fine of up to ten thousand days. Different offence, different court, different outcome, and it is covered under customs smuggling.

A sender who wants to come and answer the case should ask about CMK 246, under which the court may issue a safe conduct document stating that an absent accused will not be remanded if he attends. It lapses if he is sentenced to imprisonment or prepares to flee.

Where this leads. Whether the sender is ever produced is not something the recipient controls. What can be worked on is the record of the delivery itself, and how the file was assembled around it — the subject of the controlled delivery page.