Enforcing US Commercial Court Judgments In Turkey: A Guide To Recognition And Enforcement Under Turkish Private International Law

I. Introduction

A judgment creditor who has prevailed in a US federal or state court and seeks to enforce that judgment against assets located in Türkiye will find no bilateral treaty awaiting them. The United States and Turkey have not concluded an agreement on the mutual recognition and enforcement of court judgments. What exists instead is a domestic statutory regime, namely Act No. 5718 on Private International and Procedural Law (“MÖHUK”) that governs how Turkish courts assess and, where appropriate, give domestic effect to foreign court decisions.

Under this regime, a US judgment does not carry automatic legal force in Türkiye. It must first pass through a judicial procedure known as exequatur (in Turkish, tenfiz davası) before it can be executed through Turkish execution offices. The Turkish court hearing the enforcement action does not sit as a court of appeal over the American tribunal; it examines only whether the judgment satisfies a defined set of conditions. If those conditions are met, the court issues an enforcement decision, and the judgment creditor may proceed to execution as if holding a domestic Turkish judgment.

This guide sets out the legal framework and procedural requirements for enforcing US commercial court judgments in Türkiye, with reference to applicable MÖHUK provisions and recent decisions of the Court of Appeals and regional courts of appeal.

II. Recognition and Enforcement: Two Distinct Tracks

MÖHUK distinguishes between two forms of legal effect that a foreign judgment may be given in Türkiye: recognition (tanıma) and enforcement (tenfiz). The distinction is not merely terminological and it has practical consequences for the relief that can be obtained.

Recognition, governed by Article 58 of MÖHUK, confers upon a foreign judgment the status of res judicata (kesin hüküm) and conclusive evidentiary weight (kesin delil) within the Turkish legal system. It is typically the appropriate remedy for judgments that determine a legal relationship or declare rights without requiring execution (for instance, a declaratory ruling on the existence or validity of a contractual obligation). Importantly, recognition under Article 58 of MOHUK does not require the parties to establish reciprocity between Turkey and the state of origin.

Enforcement, governed by Articles 50 through 57 of MÖHUK, goes further: it renders the foreign judgment executable through Turkish execution offices, allowing the creditor to seize assets, freeze bank accounts, and pursue other compulsory measures. Every enforced judgment is necessarily recognized, but not every recognized judgment is enforceable. Enforcement requires, among other conditions, proof of reciprocity, a requirement that has no equivalent in the recognition track.

In commercial practice, US creditors holding money judgments will almost invariably seek enforcement rather than recognition alone.

III. Conditions for Enforcement: The Statutory Framework

Before examining the most consequential of the enforcement conditions in detail, it is useful to set out the complete list of requirements as they appear in MÖHUK. Articles 50 and 54, read together, establish the cumulative conditions that a foreign judgment must satisfy before a Turkish court may issue an enforcement order. All conditions must be met; the failure of any single one is sufficient to defeat the enforcement action.

Under Article 50 of MÖHUK, the judgment must concern a civil law matter (özel hukuk ilişkisi) and must be final and binding (kesinleşmiş) under the law of the state in which it was rendered. Under Article 54, enforcement shall further be refused where: (i) the subject matter of the judgment falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of Turkish courts; (ii) there does not exist, between Türkiye and the state of origin, a treaty, a statutory provision in the foreign law, or a de facto practice establishing reciprocal enforcement of judgments; (iii) the defendant was not duly summoned or represented in the foreign proceedings, or a default judgment was rendered in breach of the procedural law of the state of origin; or (iv) enforcement of the judgment would be manifestly contrary to Turkish public policy.

Each of these conditions is examined in turn in the sections that follow. Reciprocity, which presents the most complex and fact-specific analytical challenges for US creditors, is addressed first.

IV. Reciprocity: The State-by-State Analysis

The Statutory Requirement

Article 54(a) of MÖHUK provides that a foreign judgment shall not be enforced unless there exists, between Türkiye and the state of origin, one of three forms of reciprocity: a treaty-based arrangement, a statutory provision in the foreign law enabling the enforcement of Turkish judgments, or a de facto practice of such enforcement. Because Türkiye and the United States have not concluded a bilateral enforcement treaty as of the date of this article, the analysis must proceed on the basis of statutory or de facto reciprocity.

Federal Structure: A State-by-State Inquiry

A feature of the US legal system that bears directly on Turkish enforcement proceedings is its federal structure. Turkish courts, following settled Court of Cassation practice, do not assess reciprocity at the level of the United States as a whole. The relevant inquiry is whether the specific state in which the US judgment was rendered (e.g., New York, California, Texas, or another) would, in principle, enforce a comparable Turkish court judgment.

