Note · TCK 80/2
Recruited abroad for a job that was not the job: why consent does not end the case
If you were recruited outside Türkiye for a job that turned out to be something else, the fact that you agreed to come does not close the file. TCK 80/2 provides that where the acts in the first paragraph are carried out for the purposes listed there, the consent of the victim is invalid. Consent still matters as evidence about purpose and means. It is not a defence, and it is not a bar to being identified as a victim.
Where consent sits inside Article 80
Article 80 is built from three elements and all three have to be present. The acts include procuring a person, bringing them into the country, transporting them from one place to another, dispatching them and harbouring them; recruitment abroad sits squarely inside that list. The purposes are forced labour, forced service, forced prostitution, subjection to slavery, and the supply of bodily organs. The means are threat, pressure, coercion or violence; abuse of influence; deception; or obtaining the person's consent by using the opportunities of control over them, or their helplessness. Where the three coincide, the sentence is eight to twelve years' imprisonment and a judicial fine of up to ten thousand days.
Consent appears twice in that structure, in opposite roles. In the first paragraph it is one of the means: agreement obtained by exploiting control or helplessness is part of what makes the conduct criminal. In TCK 80/2 it is removed as an answer to the charge. Under TCK 80/3, where the person is under eighteen, none of the means has to be shown at all — age alone closes that element. Under TCK 80/4, a security measure is imposed on the legal person through which the offence was committed, which in recruitment files means the agency itself.
None of this makes the paperwork irrelevant. It changes what the paperwork is for.
| What is in the file | What it cannot do | What it is still read for |
|---|---|---|
| An employment contract signed abroad | Defeat the charge on its own once purpose and means are made out (TCK 80/2) | What job was described, by whom, and in which language |
| Wages that were genuinely paid | Show by itself that no exploitative purpose existed at the time of the movement | Whether the amount matches the work, and what deductions were set against it |
| A statement recording that the person came willingly | Operate as consent where the conditions in TCK 80/2 are met | When it was taken, whether counsel and an interpreter were present, and whose words it is in |
When the lie was only about the job
Not every recruitment deception is human trafficking. The deception has to be the means by which a person was moved for one of the purposes in the first paragraph. A wage lower than promised, a different city, longer hours, worse accommodation: these are real wrongs, and they may be several other things, but on their own they do not supply the exploitative purpose Article 80 requires at the point of the movement.
Where that purpose is absent, the same facts are usually written up under a different article, and the exposure moves by years.
| Article | Range |
|---|---|
| TCK 117/2 — employing a person for no wage, or a wage clearly disproportionate to the service, or subjecting them to working and accommodation conditions incompatible with human dignity, by exploiting their helplessness, isolation or dependence | Six months to three years' imprisonment, or a judicial fine of not less than one hundred days |
| TCK 79/1 — migrant smuggling: bringing a foreigner into the country or enabling them to remain by unlawful means and for material benefit | Five to eight years' imprisonment, and a judicial fine of one thousand to ten thousand days |
| TCK 227/2 — encouraging a person into prostitution, facilitating it, mediating it, or providing a place | Two to four years' imprisonment, and a judicial fine of up to three thousand days |
The difference between Article 79 and Article 80 is not the journey. Migrant smuggling is committed against the border regime and requires an intention to obtain material benefit; trafficking is committed against the person and requires an exploitative purpose. One recruitment chain can produce either indictment. Which one is written depends heavily on how the workers' accounts were taken in the opening hours, and characterisation is exactly the kind of question that remains open on istinaf after a conviction.
Recruited outside Türkiye, tried inside it
Article 80 sits in Book Two, Part One of the Penal Code, headed international offences. Under TCK 13/1(a), Turkish law applies to offences in that part committed abroad, whether by a citizen or by a foreigner. Under TCK 13/2, a prosecution here for such an offence depends on the request of the Minister of Justice. Under TCK 13/3, that request permits a trial in Türkiye even where a foreign court has already convicted or acquitted the same person of the same conduct. A recruiter who never entered the country is therefore not outside the article by geography alone.
What decides these files, though, is rarely jurisdiction. It is the first account. Whether the offer was recorded as a job or as a lure; whether the words attributed to a worker are the worker's or a summariser's; whether the interpreter actually spoke the language and the dialect in front of them. Under CMK 202 the right to an interpreter exists at the police station and not only in the courtroom, and at the investigation stage it covers suspects, victims and witnesses alike. Ask for an interpreter in the same sentence in which you ask for a lawyer, before anything is written down.
Two doors out of the same raid
Workers recruited abroad are usually encountered first not as victims but as people working without a permit, and unlicensed work is a deportation ground under Article 54 of Law no. 6458. Both outcomes are decided within days of each other, in different buildings.
Article 18/11 of the Regulation requires the migration authority to interview for trafficking indicators those foreigners who are being deported for working without a permit or earning a living by unlawful means. Under Article 18, identification is made whether or not a complaint has been made and without waiting for the outcome of the investigation or the trial; under Article 18/7 you are not subject to deportation proceedings while the identification process is running. That interview is easy to miss if nobody asks for it.
What identification carries is set out in the immigration law rather than the criminal one. Under Article 48 of Law no. 6458, a thirty-day residence permit is granted by the governorate, and Article 48/2 disapplies the conditions required for other permits. Under Article 49 it may be extended in blocks of up to six months, to a total that cannot exceed three years, and it is cancelled where the person re-establishes contact with the perpetrators on their own initiative. Under Article 55/1(ç), no deportation decision is taken while you are benefiting from the victim support programme. Because the minimum sentence in TCK 80 is eight years, and so above five, CMK 234 also allows a victim without a representative to ask the bar association to appoint a lawyer, at the investigation stage and at trial.
If a deportation decision has already been served, the period is seven days. Under Article 53/3 the foreigner, a legal representative or a lawyer may apply to the administrative court within seven days of notification, and removal does not take place during that period or while the action is pending. It runs from service, and it is the deadline most often missed. The rest of the picture on both sides of these files — the charge, the remand rules, the support programme — is set out on human trafficking under TCK 80.
Questions we are asked about consent
I signed a contract and I was paid every month. Isn't that the end of the case?
I recruited workers in my own country and never entered Türkiye. Can I be prosecuted here?
I admitted to the police that I was working without a permit. Have I lost the victim route?
Where this leads
Reach the duty desk
Tell us where the person is and what they have been told. An enquiry commits you to nothing. If it is urgent, message or call rather than write.