Note · CMK 135 · 137
The Indictment Quotes Your Phone Calls: how an intercepted conversation becomes a document in your file
By the time your words appear in a Turkish indictment they have passed through four hands: a judge who authorised the interception, the operator that carried it out, a person appointed by the prosecutor who turned the audio into Turkish text, and, if you were not speaking Turkish, an interpreter. The file holds that text. The recording itself exists separately, and it has to be asked for.
What is quoted is a transcript, not the call
Turkish procedure does not place a recording in front of the court by default. Under Article 137/2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, recordings made under an interception decision are converted into text by persons appointed by the public prosecutor's office, and recordings in a foreign language are translated into Turkish through an interpreter. What reaches the indictment is therefore a document — and where you were speaking your own language, a translation of a transcription of something you said months earlier.
That distinction decides how the material can be used. Article 217/1 allows a judge to base a judgment only on evidence brought to the hearing and discussed in his presence, which he then assesses freely. Article 217/2 allows the offence charged to be proved by any evidence obtained lawfully. A line quoted in an indictment satisfies neither test on its own: at that stage it is the prosecution's account of what a recording contains. It becomes evidence when the material behind it — the decision, the operation record, the audio — is produced and discussed.
Six documents stand between a call and a page of the indictment
An intercept is not a single act but a sequence, and each step is required by its own provision. A file that quotes conversations should be able to show every link.
| Step | Provision | What the file should show |
|---|---|---|
| Authorisation | CMK 135/1 | A judge's decision, or in cases where delay is prejudicial a prosecutor's, resting on strong grounds of suspicion based on concrete evidence and on the absence of any other means of obtaining evidence. A prosecutor's decision goes to the judge immediately and the judge decides within twenty-four hours at the latest. |
| Contents of the decision | CMK 135/4 | The type of offence, the identity of the person, the type of device, the number or the code enabling the connection to be identified, and the type, scope and duration of the measure. At most two months, extendable by one further month; where the offence was committed within the activity of an organisation, the judge may grant further extensions of not more than one month each, up to three months in total — a six-month ceiling in those files. |
| The request | CMK 135/2 | A document or report showing the owner of the line or device and, where known, its user. This is where a shared handset, a line in someone else's name or a hotel number is first identified — or first confused. |
| Execution | CMK 137/1 | The written demand to the operator, and a record fixing the date and time the operation began and ended and the identity of the person who carried it out. |
| Transcription | CMK 137/2 | Text produced by persons appointed by the prosecutor's office; foreign-language recordings translated into Turkish through an interpreter. |
| Unrelated material | CMK 138/2 | Where interception produces evidence of something outside the investigation, it may be preserved and reported to the prosecutor only where it raises suspicion that one of the offences listed in Article 135 has been committed. |
Nothing in that chain is discretionary paperwork. Each item exists because a provision says it must, which is why its absence from the copy of the file handed to the defence is a question rather than an oversight.
Why the first you hear of it is the indictment
Article 135/7 states that decisions taken and operations carried out under the article are kept secret for as long as the measure lasts. There is no notice, no opportunity to object while the line is live, and no way to know from the outside that a decision exists. In an ordinary case the defence learns of an intercept from the evidence list of the indictment, months after the last recorded call.
The Code also provides for the opposite ending. Under Article 137/3, where a decision of no prosecution is given, or where judicial approval of a prosecutor's order is not obtained, the prosecutor terminates the measure immediately and the records are destroyed within ten days at the latest under his supervision, with a record made of it; since 2021 the same applies after an acquittal, under judicial supervision. Article 137/4 then requires that, where the records have been destroyed, the chief public prosecutor's office or the court inform the person concerned in writing — within fifteen days at the latest of the end of the investigation or prosecution stage — of the reason, scope, duration and outcome of the measure. A letter of that kind can be the first and only thing a person abroad ever receives.
Material taken out of a handset that was seized and examined is not an intercept. That is a search-and-seizure question governed by Article 134, with its own decision and its own record. Chat histories and photographs usually arrive by that route, not through Article 135, and the two are checked separately — see searches of your flat, hotel room and phone.
What has to be true before a quoted call counts
Four provisions set the standard the material must meet, and they operate whether or not anyone raises them.
- Constitution, Article 38, sixth paragraph. Findings obtained contrary to law cannot be accepted as evidence.
- CMK 206/2-a. Evidence offered at the hearing is rejected where it was obtained contrary to law.
- CMK 217/2. The offence charged may be proved by any evidence obtained lawfully — which is the same rule stated from the other direction.
- CMK 289/1-i. A judgment resting on evidence obtained by unlawful methods is an absolute ground of unlawfulness, taken into account even if it was not raised in the appeal petition. What that means for the later stages is set out under appeals in Türkiye.
There is a further limit specific to technical surveillance. Article 140/4 provides that evidence obtained under that article cannot be used outside an investigation or prosecution for the offences the article lists, and is destroyed immediately under the prosecutor's supervision where it is not needed for the proceedings. Article 140/5 puts the home outside the measure altogether.
Which offence the file names therefore does real work. Manufacture of and trafficking in narcotic substances under Article 188 of the Penal Code is in the interception catalogue; possession for personal use under Article 191 is not — one reason so many intercept files are drug trafficking files. The catalogue itself, the statutory periods and what each decision must contain are set out on the practice page on wiretap and surveillance evidence. This note deals only with how the material travels from a line to a page.
Common questions
Can the police listen to my phone without a judge's decision?
The calls were in my own language. Who produced the translation in the file?
Nobody ever told me my phone was intercepted. Was that lawful?
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.