This means that a judgment from a New York court and a judgment from a state that has not adopted recognition legislation are assessed under entirely different reciprocity analyses. The creditor bears the burden of establishing reciprocity in each case, and the evidentiary foundation required will vary accordingly.

In practice, the Court of Cassation has confirmed that de facto reciprocity, demonstrated by showing that Turkish judgments have been or would be enforced in the relevant state, is sufficient for the purposes of Article 54(a) (Court of Cassation 11th Civil Chamber, E. 2012/1091, K. 2013/276, 9 January 2013). A legal opinion from a US-qualified attorney practicing in the state of origin, translated and submitted to the Turkish court, is a commonly used means for demonstrating the reciprocity.

New York: The Established Benchmark

The position of New York is clear in the Turkish case law. Two foundations support reciprocity: the statutory framework of CPLR Article 53, which provides a structured basis for the recognition of foreign country money judgments in New York, and the de facto evidence established by the enforcement of a Turkish judgment in New York in the matter of TMSF v. Erol Aksoy. Creditors holding New York judgments are generally well placed to satisfy the reciprocity condition in Turkish proceedings.

Other US States

The position of states that rely on common law comity principles rather than statutory recognition frameworks requires a more fact-specific evidentiary presentation, and outcomes are less predictable.

V. Substantive Conditions under MÖHUK Articles 50 and 54

Articles 50 and 54 of MÖHUK set out the cumulative conditions that a foreign judgment must satisfy to be enforceable in Türkiye. A failure to meet any one of them is sufficient grounds for dismissal of the enforcement action. The conditions are as follows.

Civil Law Subject Matter

Article 50 of MÖHUK limits enforcement to judgments concerning civil law matters (özel hukuk ilişkileri). This is broadly construed in the context of commercial litigation: contractual claims, debt collection, corporate disputes, and commercial tort actions fall comfortably within its scope. Purely administrative fines, tax assessments, and judgments that rest on the exercise of governmental authority are generally considered to fall outside it. Where a US judgment combines civil and regulatory elements, the commercial component may still be enforceable on a partial basis, as discussed in Section VI below.

Finality

Article 50 requires that the judgment be final and binding (kesinleşmiş olması) under the laws of the state in which it was rendered. Turkish courts apply this requirement strictly. A judgment that remains subject to an ordinary appeal in the United States, even where execution has been stayed pending that appeal, is not treated as final for the purposes of MÖHUK. The creditor must provide documentary evidence of finality, typically in the form of a certificate issued by the US court (kesinleşme şerhi), authenticated and translated in accordance with the documentary requirements described in Section VII below.

No Exclusive Turkish Jurisdiction

Article 54(b) of MÖHUK requires that the subject matter of the judgment does not fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of Turkish courts. In commercial practice, this condition is engaged most frequently in disputes involving rights in rem over immovable property located in Türkiye: a US court judgment directing the transfer of title to Turkish real estate will not be enforced, as such matters are reserved to Turkish courts under Turkish procedural law. Similarly, disputes that Turkish courts would treat as falling within the exclusive domain of Turkish commercial courts, such as certain aspects of Turkish bankruptcy proceedings, may raise questions under this provision.

A related but distinct jurisdictional objection is available under the same provision: enforcement shall be refused if the foreign court assumed jurisdiction without any genuine connection to the subject matter of the dispute or to the parties, provided that the defendant raises this objection. This condition targets what private international law terms exorbitant jurisdiction, the exercise of adjudicatory authority by a court whose nexus to the dispute is so attenuated that recognition of its judgment would be incompatible with fundamental principles of jurisdictional legitimacy.

However, the plaintiff in the enforcement proceedings cannot invoke it, and a defendant who fails to raise it at the appropriate procedural stage will be taken to have waived it. In practice, this condition is of limited relevance in well-structured US commercial litigation, where subject-matter and personal jurisdiction over a Turkish defendant will ordinarily rest on a discernible connection. Where, however, a US judgment was obtained in a state with no meaningful relationship to the underlying transaction or to the defendant, Turkish counsel should assess at an early stage whether the defendant may credibly advance a genuine-connection objection in the enforcement proceedings.

