Recovering Unpaid Wages and Severance for Foreign Employees in Türkiye

Who This Is For

This page is for foreign white-collar and executive employees who worked in Türkiye for a Turkish company (or a Turkish entity of an international group) and left with money still owed. Typical situations include:

• Unpaid or partly paid salary (ücret), including a final month never settled.
• Severance pay (kıdem tazminatı) and notice pay (ihbar tazminatı) after the employment ended.
• Overtime (fazla mesai) worked but never paid.
• Unused annual leave (yıllık izin) that was not paid out on departure.
• Contractual bonuses or commissions that were earned but withheld.

You may have already left the country. That does not stop you from bringing a claim in Türkiye.

The Legal Route and Who Is Liable

Employee pay and severance claims are governed mainly by the Labour Act (İş Kanunu, Law No. 4857) and are heard by the Labour Court (iş mahkemesi). The defendant is usually your employer — the legal entity named on your contract and payslips, rather than an individual manager. Where a group of companies or a subcontracting arrangement is involved, the correct defendant (and any jointly liable party) is a point your avukat will identify from your documents.

Before a suit can be filed, Turkish law requires a mediation step for most claims. Under the Labour Courts Act (İş Mahkemeleri Kanunu, Law No. 7036, art. 3), applying to a mediator (arabuluculuk) is a procedural precondition (dava şartı) for most employee and employer money and compensation claims. A narrow set of claims (for example, certain claims arising from a work accident or occupational disease) can fall outside this requirement. If mediation does not produce a settlement, the final mediation record (son tutanak) clears the way to file in the Labour Court.

What You Can Pursue

Depending on your contract and how the job ended, a labour claim may seek:

• Unpaid salary (ücret) — wages earned but not paid, including the final period.
• Severance pay (kıdem tazminatı) — where the statutory conditions for severance are met.
• Notice pay (ihbar tazminatı) — where the contract was ended without the required notice.
• Overtime (fazla mesai) — hours worked beyond the legal weekly limit.
• Unused annual leave — the cash value of accrued leave not taken.
• Bonuses and commissions — amounts that were earned under your contract or company practice.

Money judgments in Türkiye carry statutory interest, and the type and rate of interest can differ between salary and the various forms of compensation. Whether each head of claim applies, and how it is calculated, is assessed from your contract, payslips and payment records.

Your personnel file is the claim.Contract, payslips, entry and exit records: an employment claim is largely decided by what the file shows.

How Long You Have

As a general guide, the limitation period for many labour receivables — including overtime, annual-leave pay, severance pay and notice pay — is commonly five years. For employment contracts that ended on or after 12 October 2017, a five-year period was introduced for annual-leave pay and for several end-of-contract compensation heads; for contracts that ended earlier, transitional rules can apply. The clock generally runs from when each amount became due (for severance and notice, typically from the end of the employment).

Applying for mandatory mediation generally suspends the limitation period while the mediation runs, and it resumes from the date of the final record. These periods are general, vary by the type of claim, and depend on the exact dates in your case.

How It Works If You Are Abroad

You can run the whole matter from outside Türkiye. To act for you, your avukat needs a power of attorney (vekâletname). For someone overseas this is usually arranged in one of two ways:

• Signed before a Turkish consulate in your country, which issues the power of attorney directly; or
• Signed before a local notary, then apostilled (under the Hague Apostille Convention) and provided with a sworn Turkish translation.

From there, mediation and the court case can proceed without you flying in. We keep you updated in plain English and request documents — contract, payslips, correspondence, bank statements showing what was and was not paid — by email.

How We Work and Your Next Step

Restitora is the practice of a licensed Turkish lawyer (avukat) who acts as your counsel of record and represents you directly. We are not a debt-collection agency or a claims buyer — we represent you as your lawyer.

A typical path looks like this:

• Review. You send your contract, payslips and a short account of what happened. We assess the claim and whether the employer is a realistic target.
• Power of attorney. You arrange the vekâletname by consulate or apostille route.
• Mediation. We make the mandatory mediation application, where it applies, and represent you in it.
• Court. If mediation fails, we file and conduct the case in the Labour Court.

Fees are explained clearly at the outset. We typically work on a success-fee basis within the limits Turkish law allows (Avukatlık Kanunu art. 164, which caps a contingent success fee at 25% and does not permit a pure share of the asset). To start, send us your contract and a short summary of what you are owed.

An Honest Note on Who We Can Help

A judgment is only useful if it can be enforced against an employer that can actually pay. For that reason we screen for solvent corporate employers — established companies with assets or trading income in Türkiye — rather than insolvent or vanished entities. If an employer has gone bankrupt or has no recoverable assets, even a strong claim may be difficult to realise, and we will tell you that candidly before you spend time and money on it.

We cannot and do not promise any particular outcome, amount or timeline. What we offer is honest assessment and proper representation by a licensed avukat.

📚 Deep Dive: Read our guide on expat executive severance rights and the strict 30-day mandatory mediation window in Türkiye.