Methodology — Turkey

Two engines, two very different legal footings.

The state-fee side encodes the Harçlar KanunuTurkey's Law of Fees (No. 492) — the statute whose (1) sayılı Tarife «Yargı Harçları» sets the mandatory court fees a party pays the state to file and pursue a case. Revalued and re-issued each January; the figures are KDV-exempt.Glossary → (Law 492), (1) sayılı Tarife «Yargı Harçları» at its 2026 figures — the Harçlar Kanunu Genel Tebliği Seri No: 98 (Resmî Gazete, 31 December 2025), a +18,95% revaluation over 2025, effective 1 January 2026. Other Turkish state fees — notarial fees ((2) sayılı Tarife), land-registry fees ((4) sayılı Tarife) — are out of scope and are not triggered by any calculator case type.

The lawyer-fee side encodes the Avukatlık Asgarî Ücret TarifesiTurkey's minimum lawyer-fee tariff (AAÜT), issued each year by the Türkiye Barolar Birliği. Under Avukatlık Kanunu m. 164 it is a binding minimum — a lawyer's fee may not be agreed or awarded below it — unlike the reference-value tariffs of most EU states, since Turkey is outside the CJEU line that liberalised those.Glossary → (AAÜT), published in the Resmî Gazete of 4 November 2025 (Sayı 33067) by the Türkiye Barolar Birliği under Avukatlık Kanunu m. 168. The two instruments are deliberately out of phase — the AAÜT is re-issued each November, the harç each January.

Unlike Bulgaria or Romania, the AAÜT is a binding minimumA tariff floor a court could once not go below. Several EU jurisdictions abandoned binding minimums after CJEU rulings; where that has happened, the same figures now serve only as reference values.Glossary → (Avukatlık Kanunu m. 164; AAÜT Genel Hükümler m. 1): a lawyer’s fee may not be agreed or awarded below the tariff, and the court-awarded loser-pays fee is bounded between one and three times it. Turkey is not an EU member, so the CJEU line (Cipolla C-94/04, C-438/22) that turned EU bar tariffs into reference valuesA tariff figure that is advisory, not mandatory — a guide to what a fee customarily is, which the lawyer and client remain free to depart from. Every number Tarifo shows is a reference value.Glossary → does not apply. Tarifo presents the AAÜT figure as the statutory minimum with a 1×–3× recoverable-fee control — never as a “reference, not a quote”.

A başvurma fee plus a decision fee, in four shapes.

Başvurma + proportional decision fee

The dominant shape. Civil, consumer, labour, administrative and IP claims pay the forum başvurma harcıTurkey's court application fee under the Harçlar Kanunu — a flat charge to open a case, differing by forum (lower at the sulh court than the asliye court). It is paid alongside the karar ve ilam harcı, and appeals carry their own fixed başvurma harcı.Glossary → (asliye 732,00, sulh 335,20) plus binde 68,31 (0,06831) of the claim value as the karar ve ilam harcıTurkey's decision-and-judgment fee under the Harçlar Kanunu — the main court fee, charged as a fixed maktû amount for non-monetary cases or a proportional (nispî) rate on the claim value, with a statutory minimum. One quarter is paid up front at filing (peşin, m. 28).Glossary →, floored at 732,00.

Reduced-rate proportional

Maintenance (nafaka_maintenance) and real-estate sale (realestate_sale) use the reduced binde 11,38 (0,01138). Nafaka is charged on one year’s maintenance (12 × the monthly amount), not the lifetime figure.

Flat maktû (non-value)

Non-monetary matters — divorce, family, non-monetary civil — pay başvurma 732,00 + a maktû decision fee of 732,00 = 1.464,00, paid in full (no peşin split).

Enforcement collection fee

enforcement pays an icra başvurma of 732,00 plus a tahsil harcı — a percentage of the collected amount that rises by stage: 4,55 % before seizure, 9,10 % after seizure, 11,38 % via sale.

State fees: KDV-exempt. Lawyer fees: optional 20% toggle.

State court fees in Turkey are KDV-exempt — the calculator shows them at face value with no VAT line. Lawyer fees are subject to 20 % KDV (AAÜT m. 16) when the lawyer is VAT-registered; the result panel exposes this as a toggle, defaulting on. The two engines never share a VAT setting — flipping the lawyer KDV toggle has no effect on the state-fee number.

A civil claim, first instance.

Take a civil claim, first instance, with a claim value of 100.000 TRY (civil_claim_first_instance):

One quarter of the karar harcı is due at filing: 732,00 + ¼ × 6.831,00 = 2.439,75 TRY (Harçlar Kanunu m. 28), surfaced in the steps. For a small claim the nispî fee is floored at 732,00 — a 5.000 TRY claim yields 732 + 732 = 1.464,00. These anchor fixtures are pinned in the engine’s unit tests.

Where the two engines disagree on purpose.

The lawyer-fee and state-fee engines are re-derived from different statutes and diverge on purpose:

A further class of divergence is purely categorical: the out-of-court services (consultation, document_drafting) trigger no court filing, so the state-fee engine returns null and the UI hides the block. These are scope decisions, not bugs — documented in the case-type mapping.