Domestic Violence Protection Orders in Turkey: Law 6284 Guide

When a marriage in Türkiye turns dangerous, the document that can change your situation fastest is not a divorce petition. It is a protection order under Law No. 6284 on the Protection of the Family and the Prevention of Violence Against Women. A Turkish judge can order your spouse out of the shared home, bar him from approaching you, order him to hand his licensed firearms to the police, keep your new address confidential in official records, and rule on custody of the children — and the Law does not require him to be heard before the order is made. For a foreign national, that speed is the whole point: it buys the physical separation that everything else, including divorce, custody and a change of residence permit, has to be built on.

Law 6284 sets no nationality condition, and its implementing regulation defines a victim as a person exposed to violence irrespective of nationality, within the framework of the principle of reciprocity. What does make a difference is whether an application is made correctly or in panic. Foreign spouses lose protection they were entitled to by filing at the wrong desk, by arriving with untranslated evidence, by withdrawing under family pressure, or by assuming that a Turkish order will follow the perpetrator across a border. This 2026 guide sets out how Law 6284 works in practice, what an order can actually contain, how it is enforced when breached, and how it interacts with your residence permit, your citizenship file and your children.

Key Takeaways

• Without delay, and without hearing him first: Article 8(3) requires a preventive order to be given without delay, and in urgent cases the police can remove him from the home on the spot under Article 5(2), subject to a judge's approval within twenty-four hours; the order is notified to him afterwards (Article 8(4)).

• Nationality and permit status are not conditions: Law 6284 requires no Turkish citizenship, residence permit or Türkiye-registered marriage. It protects women, children, family members and victims of unilateral persistent stalking (Article 1), and the implementing regulation defines a victim irrespective of nationality, within the framework of reciprocity (Article 3(1)(n)).

• Go to whoever is nearest: Article 8(1) lets you request the measure from whichever judge, district governor's office (mülkî amir, in practice the kaymakamlık) or law-enforcement unit is quickest and easiest to reach; the application can also come through the public prosecutor, the Ministry's provincial directorate or a ŞÖNİM centre. A neighbourhood muhtar is not a filing authority under the legislation. Do not lose a night hunting for the 'right' desk.

• Two families of measures: Protective measures support you (shelter, financial aid, guidance); preventive measures restrain him (eviction, distance, communication ban, weapons). Both can be ordered together; Article 8(2) caps a first order at six months, and the Law sets no limit on how often it may be extended.

• Breach carries detention: Article 13 imposes coercive detention (zorlama hapsi) of three to ten days per violation, rising to fifteen to thirty days for repeat breaches — no separate criminal complaint needed.

• Your permit route survives: Under Article 34(6) of Law No. 6458, a court decision establishing that you were a victim of domestic violence removes the three-year prior-residence condition that otherwise applies when a divorced foreign spouse moves onto a short-term residence permit (kısa dönem ikamet izni).

What Law 6284 Is, and What Sits Underneath It

Law No. 6284 was adopted on 8 March 2012 and entered into force on 20 March 2012, the date of its publication in the Official Gazette (No. 28239). It repealed the much narrower Law No. 4320 and remains the operative statute in 2026. Its architecture is worth understanding before you walk into a courthouse, because the article number you need depends on who you are asking. Article 3 empowers the local administrative authority (mülki amir) — in practice the district governor, the kaymakam — to grant protective measures, and in cases where delay would be prejudicial a senior police officer may take certain of those measures, namely emergency accommodation and temporary protection, on the spot. Article 4 sets out a further set of protective measures that only a judge can grant: a change of workplace, the assignment of a residence separate from the marital home, an aile konutu annotation on the title deed, and, where life is at risk, a change of identity documents under the witness protection legislation. Article 5 contains the preventive measures directed at the perpetrator, which again only a judge may impose. The consolidated text is published on the official Mevzuat Bilgi Sistemi.

