How to Check Whether a Specific Article of a Law Is in Force Today?
In short: how to check that an article of law is in force
✅ Allowed
- Open the text on mevzuat.gov.tr and find the notes in brackets: Değişik (amended), Ek (added), Mülga (repealed), İptal (annulled by the Constitutional Court).
- Read the footnotes at the bottom: they show which wording has been replaced and by which decision.
- Check the date of entry into force of the latest amendment.
- Find the decisions of the President and ministries to which the article refers.
- Write down the date of checking and keep the link or a PDF.
⛔ Not allowed
- Treat as in force an article with the note Mülga: the number remains, the text is gone.
- Confuse the date of adoption of a law with the date of entry into force.
- Take amounts and lists from the law without checking the decisions: they are set by separate acts.
- Rely on old copies of laws on third-party sites.
This is a short summary of the text of the law. Details, quotations of articles and links to the official texts are below. The visa-free stay depends on your citizenship, and amounts and lists of countries are set by secondary acts, so check them on the date of your decision.
It is not enough to read an article of law in a retelling: it may have been amended, repealed or not yet have come into force. How to check whether an article of a Turkish law is in force today can be seen from several signs visible directly in the text on the official portal. Below, the order of checking is shown with examples from the real laws that we analyse in this section.
The material is for information and does not replace advice from a lawyer. If a decision is costly, show the text and the date of checking to a lawyer.
Step 1. Open the text on the official portal
Current texts are posted on mevzuat.gov.tr. Find the law by number, for example Law No. 6458: mevzuat.gov.tr, Law No. 6458. Do not use copies on the websites of law firms and directories as the main source: they lag behind.
Step 2. Read the notes in brackets by the article
Each amended article has a note in brackets saying what happened to it and when. The Turkish words you need to know:
- Değişik: the article has been amended. Example: Article 53 of Law No. 6458 has a note on the amendment by Law No. 7533 of 21 November 2024.
- Ek: added. Example: additional Article 4 of Law No. 2644 was added by Law No. 7579 of 7 May 2026.
- Mülga: repealed. Example: Articles 103–120 of Law No. 6458 were repealed by Decree No. 703 of 2 July 2018, so you see their numbers but there is no text there.
- İptal: annulled by the Constitutional Court. Example: in Article 21 of Law No. 6458, by a decision of the Constitutional Court of 25 January 2023 (E.2020/30, K.2023/12), certain sentences about intermediaries for receiving applications were annulled.
Step 3. Look at the footnotes at the bottom of the page
The footnotes explain which exact wording was replaced, for example that the words “Council of Ministers” were replaced by the word “President” by Decree No. 703 (in the articles of Law No. 6458 this was done many times). Thanks to this it is clear that the present text is about the powers of the President and not of the former bodies.
Step 4. Check the date of entry into force
Some amendments do not come into force at once. An example from the Civil Code: Law No. 7589 of 16 July 2026 added to the article on the sale of property words about an electronic portal, and the footnote reports that these words come into force after three months, on 31 October 2026, with a reference to the issue of the Official Gazette of 31 July 2026 (No. 33326). Until that date the old procedure applies. Always read the last article of the law on entry into force, and the footnotes.
Step 5. Find the decisions to which the article refers
If an article says that an amount, a list or a deadline is determined by the President or a ministry, you have to find that decision. Thus the list of countries for buying property is determined by the President (Law No. 2644, Article 35), and the property for a residence permit by the ministry (Law No. 6458, Article 31, paragraph 6). Decisions are looked for in the Official Gazette and on the websites of the authorities. More on where changes are published in article No. 16.
Step 6. Record the result
Keep the link, a screenshot or a PDF of the page and write down the date of checking: in a year the version may be different. This will be useful to a lawyer and in a dispute with an authority.
Typical mistakes
- Using an old translation of a law: translations often lag by years.
- Treating an amount from the law as in force: amounts are often changed by Presidential decisions (for example, the minimum capital of companies in the Commercial Code).
- Not noticing that an article has been repealed: the number remains, but the text is gone.
- Confusing the date of adoption and the date of entry into force.
- Forgetting about secondary acts and notices of the authorities.
How this relates to the other articles of the section
The latest changes of 2025–2026 are gathered in article No. 15. How to obtain a written clarification from an authority if the text is unclear is in article No. 20. If you are choosing a flat in Mersin, start with the property catalogue and the step-by-step guide to buying as a foreigner.
Conclusion
To understand whether an article of law is in force, open the text on mevzuat.gov.tr, read the notes and footnotes, check the date of entry into force and find the decisions to which the article refers. Record the date of checking. Read the other questions of this section on the page “Laws of Turkey”.
The material does not replace advice from a lawyer. The examples are taken from the texts of laws on mevzuat.gov.tr as of October 2026.
Photo: Nedim Ardoğa (CC BY-SA 3.0), Wikimedia Commons; photos of the complexes are used with the site owner’s consent.