Due Service and the Right to be Heard

Article 54(ç) of MÖHUK provides that enforcement shall be refused if the defendant was not duly summoned or represented in the foreign proceedings, or if a default judgment was rendered against the defendant in breach of the procedural law of the state of origin. This condition engages directly with the manner in which service of process was affected in the US litigation. Both the United States and Turkey are parties to the 1965 Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents; however, Turkey has entered a reservation to Article 10 of that Convention, with the consequence that service effected through postal channels or private process servers (without recourse to the Central Authority) is not recognized as valid under Turkish law. Creditors who obtained a US judgment following service by mail or courier on a Turkish defendant should take legal advice on this point before commencing enforcement proceedings in Turkey. (Court of Cassation 11th Civil Chamber, E. 2009/1020, K. 2011/1679, 15 February 2011).

VI. The Public Policy Exception

Article 54(c) of MÖHUK permits a Turkish court to refuse enforcement where the judgment is manifestly contrary to Turkish public policy (Türk kamu düzenine açıkça aykırılık). This ground for refusal is well established in Turkish private international law but is also consistently described by the Court of Cassation and by academic commentary as one that must be applied narrowly.

The Court of Cassation General Assembly has emphasized that the public policy exception does not give the enforcement court license to review the merits of the foreign judgment, nor does it permit refusal on the grounds that the foreign law applied differs from Turkish law. What is required is that the enforcement of the judgment in Turkey would produce a result that is fundamentally irreconcilable with the core principles of the Turkish legal order (e.g., its constitutional values, basic concepts of justice, or the essential interests of Turkish society (Court of Cassation Civil General Assembly, E. 2013/1136, K. 2014/974, 26 November 2014). The prohibition on révision au fond (re-examination of the merits) is treated as an equally important constraint on the enforcement court’s powers.

Punitive and Exemplary Damages

The treatment of punitive damages (cezalandırıcı tazminat) awarded by US courts is among the most debated questions in Turkish enforcement practice. Turkish tort law is grounded in the compensatory principle: damages are intended to restore the claimant to the position they would have occupied absent the defendant’s wrong, not to punish the defendant or to enrich the claimant beyond their actual loss.

Academic opinion on whether US punitive damage awards constitute a violation of Turkish public policy is divided. One view holds that punitive damages are inherently incompatible with the Turkish civil law tradition and the state’s monopoly on punitive sanctions and should therefore be refused as contrary to public policy. A competing view, supported by reference to domestic Turkish legislation that expressly permits multiple damages, including Article 58 of the Law on the Protection of Competition and Article 68 of the Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works, both of which allow claims of up to three times the actual loss, argues that punitive awards are not categorically contrary to Turkish public policy, and that refusal should be limited to cases where the award is grossly disproportionate.

Turkish courts have not settled this debate in a manner that permits categorical conclusions. What the case law does support is the possibility of partial enforcement: where a US judgment includes both compensatory and punitive components, a Turkish court may enforce the compensatory element while declining to give effect to the punitive element, on the basis of Article 52(c) of MÖHUK, which expressly permits partial enforcement. Creditors holding judgments with significant punitive components should, in preparing their Turkish enforcement filings, present the compensatory and punitive elements as separately quantified items so as to preserve the enforceability of the compensatory award.

Penal Fines and Regulatory Awards

MÖHUK Article 50 restricts enforcement to judgments arising from civil law matters. Judgments that are, in substance, expressions of a state’s penal or regulatory authority, such as fines payable to a government body, or awards based on statutory penalties imposed as a matter of public law, fall outside the scope of enforcement entirely. The critical question is not the label attached to the award but its substance: if the obligation runs to a private party and arises from the civil relationship between the parties, it is enforceable; if it runs to the state or to a public authority and rests on the exercise of governmental power, it is not.

Where a US judgment combines a compensatory award for private loss with a regulatory penalty, the same logic of partial enforcement may apply: the private law component remains enforceable, while the regulatory penalty does not.

VII. Mandatory Mediation: Not a Condition Precedent

A question that arises with some regularity in Turkish enforcement practice is whether a creditor seeking to enforce a foreign judgment in a Turkish commercial court must first attempt mandatory mediation under Article 5/A of the Turkish Commercial Code. Article 5/A, read with the Law on Mediation in Civil Disputes No. 6325, designates mediation as a mandatory condition precedent (dava şartı) for certain commercial claims; in particular, claims for payment of a sum of money, compensation, and related actions.

The position of both the Court of Cassation and the regional courts of appeal is that enforcement proceedings do not attract this requirement. The reasons are structural. First, an enforcement action is not a proceeding on the merits of the underlying dispute: the Turkish court examines only whether the MÖHUK conditions are satisfied and does not adjudicate the parties’ substantive rights. Mediation presupposes a live dispute that the parties might resolve through negotiation; in an enforcement action, that dispute has already been determined by a foreign court. Second, Article 5/A of the Turkish Commercial Code enumerates the categories of commercial action to which mandatory mediation applies, and enforcement proceedings do not appear in that list, a list that Turkish courts treat as exhaustive.

