Employing Staff in Türkiye: A Complete Guide for Foreign Employers

For a foreign company, employing staff in Türkiye is where an otherwise smooth market entry most often meets friction. The rules are codified, protective and unforgiving of improvisation: minimum standards cannot be bargained away, terminations are heavily scrutinised, and almost every dispute now begins with a compulsory mediation stage before a court will even open the file. This guide is the master tour a foreign employer can start from — the legal framework, the contract you choose, working time and leave, the full termination picture, the job-security regime, mediation, social security and workplace safety — with links out to the specialist pieces that go deeper on each.

The Legal Framework

Employment in Türkiye is governed primarily by the Labour Act No. 4857 (İş Kanunu). It sets a floor of rights that cannot be lowered by contract; a clause purporting to waive severance, cap overtime below the legal rate, or strip job-security protection is simply void, and the employee keeps the protection regardless of what they signed. Where an employee falls outside the Labour Act’s scope — certain senior executives and liberal professions among them — the Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098 (TBK) governs the relationship instead.

Several statutes sit alongside the Labour Act and apply in parallel: the Unions and Collective Bargaining Act No. 6356, the Occupational Health and Safety Act No. 6331, the Social Insurance and General Health Insurance Act No. 5510 (the SGK framework), and the Labour Courts Act No. 7036, which since 2018 has made mediation a precondition to most employment litigation. For a foreign investor, the gap between a Western at-will mindset and this framework is where the costliest mistakes happen, which is why our labour and employment practice treats compliance as a stack of registrations and records that must be in place from day one, not a single signed document.

Choosing a Contract Type

The indefinite-term contract (belirsiz süreli iş sözleşmesi) is the default and the safest starting point. A fixed-term contract (belirli süreli iş sözleşmesi) is valid only where there is a genuine objective reason (esaslı neden) for a fixed duration — a defined project, seasonal demand, or a specific temporary need. The trap is renewal: chaining fixed terms without a fresh objective reason converts the relationship into an indefinite-term one by operation of law, and the employee acquires full termination protection. Written form is required for fixed-term contracts of one year or more and for certain clauses.

Beyond these, the law recognises part-time, on-call and remote arrangements, the last regulated in detail by the 2021 Remote Working Regulation. A probation period (deneme süresi) may run up to two months — extendable to four by a collective bargaining agreement — during which either side may terminate without notice or severance. Getting the contract type and its clauses right at the outset is precisely the groundwork covered by our dedicated employment contracts practice, and it is explored in depth in our guide to employment contracts in Türkiye.

A signed release or a tidy “resignation letter” does not close the file. Turkish courts scrutinise settlements and quit-claims closely, and a waiver signed under economic pressure is frequently set aside — leaving the employer exposed to the full claim years later.

Working Time, Overtime and Leave

The statutory working week is capped at 45 hours for full-time employees. Work above 45 hours is overtime (fazla çalışma), paid at 1.5 times the hourly wage, or offset by 1.5 hours of free time per overtime hour where the employee prefers. Overtime requires the worker’s consent and is capped at 270 hours per year; night work is limited to 7.5 hours.

Wages must at least meet the national minimum wage (asgari ücret), which is set by a commission and revised at least annually — we deliberately do not quote a figure, because it changes. Annual paid leave (yıllık ücretli izin) accrues after one full year of service and scales with seniority; accrued-but-unused leave is paid out in cash on termination, a line item employers routinely underestimate.

Length of service	Minimum annual paid leave
1 to 5 years	14 working days
5 to 15 years	20 working days
More than 15 years	26 working days
Workers under 18 or over 50	at least 20 working days

The mechanics of the working week, overtime consent and leave accrual are set out more fully in our article on working time, overtime and annual leave in Türkiye.

The Full Termination Picture

Termination is the most litigated area of Turkish employment law, and the outcome turns almost entirely on how the relationship ends. Four concepts interlock.

Notice (bildirim/ihbar süresi) is graduated by seniority: two weeks for under six months’ service, four weeks for six months to a year and a half, six weeks for one and a half to three years, and eight weeks beyond three years. A party who ends the contract without giving that notice owes notice indemnity (ihbar tazminatı) equal to the wage for the notice period.

Severance pay (kıdem tazminatı) is owed where the employee has at least one full year of service and the termination qualifies — an employer termination other than for just cause under Art. 25/II, or an employee resignation for a justified reason such as the employer’s material breach or non-payment, compulsory military service, retirement entitlement, a woman resigning within a year of marriage, or death. It is 30 days’ gross wage per full year of service, pro-rated for part years, on the all-in (giydirilmiş) wage, and capped at a statutory ceiling (kıdem tazminatı tavanı) updated twice a year.

