Personal Use or Outright Denial? The answer that sets the sentence in a Turkish cannabis growing case

The fifth paragraph of article 23 of Law no. 2313 contains two sentences and two penalties, with nothing in between. Growing cannabis for the purpose of obtaining esrar carries four to twelve years' imprisonment and a judicial fine of five hundred to ten thousand days. Growing it solely to obtain the esrar the grower needs for their own use carries one to three years' imprisonment and no fine at all.

Denial is not a third bracket in that paragraph. It is a position on whether you grew anything, and it either succeeds or it does not. So the two answers are not two points on one scale. One accepts a conviction in exchange for the lower penalty; the other refuses the conviction and accepts the higher penalty as the price of being wrong.

Neither answer is free, and neither is decided by how many plants there were. The Law fixes no number.

Saying the plants were for your own use concedes that you sowed and tended them. Once that is on the record, purpose is the only live question left, and purpose is decided from the whole file rather than from your account of it.

What you get in return is a sentence range that can end without imprisonment. Under TCK 51, a sentence of two years or less may be suspended where the person has not previously been sentenced to more than three months for a deliberate offence and the court is satisfied, from the remorse shown during the proceedings, that they will not offend again; the supervision period is one to three years and cannot be shorter than the sentence. Under CMK 231, rewritten by Law no. 7589 of 16 July 2026 and in force from 31 July 2026, the announcement of a verdict of two years or less may be deferred where there is no previous conviction for a deliberate offence, where the court forms a view from the defendant's personality and conduct at the hearing that they will not reoffend, and where any damage caused to a victim or to the public has been fully repaired. Five years of supervision follow, and if they pass without a deliberate offence and without breach, the case is dismissed. TCK 62 allows a further discretionary reduction of up to one sixth. The mechanics of both routes are set out on suspended sentences and deferral of the verdict.

The arithmetic is simple and it is the whole reason the answer is attractive: one to three years touches the two-year ceiling; four to twelve years does not come near it.

What the answer does not cover is anything already harvested. Dried material in the flat is a separate Penal Code offence. If it is treated as possession for use under TCK 191, the sentence is two to five years but the prosecutor must defer the opening of a public case for five years, with at least one year of probation, extendable in six-month blocks up to two further years, and at least two drug tests a year; compliance ends in a decision not to prosecute. If the same material is treated as supply under TCK 188/3, the sentence is not less than ten years. That fork is explained under drug offences and where the line falls, and it can swallow whatever the cultivation charge gave back.

Denial does not simply fail on its own terms. Every route that softens a conviction in Turkish law asks the court to make a finding about you, and each of those findings is expressed in the same vocabulary.

• TCK 62 lists, among the grounds for a discretionary reduction, the defendant's conduct after the act and during the proceedings showing remorse. Since the amendment of 12 May 2022, formal courtroom behaviour aimed at influencing the court is expressly not counted, and the reasons must be stated in the judgment.
• TCK 51/1(b) requires the court to be satisfied, from the remorse shown during the proceedings, that the person will not offend again.
• CMK 231/6(b) requires a view formed from the defendant's personality traits and their attitude and conduct at the hearing.

A denial that the evidence defeats leaves the court with none of that. So the loss is not one bracket but two things at once: the lower penalty, and the argument for not serving it.

None of which makes denial the wrong answer. It is the correct answer whenever it is true, and attribution in these files is often genuinely contested — a shared flat, a garden behind a rented house, a roof reached by several tenants, a plot on land you do not farm. Access is not cultivation. The plants themselves are destroyed early, on the order of the senior civil authority for the district under the second paragraph of article 23, so by the time the case is heard the prosecution is relying on records, photographs and expert reports made before you said anything at all. Those documents either attach the growing to you or they do not, and that question is answered by their contents rather than by your answer to it.

One route that helps elsewhere does not reach here. Effective remorse under TCK 192 is drafted for the Penal Code offences — manufacture and supply, and possession for use — not for the cultivation offence in Law no. 2313. What it can and cannot reach where both charges sit in one file is set out under effective remorse in drug cases. A disclosure made on the wrong assumption cannot be withdrawn.

The choice is almost always made in the first hours, by someone who has not seen the file and has not been told that two brackets and two separate offences are in play. Turkish procedure does not require it to be made then.

Under CMK 147, you are told the offence alleged against you, told that you may choose counsel, and told expressly that it is your legal right not to make a statement about the accusation. The same article entitles you to ask for concrete evidence to be collected so that suspicion can be dispelled — a right that matters here, because a drug test result, a yield report or the absence of scales, packaging and messages is the kind of material that decides which sentence applies. Under CMK 148, a statement must rest on free will, statements obtained by prohibited methods cannot be used even if given with consent, and a statement taken by the police without counsel present cannot form the basis of a judgment unless the suspect confirms it before a judge or a court.

What separates growing for esrar from growing solely for own use is a question the courts answer on the whole content of the file: the number of roots and their condition, the quantity of esrar obtainable from them at the date of the offence, whether anything had been harvested, whether there is any step towards supply, and whether the grower tested positive. Those criteria, the destruction procedure, the confiscation of equipment and the court that hears the case are set out in full on our page on growing cannabis in Türkiye under Law no. 2313. Read it before deciding which answer your file can actually carry.