Sentenced to Three Years in Türkiye: how the real release date is calculated

Turkish execution law does not produce one release date. It produces three, and on a three-year sentence they sit close enough together that confusing them costs months.

Read across the rows: six months in prison, twelve months outside under a probation directorate, conditional release at eighteen months, then eighteen months of supervision to the thirty-six month mark. Nothing is cancelled at any stage. What changes is where the sentence is served.

None of it is automatic. Article 105/A says talebi hâlinde, on the prisoner's own request, and nobody opens that file for him. Since 4 June 2025 there is one further condition: he must already have spent inside at least one tenth of the period he is required to serve up to the conditional release date, and in no case fewer than five days. On eighteen months, one tenth is one month and twenty-four days — shorter than the six months already required, so on a three-year sentence the new condition changes nothing. Under provisional article 11 it does not apply at all to offences committed before that date.

Three years is a threshold in several places in Law no. 5275, and each one works in the prisoner's favour.

Summons, not arrest. Under article 19/2 a direct arrest warrant is issued for the execution of a sentence over three years for an intentional offence. At three years or below the prosecutor sends a çağrı kâğıdı, and article 19/1 allows ten days to attend. Missing the ten days, or giving grounds to suspect flight, turns the summons into a warrant.

A written release date on day one. Article 20/4 requires the prosecutor's office to give the prisoner a document stating the date he entered the institution, the date he is to be released, the length of the sentence and the judgment it relates to. That document is the first calculation anyone makes. It is in Turkish, it is the thing to photograph and send out, and it is the thing to check.

Open prison from the start. Article 14/2-a sends a person sentenced to a total of three years or less for intentional offences directly to an open prison, without waiting for a transfer decision. Terrorism offences, founding, leading or belonging to an organisation, offences committed within an organisation's activity, offences against sexual inviolability, second recidivists and those whose conditional release has been revoked are excluded. This matters because article 105/A is built around an open prison, so a closed-prison placement will normally remove the six-month date. Not always, though. Under article 105/A(2) a well-behaved prisoner who met the conditions for open prison but could not be moved there, or was sent back, for a reason outside his own control still qualifies if he meets the remaining conditions. Overcrowding and a delayed transfer are the usual reasons, and both are common for foreign prisoners. Establish why he is in a closed prison before accepting that the date is gone. Article 14/5 sends a prisoner back to closed conditions for escape, for arrest in another matter, for any final disciplinary penalty other than a reprimand, or where he cannot meet open-prison or work conditions.

Not necessarily continuous. Since 4 June 2025, article 110/1 allows the infaz hâkimi, on request, to order a total of three years or less for intentional offences to be served at weekends — entering at 19.00 on Friday and leaving at 19.00 on Sunday — or at night, entering at 19.00 and leaving at 07.00. Article 110/9 excludes broadly the same categories. Time served this way is deducted and the conditional release rules still apply, but where the method is ended for unexcused breach, execution continues in prison under the general rules and article 105/A no longer applies.

• Time already in custody. TCK 63 deducts every period of deprivation of liberty before the judgment became final. Ten months on remand on a three-year sentence means the six-month probation date has already passed on the day the judgment becomes final.
• Good conduct. Article 89 requires the prison's idare ve gözlem kurulu to assess each prisoner at least once every six months, weighing participation in programmes, work and courses, relations inside the institution, remorse for the offence, and disciplinary penalties received. On a six-month runway there are at most two such assessments, and realistically one that matters.
• Other judgments. Under article 99 each sentence remains independent, but where there are separate final judgments a toplama kararı must be requested from the infaz hâkimliği before article 107 can be applied at all. A second judgment can also push the total past the three-year thresholds in articles 14 and 110.
• Whether the judgment is final. Nothing starts until it is. While an istinaf appeal is still running there is no execution file and no date to calculate.

Where the calculation itself is wrong, article 98/1-b sends the dispute to the infaz hâkimliği; a question about how the judgment is to be read goes back to the sentencing court. Neither application suspends execution by itself. Decisions of the infaz hâkimi are challenged within two weeks of service, before the ağır ceza mahkemesi of the district where that judge sits (Law no. 4675, art. 6), and those two weeks run from service inside the prison, in Turkish.

The parole date is not the date of the flight home, and for a foreign national that difference is the whole point.

TCK 59 requires that where a foreign national sentenced to imprisonment is granted probation-based execution or conditional release — and in any event once the sentence has been fully executed — his position is notified immediately to the Ministry of the Interior so that removal can be considered. Release from prison and departure from Türkiye are decided by different authorities on different days, and administrative detention can sit between them.

The twelve months under article 105/A are performed in Türkiye and cannot be performed anywhere else. There are five days from leaving prison to report to the named probation directorate, then obligations set by that directorate: unpaid work of public benefit, remaining in a specified residence or district, staying away from named places, attending programmes. Two days past the reporting deadline, or two days without surrendering after a return order, brings the escape provisions of TCK 292 and 293 into play. Where the intention is to serve the remainder at home instead, the route is a transfer, applied for separately and well in advance, not a parole application.

For a family abroad the work is documentary. The article 20/4 document, the final judgment with its article numbers, the date of the offence and the execution file are what turn a guess into arithmetic; what to ask for, and from whom, is set out for families here. Once those papers exist the figure can be checked against the fractions and conditions that govern early release generally, and a wrong figure can be put before the infaz hâkimliği inside the two weeks available.