Law 6284 does not operate alone. Where the conduct is criminal, the Turkish Penal Code runs in parallel: threats under TCK Article 106, intentional injury under TCK Articles 86 to 88, torment under Article 96, and persistent stalking under Article 123/A, the offence added in 2022 that finally gave Turkish prosecutors a dedicated tool for following, messaging and surveillance campaigns. On the civil side, divorce is governed by TMK Articles 161 to 184 and parental authority (velayet) by TMK Articles 335 to 351; a protection order is deliberately independent of both, and you do not need to have filed for divorce to obtain one.

Who counts as a protected person

Article 1 draws the protected category wide: women, children, family members and victims of unilateral persistent stalking. Article 2(1)(d) defines violence to include physical, sexual, psychological, verbal and economic conduct, together with threats and pressure, and Article 2(1)(b) expressly covers domestic violence between people who do not share the same household. The Law does not require a marriage registered in Türkiye, and because women are protected as such, a religious-only union (imam nikâhı) does not put a woman outside the statute. Nor does nationality: the implementing regulation defines a victim as a person exposed to violence irrespective of nationality, within the framework of the principle of reciprocity (Regulation, Article 3(1)(n)), so a foreign woman married abroad and living in Istanbul on a tourist stamp is not excluded by her status.

The constitutional and treaty backdrop

The regime rests on Article 41 of the Turkish Constitution, which obliges the State to take the measures necessary to protect the family. Türkiye withdrew from the Council of Europe's Istanbul Convention by Presidential Decision No. 3718, published in the Official Gazette on 20 March 2021, and clients frequently ask whether that gutted their protection. It did not: Law 6284 and its implementing regulation remain in force, and Article 1(2)(a) still names that Council of Europe convention among the instruments on which the Law is to be applied. For cross-border questions — where the applicant lives abroad, or where a foreign protection order needs effect in Türkiye — the Act on Private International and Procedural Law (MÖHUK, Law No. 5718) supplies the jurisdictional and recognition rules.

Where to File, and How Fast the Order Arrives

Whichever door is nearest

Article 8(1) sends the request to whichever judge, district governor (mülkî amir) or law-enforcement unit is the quickest and easiest to reach; the application itself may be made by you, by police officers, by the public prosecutor or by the Ministry, in practice through its provincial directorate and the local Violence Prevention and Monitoring Centre (ŞÖNİM). A neighbourhood muhtar is not a filing authority under the legislation and can only point you onward, so a crisis night should not be spent there. There is no filing fee — Article 20 removes court costs, charges and postal expenses from these files entirely — and no requirement to instruct a lawyer first. Nor does every route end with a judge: confirmation is required only for measures a senior police officer takes on the spot in urgent cases. Protective measures taken by the police go to the district governor and lapse if they are not approved within forty-eight hours (Article 3(2)); preventive measures taken by the police go to a judge and lapse if they are not approved within twenty-four hours (Article 5(2)). A protective measure issued directly by the district governor under Article 3 needs no judicial confirmation at all. The practical lesson for foreign spouses is that on a Saturday night the correct answer is the nearest police station, not a search for a family courthouse that opens on Monday.

Jurisdiction when you have no Turkish address

Article 8(1) does not tie you to a list of places. It provides only that the measure may be requested from the judge, district governor or law-enforcement unit that is quickest and easiest to reach — a deliberately open criterion, and a wider one than the venue rules of ordinary civil procedure. A victim who has left the marital home for a hotel, a friend's flat in another district, or a state shelter therefore keeps a forum wherever she now is, without having to return to the neighbourhood she fled. Law 6284 does not require a hearing before an order is made, so you are not obliged to face the respondent before it issues.

What the judge must be satisfied of

This is where Law 6284 departs most sharply from ordinary civil litigation, although the rule is narrower than it is usually reported to be. Article 8(3) provides that no evidence or document is required in order to grant a protective measure (koruyucu tedbir) — shelter, temporary financial assistance, guidance. For the preventive measures directed at the perpetrator (önleyici tedbir), the same provision says something different: that decision must be given without delay, and may not be postponed in a way that would defeat the purpose of the Law. That is a rule about speed, not a guarantee that an eviction or a no-contact order issues on assertion alone. Anyone affected may object to the family court within two weeks of the decision being announced or served (Article 9(1)); the objection authority rules within one week, and its decision is final (Article 9(3)). An extension under Article 8(2) turns on whether the violence, or the danger of it, will continue, which is why the file you build in the first fortnight matters more than the one you build in the first hour.

