Serving a Turkish sentence, and the route home.

Under Article 32 of Law no. 6706 on international judicial co-operation in criminal matters, a person convicted by a Turkish court and held in a penal institution may be transferred to a foreign state for the execution of the sentence where the following conditions are present together:

• The person is a national of the state to which they would be transferred, or has strong social ties with that state.
• The person, or their legal representative, consents.
• The judgment of conviction is final.
• The act underlying the conviction constitutes an offence under the law of the receiving state.
• Unless the central authorities decide otherwise, at the date of the request there is at least six months of the custodial sentence remaining to be served.
• There is no other investigation or prosecution against the person in Türkiye for another offence.

Article 32/2 provides that where a transfer request is made by the prisoner, their legal representative or a relative, a defined set of documents is sent to the authorities of the receiving state:

• A certified copy of the judgment of conviction.
• The text of the statutory provisions on which the judgment was based.
• A document showing that the prisoner or their legal representative consents to the transfer.
• A document showing the remaining sentence to be executed.
• Where considered necessary, medical reports showing the prisoner's state of health, together with treatment recommendations if there is an illness.
• Where considered necessary, translations of those documents.

This matters practically. The person inside is not always in a position to organise anything. The law does not require them to be the one who starts it.

A judicial fine has to be dealt with first

Under Article 32/4, where the sentence includes a judicial fine alongside imprisonment, the fine must be paid before a transfer can be ordered. If it is not paid, the number of days corresponding to the unpaid portion is converted into imprisonment. Time already served in Türkiye is set off first against that converted sentence; if the time served does not cover it, the remainder is added to the term of imprisonment. The resulting figure is notified to the foreign state, and the transfer can be ordered if that state accepts it.

In a drug file, where fines run to thousands of days, this is not a detail. It can be the difference between going home and not.

Litigation costs

Article 32/5: the request can only be accepted if the litigation costs have been paid — unless it is established that the prisoner is not in a position to pay them, in which case a transfer may be ordered without payment.

The cost of the transfer itself

Article 34/3 deals with transfers into Türkiye and places those costs on the prisoner, to be paid into an account opened for the purpose by the Ministry of Justice, with provision for the position where the prisoner cannot meet them — assessed against the nature of the offence, the public benefit of the transfer and the person's circumstances.

Under Article 32/3, the Central Authority may refuse a transfer request where it is established that:

• the conditions for transfer are not present;
• the transfer would not contribute to the prisoner's social rehabilitation;
• it would not serve the aims of criminal justice; or
• it is not compatible with Türkiye's national security and fundamental interests.

These are broad, and a request that simply asserts the six conditions without addressing them is a weaker request than it needs to be.

You find out the terms before it happens

Article 32/6 is the provision most worth knowing. Before a transfer can be ordered, the receiving state is asked to state how long the prisoner will remain in a penal institution and how the sentence will be executed there. That information is notified to the prisoner.

In other words, you are not asked to consent blind. The answer can be better than the Turkish position or worse than it, and it is a real factor in deciding whether to pursue the transfer at all.

Under Article 32/7, once the foreign state has given its consent, the Minister of Justice decides on the transfer.

Article 30 governs the position in reverse — a person sentenced abroad being brought to Türkiye to serve the sentence here. The conditions mirror those above: Turkish nationality or strong social ties with Türkiye, consent, a final judgment, dual criminality, and at least six months remaining unless the central authorities decide otherwise. Article 31 governs execution in Türkiye. The period to be spent in a penal institution is notified to the prisoner and to the foreign authorities when the transfer is decided — before the move, not after it — and the prisoner is brought to Türkiye once both the foreign state and the prisoner accept it, then delivered to the public prosecutor with the transfer file. Article 31/3 leaves applications going to the merits of the conviction with the courts of the sentencing state, and Article 31/4 gives the ağır ceza court of the place where the prisoner is held the decision on his legal position where an amnesty, or anything removing or reducing the offence or the sentence, arises during execution.

The transfer is not the end of the file

Article 33 governs what follows once execution has passed to the other state, and it answers the question families ask next. The Central Authority asks the receiving state to report special circumstances arising during execution, the completion of execution, and any escape; what reaches the Central Authority is passed to the court that gave the judgment.

Two consequences follow. Where the judgment is executed in full by the foreign state, or loses its capacity for execution in whole or in part, the same consequences follow under Turkish law — the sentence is genuinely discharged rather than left open behind you. And where the foreign state cannot execute the judgment, execution resumes in Türkiye.

A transfer is one route among several, and the others do not pause while it is considered. Execution of sentence in Türkiye is governed by its own legislation and has its own applications, its own calculations and its own supervising judge. Conditional release, execution under probation, postponement of execution on health grounds, transfers between institutions, and objections to disciplinary penalties are separate matters with separate deadlines.

Two things are worth saying plainly. First, the arithmetic of a Turkish sentence — what has to be served before any of these becomes available — is specific to the offence and to the judgment, and it should be calculated on the actual papers rather than assumed from what someone else in the same wing was told. Second, none of it is automatic. Each one is an application, and applications that are not made are not granted.