Personal Injury Lawyer
Personal Injury and Compensation Law
Damages suffered through a tort, an accident, or a breach of contract can be pursued through claims for pecuniary and non-pecuniary compensation. Accurately calculating the loss and the degree of fault is the precondition for recovering the true value of your claim; the limitation period is, as a rule, 2 years.
Compensation law aims to remedy every kind of loss — from bodily injury to loss of support, and from torts to violations of personality rights. Calculating damages requires actuarial expertise, and because a court cannot award more than what is claimed, structuring the case correctly from the outset is critical. Our office pursues compensation claims arising from traffic and workplace accidents, losses caused by the torts of third parties, non-pecuniary damage claims for attacks on personality rights, and breach-of-contract cases, supported by comprehensive evidence and calculation reports.
Legal basis: the four elements of tort liability
The general framework of compensation liability is drawn by the Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098 (TBK): whoever causes damage to another through a culpable and unlawful act is obliged to remedy it (TBK Art. 49). For liability to arise, four elements must exist together: an unlawful act, damage, fault, and a causal link between the act and the damage. There are also special strict-liability cases where fault is not required: the liability of the employer of auxiliaries (TBK Art. 66), of the keeper of an animal (TBK Art. 67), of the owner of a building (TBK Art. 69), strict liability for dangerous activities (TBK Art. 71), and the liability of the operator of a motor vehicle under the Road Traffic Law No. 2918 (KTK) are the principal ones. Since the burden of proving the damage and the wrongdoer's obligation to compensate rests, as a rule, on the injured party, gathering evidence systematically from the moment of the incident is the foundation of the case.
Items of pecuniary damages: what can you claim?
In bodily injury, the recoverable items are listed in TBK Art. 54: treatment expenses, loss of earnings, losses arising from the reduction or loss of working capacity, and losses arising from the shaking of the person's economic future. In permanent disability, permanent incapacity compensation is calculated actuarially over the disability rate, age, probable life span, and income — a disability rate established by a duly issued medical board report is the backbone of this calculation. In the event of death, under TBK Art. 53, funeral expenses, treatment expenses and losses from reduced working capacity if death was not immediate, and the losses of those deprived of the deceased's support can be claimed. For damage to property (vehicle damage, diminished value, and the like), the repair cost and the market value difference are claimed. Each item has its own method of proof and calculation; a claim list framed incompletely ends, at the close of the case, in a judgment below the real loss.
Non-pecuniary damages: measure and proper defendants
A person whose bodily integrity is harmed may claim non-pecuniary damages under TBK Art. 56; in cases of severe bodily harm or death, non-pecuniary damages may also be awarded to the injured person's relatives. A person whose personality rights are unlawfully attacked (insults, violation of private life, unauthorized sharing of images and audio recordings, and the like) relies on TBK Art. 58. The amount is set at the judge's discretion, weighing the gravity of the incident, the degrees of fault, the parties' economic and social circumstances, and the depth of the pain and suffering endured; under the settled principle, non-pecuniary damages cannot be a means of enrichment, but they must be deterrent and provide solace. In practice, to keep the non-pecuniary award from remaining symbolic, it is important that the petition concretize the incident's impact on quality of life (psychological support records, witnesses from the person's social circle). Because of the rule that a non-pecuniary claim cannot be split, setting the amount correctly from the start is also critical.
Traffic accident compensation: the insurer application and arbitration
For losses arising from a traffic accident, the first addressee is the company that issued the at-fault vehicle's Compulsory Motor Third-Party Liability (Traffic) Insurance. Under KTK Art. 97, a written application to the insurance company is mandatory before litigation or arbitration; if the company does not respond within 15 days or its offer is inadequate, the injured party may either sue before the commercial court of first instance or apply to the Insurance Arbitration Commission. The arbitration route runs markedly faster than the courts and is widely used in our region's diminished value, disability, and loss-of-support files. The claim items are vehicle damage and diminished value, temporary and permanent incapacity for work, caregiver expenses, and, in fatal accidents, loss-of-support compensation. Since the fault apportionment (accident report, camera footage, expert examination) is the multiplier of the compensation, professional handling from the first day of the accident — including the objection process against the report — is recommended.
Workplace accident compensation and coordinating the SGK process
An employee who suffers a workplace accident — or their relatives in the event of death — may, independently of the income and allowances granted by the Social Security Institution (SGK), sue the employer for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages on the basis of fault liability. The employer's liability is assessed by reference to whether occupational health and safety measures (training, equipment, supervision) were taken; the apportionment of fault is determined by expert panels. Reporting the accident to the SGK and having the incident established as a 'workplace accident' is the first link in the process; since the recourse-eligible portion of the income granted by the SGK is deducted from the compensation calculation, the two processes directly affect each other. Workplace accident compensation cases — unlike employee receivables — are not subject to mandatory mediation and can be filed directly before the labor court. In occupational disease files, a staged proof process runs through the Medical Board and the court to establish the causal link between the illness and the work; applying early prevents the loss of evidence.
