Serving a Turkish Sentence in the UK: how the transfer route works

Turkish law calls this hükümlü nakli, the transfer of a sentenced person, and Article 32 of Law 6706 on international judicial co-operation in criminal matters governs transfers out of Türkiye. Article 30 is the mirror provision for transfers into Türkiye. Türkiye and the United Kingdom are both parties to the Council of Europe convention on the transfer of sentenced persons, and Article 1/3 of Law 6706 expressly preserves the provisions of treaties Türkiye has signed. In practice the convention supplies the channel between the two governments; Article 32 supplies the conditions a Turkish file has to satisfy before anything is sent.

The conditions are cumulative. One missing element ends the request, however strong the rest of it looks.

Two of these deserve attention early. Finality means the appeal route is exhausted or abandoned: while an istinaf or temyiz appeal is pending there is no final judgment to transfer, and withdrawing an appeal to unblock a transfer closes a door that does not reopen. And Article 32/1-e is not limited to the case you were convicted in. A separate file still at the investigation stage somewhere in Türkiye, which you may not have been told about, is enough to hold the request.

Even with all six satisfied, nothing is automatic. Article 32/3 allows the Central Authority to refuse where the conditions are absent, where the transfer would not contribute to your social rehabilitation, where it would not serve the aims of criminal justice, or where it is incompatible with Türkiye's national security and fundamental interests.

Two requirements have nothing to do with your conduct in prison, and they stop more requests than any argument about rehabilitation.

The first is the judicial fine. Where the sentence includes one alongside the prison term, Article 32/4 requires the fine to be paid before a transfer can be decided. If it is not paid, the unpaid part is converted into days of imprisonment. The time you have already served in Türkiye is then set off first against that converted term, not against the original prison sentence; only where the time served does not cover the converted days is the outstanding balance added to the prison sentence. The figure produced by that calculation, not the sentence as pronounced in court, is what is notified to the receiving state, and the transfer can be decided only if that state accepts it.

The second is Article 32/5: the litigation costs must have been paid for the request to be accepted. There is an express exception. Where it is established that you are not in a position to pay them, the transfer may be decided without payment. That is a finding someone has to place on the file with documents; it is never assumed from silence.

Article 32/2 names who may set the process in motion: the sentenced person, the legal representative, or a relative. That matters, because someone held in a Turkish prison without the language and often without regular visits is rarely the person best placed to gather certified documents. Much of the practical work falls to the family of a detainee in Türkiye, working with counsel who can obtain the file from the court and the prosecutor's office.

The Central Authority throughout is the Ministry of Justice (Article 2/1-b). Article 32/6 is the step foreign families most often overlook and the one most worth reading carefully: before anyone signs, the receiving state has to say what it will actually do with the sentence and how long you will be detained under its own rules, and that answer is formally served on you. If it is worse than what you face where you are, that is information you have before the transfer, not after.

The Turkish file does not simply close. Article 33/1 requires the Central Authority to ask the receiving state to report special circumstances arising during enforcement, the completion of the sentence, and any escape, and what comes back is passed to the court that gave the judgment. Under 33/2, full enforcement abroad, or the partial or total loss of the judgment's enforceability there, produces the same consequences in Turkish law. Under 33/3, where the receiving state proves unable to enforce the judgment, enforcement continues in Türkiye.

The release arithmetic also changes at the moment of handover. While you are in a Turkish institution the release date is calculated under Turkish enforcement law, which is the subject of conditional release and early release in Türkiye. After transfer it is the receiving state's regime that decides when you leave, which is exactly why Article 32/6 forces that answer onto the file first.

A different provision applies to someone who is no longer in Türkiye at all. Under Article 28 the prosecutor's office may ask a foreign state to enforce a Turkish judgment where the sentenced person is already in that state, on conditions that track Article 32 in part: nationality or strong social ties with that state, a final conviction, dual criminality, at least six months of imprisonment remaining at the date of the request unless the central authorities decide otherwise, and the favourable opinion of the Central Authority. Article 28/2 extends it to sentences being served under probation supervision, and Article 28/3 makes clear that requesting the transfer of enforcement does not stop enforcement steps continuing in the meantime.

Which of the two routes fits, what has to be paid before either can move, and how the receiving state's Article 32/6 answer should be read are the practical questions behind serving a Turkish sentence and transferring home.