Employment Lawyer
Employment Law
If you have been dismissed, the path to severance pay, notice pay, and reinstatement begins with mandatory mediation. For reinstatement, you must apply to a mediator within 1 month of the termination; employee receivables are subject to a 5-year limitation period.
Employment law exists to redress the imbalance of power between employee and employer, and its deadlines and procedures are strict. Missing a critical threshold — such as the 1-month preclusive period for the reinstatement application — causes irreparable loss. When acting for employees, our office establishes and collects severance, notice, overtime, annual leave, and national holiday and general holiday (UBGT) receivables, and handles reinstatement and mobbing proceedings. When acting for employers, we draft employment contracts, manage disciplinary procedures and terminations for valid or just cause, and provide defense in employment litigation.
Reinstatement: conditions and a strict two-stage timeline
To benefit from the job security protection regulated in Articles 18-21 of the Labor Law No. 4857, three conditions must be met together: the workplace must employ at least 30 workers, the employee must have at least 6 months of seniority, and the termination must not rest on a valid reason. The process follows a two-stage and very strict timeline: an application to mandatory mediation must be made within 1 month of service of the termination notice; if no agreement is reached in mediation, the lawsuit must be filed with the labor court within 2 weeks of the date the final report is drawn up. If the court finds the termination invalid, the employer must reinstate the employee within 1 month; if it does not, it pays job security compensation of 4-8 months' wages plus wages for the idle period of up to 4 months. The employee, in turn, must apply to the employer within 10 business days of the judgment becoming final — missing any one of these steps leads to the complete loss of the right.
Severance pay: entitlement and calculation principles
Severance pay is governed by Article 14 of the (still in force) former Labor Law No. 1475: an employee with at least 1 year of service with the same employer is paid, in the cases listed in the law, 30 days' wages for each full year of service, calculated over the last 'dressed' gross wage; periods exceeding a full year are prorated. The dressed wage includes all benefits of a continuing nature, such as transport, meal allowances, and bonuses; the calculation is capped by the severance pay ceiling updated every year, and no deduction other than stamp duty is made. In an employer termination (except termination for just cause based on breaches of morality and good faith), severance pay is, as a rule, owed; on the employee's side, termination for just cause, military service, a female employee leaving within 1 year of her marriage, and retirement or completing the conditions other than age all give rise to entitlement. The five-year limitation period runs from the date of termination.
Notice pay and notice periods
The party terminating an employment contract of indefinite duration must comply with the notice periods in Article 17 of the Labor Law: 2 weeks for an employee with less than 6 months of seniority, 4 weeks for 6 months to 1.5 years, 6 weeks for 1.5 to 3 years, and 8 weeks for more than 3 years. These periods can be increased by contract but not reduced. The party that fails to observe the notice period pays notice pay equal to the wages for that period; the employer may, if it wishes, terminate the contract immediately by paying the wages for the notice period in advance. An important detail: in immediate termination for just cause (for example, termination by an employee whose wages go unpaid), no notice pay arises — even the party terminating for just cause cannot claim notice pay. Granting the employee at least 2 hours of paid job-search leave per day during the notice period is also a statutory obligation; leave not granted must be paid at an increased rate.
Overtime, holiday (UBGT), and annual leave receivables
Work exceeding 45 hours per week is overtime and is paid at fifty percent above the normal hourly wage for each hour (Labor Law Art. 41); overtime may not exceed 270 hours per year, and the employee's written consent must be obtained each year. An employee who works on national holidays and general holidays (UBGT) is paid an additional day's wage for each day worked (Art. 47). Paid annual leave varies between 14 and 26 days according to seniority (Art. 53) and cannot be waived; unused leave converts into a receivable, calculated over the final wage, only when the contract ends (Art. 59). These receivables are subject to a 5-year limitation period. Proof relies on workplace records, timesheets, electronic entry-exit data, and witness statements; in practice, the evidentiary problem that most often works against the employee is having signed payroll slips whose overtime column is filled in, without recording a reservation.
Just cause: the employee's and the employer's immediate termination rights
Article 24 of the Labor Law gives the employee the right to terminate the contract immediately for health reasons, for breaches of morality and good faith (unpaid wages, social security premiums paid on less than the real wage, insults, harassment, mobbing, and the like), and for compelling reasons; an employee who terminates on this basis is entitled to severance pay. On the employer's side, Article 25 establishes a similar structure; in a just-cause termination based on breaches of morality and good faith, the employee receives neither severance nor notice pay. The critical procedural rule: the right to terminate for breaches of morality and good faith must be exercised within 6 business days of learning of the act and, in any event, within 1 year of its commission (Art. 26); a termination effected after the deadline does not produce the consequences of a just-cause termination. Because of the principle that the ground of termination cannot be changed later, the content of the termination notice must be framed correctly from the start.