Limitation periods: 2 years, 10 years, and the extended criminal period
A tort-based compensation claim becomes time-barred 2 years from the date the injured party learns of the damage and of the person liable, and in any event 10 years from the date of the act (TBK Art. 72). However, if the act also constitutes a criminal offense and the criminal statutes provide a longer prosecution period, that extended period applies to the compensation claim as well — in injury and fatality accidents, this rule can carry the period into the 8-to-15-year range. For traffic accidents, KTK Art. 109 repeats the same principle. For compensation claims arising from breach of contract, the general 10-year limitation period applies as a rule (TBK Art. 146). The effect of the application to the insurance company and of amendment (ıslah) steps on the limitation period must be assessed separately for each file; since even a one-day error in computing the period can cause the total loss of the right, the limitation analysis is the first step in every file.
Compensation for unlawful detention and custody (CMK Art. 141)
Persons who were apprehended, taken into custody, or detained unlawfully during a criminal investigation or prosecution — and persons who, after being lawfully detained, received a non-prosecution decision or an acquittal — may claim compensation from the state for their pecuniary and non-pecuniary losses (Code of Criminal Procedure, CMK Art. 141). The claim is filed with the assize (heavy penal) court of the claimant's place of residence within 3 months of service of the final decision on the person concerned and, in any event, within 1 year of the date the decision became final (CMK Art. 142). The pecuniary items are the income lost during the deprivation of liberty, attorney expenses, and other losses resting on concrete documents; non-pecuniary compensation is assessed according to the duration of the deprivation of liberty and the person's social standing. In these files, submitting the income documents completely (payslips, tax records, self-employment receipts) is the precondition for calculating the pecuniary award at its true amount.
The course of compensation cases in Büyükçekmece and Esenyurt
Compensation files in our region proceed before different forums according to their type: general tort actions against third parties are heard by the civil courts of first instance at the Büyükçekmece Courthouse, workplace accident compensation by the labor court, and claims against traffic insurers before the commercial courts of first instance or the Insurance Arbitration Commission. The heavy traffic on the E-5 and TEM connector roads and the region's construction and manufacturing activity have made traffic accident and workplace accident files the highest-volume groups in our practice. The concrete steps that accelerate these files are completing the hospital and forensic report processes without skipping any, having the camera footage near the accident scene preserved before it is erased (in most systems, recordings are overwritten within a short time), and filing the insurance application with complete documents. Supporting the file with a calculation report determines bargaining power at both the negotiation and the trial stage.
The most common mistakes in compensation cases
The mistakes we encounter most often are these: accepting the insurance company's first offer, and signing a release, without having the real loss calculated (after a duly signed release, further claims become substantially harder); missing the deadline for objecting to the accident report; abandoning treatment midway and thereby causing the disability rate to be assessed too low; letting the file sit on the assumption that the limitation period is 'long anyway'; and leaving the scene without taking witness details. Another critical mistake is social media posts: posts contradicting a disability claim can be used as evidence by the other side. Claiming non-pecuniary damages at a symbolic amount is also a common framing error. All of these mistakes are preventable with brief legal advice in the first week after the incident; in compensation files, time is itself the evidence.
Example scenario — diminished value and an incapacity claim
(The following example is fictional, constructed to illustrate a common case type; it does not refer to any actual client or case.) A driver is hit at an intersection in a collision caused entirely by the other side's fault; the vehicle is damaged and a permanent restriction of movement develops in the driver's wrist. In the file, the fault situation is clarified first: the accident report and camera footage are collected. For the vehicle, the repair cost and diminished value are pursued; for the bodily injury, a disability rate report from the medical board is planned. A written application covering all items is filed with the other vehicle's traffic insurer; if an inadequate offer arrives at the end of the 15-day period, the diminished value and incapacity claims are taken to the Insurance Arbitration Commission, while the non-pecuniary claim — falling outside the insurance cover — is asserted in court against the at-fault driver. This scenario shows how the claims arising from a single accident are distributed to different forums in the right order.
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Services We Provide in This Area
- Traffic accident claims for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages
- Workplace accident and occupational disease compensation
- Loss-of-support (wrongful death) compensation
- Permanent and temporary incapacity-for-work compensation
- Non-pecuniary damages for attacks on personality rights
- Compensation for losses arising from breach of contract
- Compensation for unlawful detention and custody (CMK 141)
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Personal Injury and Compensation Law: Frequently Asked Questions
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