Registering Trademarks In Türkiye: What You Need To Know

A Practical Guide to Trademark Registration in Türkiye: Protecting Your Brand at the Crossroads of Europe and Asia

This is the third post in our global trademark series. After covering Australia and Brazil, we now turn to Türkiye—the 16th-largest economy in the world and a critical bridge between East and West.

With its expansive consumer base and vital role in regional manufacturing and logistics, Türkiye is a key market for companies operating internationally. If your brand is doing business in Türkiye—or planning to—securing trademark protection is an essential first step.

Here's what you need to know.

What Can Be Registered as a Trademark in Türkiye?

Türkiye's Law No. 6769 on Industrial Property governs trademark rights. It allows for the registration of a wide range of signs, including:

• Words, slogans, and personal names
• Logos and visual symbols
• Letters, numbers, and colors
• The shape of goods or their packaging
• Sounds
• Any combination of these elements

The common requirement is that the sign must be capable of distinguishing your goods or services from those of others.

What Cannot Be Registered as a Turkish Trademark?

Even with its broad scope, Türkiye's trademark law excludes certain marks from protection under absolute and relative grounds for refusal.

Absolute grounds include:

• Non-distinctive or generic signs
• Descriptive terms
• Marks that mislead consumers
• Symbols contrary to public order or morality
• Protected symbols like national flags, religious emblems, or official insignia

Some of these limitations can be overcome if the applicant can demonstrate acquired distinctiveness through prior use.

Relative grounds for refusal include conflicts with earlier rights. If your mark is identical or confusingly similar to an existing registered trademark or pending application—particularly within the same or related class—it may be refused to avoid consumer confusion or dilution of existing marks.

Türkiye Is a First-to-File Country

Türkiye follows the first-to-file principle, meaning that the first party to file a valid trademark application will typically have priority, regardless of who used the mark first. This makes early trademark filing essential for any business planning to operate in Türkiye, even if you are not yet selling products or services there.

Failing to register early could expose your brand to legal challenges, block you from using your own brand name, or leave you vulnerable to trademark squatters.

Multi-Class Applications

Türkiye allows multi-class applications, which means you can apply for protection across multiple classes of goods or services in one filing. This can streamline the process, but remember that government fees apply per class.

Step-by-Step: The Turkish Trademark Registration Process

1. Application Submission

Submit your application to TÜRKPATENT (the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office). Be sure to specify the classes of goods or services clearly, using acceptable language to avoid delays.

2. Formal Examination

TÜRKPATENT reviews the application for procedural compliance. If there are deficiencies, you'll have two months to correct them. Otherwise, the application will be cancelled.

3. Substantive Examination

Next, the mark is evaluated for compliance with Turkish trademark law, including whether it is distinctive and whether it conflicts with prior registrations.

4. Publication and Opposition

If the application passes examination, it is published in the Official Trademark Bulletin for a two-month opposition period. Third parties may file objections during this time.

5. Registration

If no opposition is filed—or if opposition is resolved in your favor—you can pay the final registration fee, and TÜRKPATENT will issue your certificate of registration.

Türkiye Trademark Registration Timeline

The full registration process in Türkiye typically takes a minimum of six months, assuming there are no formal issues or oppositions. If objections arise, the timeline may extend considerably, especially if hearings or appeals are required.

Common Türkiye Trademark Filing Mistakes

Some of the most common pitfalls we see for Türkiye Trademarks include:

• Filing overly broad or vague goods/service descriptions
• Missing the two-month deadline to correct application deficiencies
• Attempting to register non-distinctive or generic terms
• Using the ® symbol before official registration
• Skipping a clearance search, leading to refusals based on prior marks
• Misfiling non-Turkish character marks as word marks instead of design marks

Avoiding these errors at the outset can significantly reduce time, cost, and frustration.