Mandatory mediation and litigation before the labor court
Under Article 3 of the Labor Courts Law No. 7036, applying to a mediator before filing suit is a procedural precondition for employee receivables such as severance, notice, overtime, and annual leave, as well as for reinstatement claims — a case filed without it is dismissed on procedural grounds. Compensation claims arising from workplace accidents and occupational diseases are the exception and can be filed directly. Mediation talks are usually completed within a few weeks; if an agreement is reached, the report drawn up has the force of a court judgment, and no new claim can be brought on the agreed matters. This is why calculating the true value of the receivables before sitting down at the mediation table is vitally important: an employee who settles with a release without knowing the amounts can be permanently bound to a figure far below what a court would award. If no agreement is reached, litigation follows; in the trial, the expert accountant's report plays the decisive role.
Workplace accidents, occupational disease, and service determination
An employee who suffers a workplace accident may — separately from the income and allowances granted by the Social Security Institution (SGK) — claim pecuniary damages (loss of working capacity) in proportion to the employer's fault, together with non-pecuniary damages; in the event of death, the relatives' right to loss-of-support compensation arises. The employer must report the accident to the SGK within the statutory period; where an accident goes unreported or is presented as having occurred 'outside the workplace', it may first be necessary to have the incident established as a workplace accident. For employees worked without registration (uninsured), the service determination action (Law No. 5510, Art. 86) is a separate safeguard: this action is subject to a 5-year preclusive period running from the end of the year in which the service was rendered, though the period does not run in certain cases where the employer filed declarations. Witnesses, workplace records, photographs, and message correspondence form the core evidence set of these cases; the content of post-accident reports must be reviewed carefully.
Mobbing (psychological harassment) and proof
Mobbing — appearing as systematic exclusion, discrediting, assignment outside the job description, or pressure to resign — is a breach of the employer's duty to protect and respect the employee's personality, regulated in Article 417 of the Turkish Code of Obligations (TBK). An employee subjected to mobbing may terminate the employment contract for just cause and claim severance pay, and may additionally claim non-pecuniary damages where the conditions are met. The hardest aspect of a mobbing claim is proof: what is required is not a one-off argument but a continuing pattern of pressure. Events should therefore be recorded in chronological order, e-mails and messages preserved, changes of duties documented in writing, and any physician or psychologist reports kept on file. Judicial practice can accept approximate proof based on the totality of the facts where conclusive evidence is unavailable; however, mobbing cases filed without preparation carry a high risk of dismissal.
Employment litigation in the Esenyurt and Büyükçekmece region
Esenyurt, Beylikdüzü, and Büyükçekmece form a dense employment zone stretching from textile and logistics workshops to shopping malls and construction sites, and the litigation and mediation processes of employees in the region are conducted predominantly around the Büyükçekmece Courthouse. The dispute types we see most often in regional files are claims that severance and overtime be calculated over the real wage where part of the pay was made off the books ('cash in hand'), service determination for periods of unregistered work, and proving overtime under intense shift schedules. To establish the real wage, bank records, chamber-of-commerce comparable wage inquiries, and witness accounts are assessed together. Since some mediation sessions can be held online, employees who have moved to another city can also pursue their files in the region remotely.
The most common mistakes in employment law
On the employee side, the mistakes we see most often are: missing the 1-month reinstatement application period after termination; signing a release or a 'resignation letter' without reading its contents (resignations signed under pressure can be invalidated, but the burden of proof becomes heavier); signing payroll slips whose overtime column is filled in without recording a reservation; and leaving the workplace without collecting the contact details of colleagues who could serve as witnesses. On the employer side, issuing the termination notice without grounds or with the wrong grounds, imposing disciplinary penalties without taking the employee's defense, and missing the 6-business-day just-cause window are the main faults that lose cases. The rule common to both sides is this: the moment of termination is the legally riskiest moment of the employment relationship, and a signature given that day can determine the fate of litigation lasting years.
Example scenario — off-the-books wages and the severance calculation
(The following example is fictional, constructed to illustrate a common case type; it does not refer to any actual client or case.) A warehouse worker is dismissed after years of employment during which the minimum-wage portion of the salary was paid through the bank and the remainder in cash; the employer wants to calculate and pay severance only over the minimum wage shown on the payroll. In such a file, the strategy is built on proving the real wage: the irregularity of the amounts deposited to the bank, the wages of comparable employees at the workplace, the comparable wage obtained from the chamber of commerce, and witness statements are assessed together. At the mediation stage, a receivables table calculated over the real wage is presented; if no agreement is reached, litigation follows. This scenario shows how the gap between the payroll wage and the real wage fundamentally changes the compensation calculation.
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Services We Provide in This Area
- Severance and notice pay claims
- Reinstatement actions
- Overtime, annual leave, holiday (UBGT), and bonus receivables
- Mobbing (workplace psychological harassment) claims
- Compensation claims arising from workplace accidents and occupational diseases
- Service determination (unregistered employment) actions
- Drafting employment contracts and managing terminations
- Employer advisory and HR process compliance
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