The Court of Cassation has confirmed this position by upholding regional court decisions that rejected defendants’ arguments to the contrary (Yargıtay 11th Civil Chamber, E. 2024/2949, K. 2025/977, 18 February 2025). Regional courts have reached the same conclusion by reference to both the purpose of the mediation regime and the sui generis character of enforcement proceedings (Istanbul Regional Court of Appeal, 44th Civil Chamber, E. 2025/687, K. 2025/1174, 25 September 2025; Istanbul Regional Court of Appeal, 12th Civil Chamber, E. 2024/151, K. 2024/446, 21 March 2024).

VIII. Procedural Requirements

Competent Court

Subject-matter jurisdiction in enforcement proceedings involving commercial disputes lies with the Commercial Courts of First Instance (Asliye Ticaret Mahkemesi), by virtue of Article 51 of MÖHUK read together with Article 5 of the Turkish Commercial Code. Filing in a general civil court will result in a transfer order and delay. Venue is determined by the defendant’s domicile in Turkey; in the absence of Turkish domicile, by the defendant’s habitual residence; and, in the further absence of either, by the location of assets subject to enforcement or, as a residual rule, by the courts of Istanbul, Ankara, or Izmir.

Required Documents

Article 53 of MÖHUK sets out the documents that must accompany the enforcement petition. The burden of proof rests on the applicant throughout. The standard documentary package for a US judgment consists of the following:

• A certified copy of the judgment.
• A certificate of finality (kesinleşme şerhi), confirming that all ordinary rights of appeal have been exhausted or have expired under the law of the issuing state.
• An Apostille, issued by the competent authority of the relevant US state under the 1961 Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents. The Apostille must be affixed to each document submitted.
• A sworn Turkish translation of all submitted documents, prepared by a sworn translator.

Interim Attachment

Because enforcement proceedings can take a year or more to conclude at first instance, creditors who have reason to believe that the defendant may dissipate assets during the litigation should consider applying for an interim attachment order (ihtiyati haciz) at the outset. Turkish courts may (although debated) grant interim attachment on the basis of a foreign court judgment, ordinarily upon the creditor posting a security bond. The attachment freezes the relevant assets pending the enforcement decision, providing a practical safeguard against asset dissipation.

IX. Security for Costs (Cautio Judicatum Solvi)

Article 48 of MÖHUK requires foreign nationals and foreign-domiciled entities commencing proceedings in Türkiye to provide a security deposit to cover the potential costs and damages of the opposing party if the claim is ultimately dismissed. The deposit is ordinarily set by the court at between ten and fifteen per cent of the amount in dispute.

Article 48(2) of MÖHUK provides for an exemption from this requirement on the basis of reciprocity, that is, where Turkish nationals bringing equivalent proceedings in the foreign state’s courts would not be required to provide equivalent security. The application of this exemption to US parties is a matter of ongoing debate in Turkish practice. Turkey is not a party to the 1954 Hague Convention on Civil Procedure, which contains a mutual exemption from security requirements among contracting states, and there is no bilateral arrangement between Turkey and the United States addressing this point.

In the absence of a treaty basis, Turkish courts have taken varying positions on whether US creditors are entitled to the exemption. Some courts have required the security deposit from US parties; others have accepted a de facto reciprocity argument in its favor. The creditor should be prepared to address this issue early in the proceedings (failure to deposit the security within the timeframe set by the court results in immediate dismissal) and should take Turkish legal advice on the current state of practice in the relevant jurisdiction.

X. Conclusion

Turkish law provides a structured and accessible mechanism for the enforcement of US commercial court judgments, notwithstanding the absence of a bilateral enforcement treaty. The MÖHUK regime is broadly hospitable to foreign judgment creditors, provided that the conditions it sets are satisfied.

Recent developments in Turkish case law reflect a measured alignment with international commercial norms. The Court of Cassation has applied the public policy exception with restraint in commercial cases, confirmed that mandatory mediation is not a condition precedent to enforcement proceedings, and shown increasing willingness to accept de facto reciprocity arguments supported by credible evidentiary foundations.

For US creditors with assets to pursue in Türkiye, early engagement of Turkish legal counsel, ideally before the US proceedings conclude, is the most effective way to ensure that the eventual US judgment is one that Turkish courts can and will enforce.

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.