If You Receive an Office Action or Opposition

Türkiye offers several avenues for responding to objections. Depending on the reason, you may:

• Provide legal arguments demonstrating distinctiveness
• Narrow the scope of goods/services
• Seek consent from the owner of a cited earlier mark
• Submit proof of acquired distinctiveness through extensive prior use

Professional support is often critical here, especially when timing and precision matter.

Official Fees (as of 2025)

Fees are charged per class. Rates are subject to change and should be confirmed with TÜRKPATENT or your legal counsel at the time of filing.

Trademark Use Requirements

Use of your trademark is not required at the time of filing or registration. However:

• If your trademark is not used for five consecutive years, it becomes vulnerable to cancellation for non-use
• No declaration of use is required for renewal
• Continuous use helps reinforce your rights and makes enforcement easier

Registering Non-Turkish or Non-Latin Character Marks

If your trademark includes characters from outside the Turkish alphabet—such as Chinese, Arabic, or Cyrillic—it must be filed as a design mark rather than a word mark.

In these cases, you'll need to include:

• A phonetic transliteration
• An English translation, where applicable

This helps examiners assess your application more accurately and reduces confusion with existing registrations.

^TM and ® Symbols: What They Mean and How to Use Them

• The " symbol may be used to indicate that a mark is being claimed, but it carries no legal status under Turkish law
• The ® symbol should only be used once your mark is formally registered with TÜRKPATENT

Using ® before registration is granted may be seen as misleading and could give rise to unfair competition claims.

Turkish Customs Recordation

Once your trademark is registered, it can be recorded with Turkish Customs. This recordation helps protect your brand by allowing customs officials to intercept counterfeit or infringing goods at the border.

This is especially valuable for brands with manufacturing or distribution operations in the region.

Why We Know Türkiye Well

Our firm has a long history of working with Turkish companies and international businesses operating in Türkiye. That's largely because our founding partner, Dan Harris, attended high school in Istanbul and speaks Turkish. Over the years, this background has translated into a disproportionate amount of cross-border legal work involving Türkiye.

Dan often notes that Turkish is one of the most regular and logically structured languages in the world. After the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk spearheaded a sweeping language reform, replacing the Ottoman Arabic script with a modified Latin alphabet in 1928. This was part of a broader push toward modernization and secularization, and it had a profound impact—making the language far more accessible and dramatically improving literacy.

Turkish phonetics are straightforward and almost perfectly one-to-one: each letter corresponds to a single sound, and the spelling system is entirely phonemic. As Dan likes to point out, his name becomes "Danyal" in Turkish. For example, "ç" is always pronounced like "ch" in "church," and "ş" like "sh" in "shoe." There are no silent letters or inconsistent exceptions, which makes Turkish remarkably easy to read aloud with near-perfect accuracy—even for beginners.

Grammatically, Turkish is just as efficient. It has only one truly irregular verb, and the language has no articles, no grammatical gender, and no gender-based verb conjugations.

This appreciation for Turkish's linguistic precision directly informs how we approach our legal work in Türkiye. Just as the language favors structure and clarity, so does an effective trademark strategy: knowing exactly what protection you need, where you need it, and how to secure it efficiently. And with a lawyer who reads and understands Turkish, we're able to go beyond the legal text to grasp the cultural and contextual nuances that often make the difference in cross-border matters. We don't do business with Türkiye—we understand it.

Final Thoughts

Türkiye's trademark system is strong, modern, and relatively efficient—but as a first-to-file country, early registration is vital. Once registered, enforcement depends not just on having rights, but on how well those rights are used, monitored, and defended.

To maintain strong protection over time, be sure to:

• Register your mark before entering the market
• Use it consistently in commerce
• Monitor for infringing use
• Renew and enforce your rights as needed
• Consider customs recordation as a preventive measure

If you're planning to register trademarks in Türkiye—or manage a broader international portfolio—our global IP team is here to help.

Next in our series: trademark registration in Mexico, a vital gateway to North American trade and manufacturing.

Let us know if there's a country you'd like us to prioritize.

To view the original article click here

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.