Just-cause termination (haklı nedenle fesih) — Art. 24 for the employee, Art. 25 for the employer — is immediate and needs no notice. Where the employer terminates for the employee’s misconduct under Art. 25/II, no severance is owed, but the right must be exercised within six working days of learning the facts and within one year of the event.

How the employment ends	Notice / indemnity	Severance	Reinstatement risk
Employee resigns without justified cause	Employee gives notice	No	No
Employee resigns for justified cause	No	Yes	No
Employer dismisses with a valid reason	Yes	Yes	Low, if documented
Employer dismisses for just cause (Art. 25/II)	No	No	No, if cause holds up
Dismissal without a valid reason (30+ staff)	Yes	Yes	Yes, plus compensation

The interaction between these categories — and how a single missed deadline can flip an employer’s exposure from nothing to reinstatement plus months of wages — is the subject of our detailed pieces on terminating an employee in Türkiye and on severance and notice pay, and it is the core of our termination and severance practice.

Job Security and Reinstatement

The job-security regime (iş güvencesi) under Arts. 18–21 applies to an employee with at least six months’ seniority in a workplace of 30 or more employees on an indefinite-term contract. For such staff the employer cannot simply dismiss at will: it must have a valid reason (geçerli sebep) — capacity, conduct, or operational and business needs — and follow procedure, including written notice and, for conduct dismissals, a chance for the employee to defend. A dismissal that fails either test is invalid.

To challenge an invalid dismissal, the employee must first apply to mandatory mediation within one month of the notice; if mediation fails, they file at the labour court within two weeks. If the court finds the dismissal invalid, the remedy is reinstatement, or — where the employee is not re-employed — job-security compensation of four to eight months’ wages plus up to four months’ wages for the idle period. Because performance and conduct concerns must be documented over time, and warnings issued and acknowledged before dismissal, a file assembled after the decision rarely convinces a labour court that termination was truly the last resort.

Why Almost Every Dispute Starts with Mediation

Since 1 January 2018, under the Labour Courts Act No. 7036, mediation is a precondition for most employee and employer monetary claims — severance, notice, overtime, leave and bonus — and for reinstatement claims. File suit without first mediating and the case is dismissed on procedural grounds. The principal exception is a claim arising from a work accident or occupational disease, which goes straight to court. The mechanics of the process are set out in our overview of mandatory mediation in Turkish law, and its specific role in workplace disputes — alongside the litigation that follows a failed mediation — is covered in our article on workplace mediation and labour litigation and handled by our workplace disputes and litigation practice.

Mediation is not a formality to be rushed through. It is the single best chance to settle on controlled terms — once the reinstatement clock and litigation costs start running, both sides lose leverage.

Social Security, Safety and Data

Three background obligations bind every employer from the first day. Under the SGK framework (Law No. 5510), the employer must register the workplace and each employee, file the monthly premium service declaration, and pay both the employer and employee premium shares; undeclared (“kayıt dışı”) employment carries heavy administrative fines and back-premium liability. Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act No. 6331, every employer must carry out a risk assessment and provide OHS training and — depending on hazard class and headcount — engage an OHS expert and a workplace physician. And because employment generates extensive personal data, processing it lawfully is a duty under Türkiye’s data-protection regime, addressed in our personal data protection practice; an employer building its Turkish presence usually sequences all of this alongside company formation.

Two further points round out the picture. Overbroad restrictive covenants are risky: a non-compete (rekabet yasağı) under TBK Arts. 444–447 is valid only if reasonably limited in time (a maximum of two years), place and subject matter, and only where the employee had access to the customer base or trade secrets — courts routinely narrow or strike out the rest. And a collective dismissal (toplu işçi çıkarma) under Art. 29, triggered when at least ten workers are let go for operational reasons (with thresholds scaling by workplace size), requires notice to İŞKUR, the workplace union and the regional directorate at least 30 days in advance.

A Note on Foreign Nationals

Employing a foreign national is a separate matter. It additionally requires a work permit from the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, issued together with the right of residence. This is a distinct, specialist process with its own quotas and conditions, and it sits outside the general employment framework this guide describes. We flag it here only so the distinction is clear: the rules above apply to your workforce whatever their nationality, while the permit is an extra, separate step for foreign hires.

Putting It Together

For a foreign employer, the through-line is simple even where the detail is not: choose the right contract, register and insure the worker before day one, run working time and leave correctly, and — above all — plan any termination before you act rather than after. The difference between a resignation, a just-cause dismissal and an invalid dismissal can swing exposure from nothing to reinstatement plus several months’ wages, and the compulsory mediation stage now decides much of that outcome before a judge is ever involved. Getting the structure right at the outset, with advice that reflects how Turkish labour courts actually read a file, is far cheaper than defending a claim built on paperwork assembled too late.