What the Order Can Actually Contain

Measures against the perpetrator

Article 5(1) gives the judge a catalogue that can be combined in a single decision: an order not to threaten, insult or humiliate the victim; removal of the perpetrator from the shared residence, with the home allocated to the protected person (uzaklaştırma); an order not to approach the protected persons or their home, school or workplace; supervised, restricted or suspended contact where a contact order for the children already exists; an order not to approach the protected person's relatives and witnesses, or the children subject to contact arrangements; an order not to damage personal and household belongings; an order not to harass the protected person through communication tools or otherwise; surrender of any licensed firearm to the police, and of a service weapon where the perpetrator holds a public post that requires one; a bar on using alcohol or drugs where the protected persons are, or approaching them under the influence; and referral to a health institution for examination or treatment. Where children are involved, Article 5(3) allows the same judge to rule on custody, curatorship (kayyım), maintenance and contact under the Civil Code, and to order protective and supportive measures under the Child Protection Law No. 5395.

Measures that support the victim

The protective side is less discussed and often more useful in the first week. It includes placement in a state shelter (sığınmaevi) run under the Ministry of Family and Social Services, temporary financial assistance, psychological and legal guidance and temporary childcare support; alongside the order, the authority can also take a confidentiality decision (gizlilik kararı) under which the identity details and addresses of the protected person and other family members are kept confidential in all official records (Article 8(6)). For a foreign spouse whose only Turkish address is the marital flat, the confidentiality decision can be the difference between an order that works and one that simply tells the perpetrator where to go looking.

Duration, renewal and money

Article 8(2) fixes the ceiling for a first order at six months. Where it emerges that the violence, or the danger of it, will continue, the court may extend the measures, vary their form, maintain them unchanged or lift them — on its own motion or on the application of the protected person, the Ministry or the police — and the statute sets no cumulative ceiling on how often that may be done. Under Article 5(4), where the perpetrator also provides for or contributes to the family's upkeep and no maintenance has already been awarded under the Civil Code, the judge may order interim maintenance (tedbir nafakası) even where none has been requested, having regard to the victim's standard of living. That matters where the abuse has taken an economic form: Article 2(1)(d) includes economic conduct in the definition of violence, and control of the bank cards, the residence-permit paperwork and the rent can fall within it.

Enforcement: What Happens If He Breaks It

Article 13 is the reason a Turkish protection order is taken seriously. A proven breach attracts coercive detention (zorlama hapsi) of three to ten days, escalating to fifteen to thirty days on each repetition, with the aggregate capped at six months. The detention is ordered by the family court judge rather than obtained through a prosecution, and the public prosecutor's office then executes that order. Article 13(1) applies even where the same conduct is itself a criminal offence, so no criminal complaint or conviction is needed: under the implementing regulation, a breach recorded by the police is sent to the public prosecutor, who forwards the record to the family court without delay (Regulation, Article 38(1)). Coercive detention requires that the order was announced or served with a warning that a breach will lead to it (Law, Article 8(5); Regulation, Article 38(3)). Where the breach also involves assault, threats or a weapons offence, an independent criminal file proceeds on the ordinary TCK track. Keep the case number of your order on your phone and give it to the police officer who attends; it converts a domestic-dispute callout into an enforcement matter.

Building a File That Survives the Objection

What actually carries weight

The strongest single document is a medical report of assault (darp raporu) issued by a state hospital or the Forensic Medicine Institute (Adli Tıp Kurumu) — obtained the same day, not a week later. Around it, assemble a contemporaneous written chronology with dates and locations, photographs of visible injury and of damage to the home, screenshots of threatening messages showing the sender and the timestamp, any earlier police incident reports, and the names of neighbours or colleagues who witnessed incidents or their aftermath. Do not edit or delete the message history; a partial thread is easy for opposing counsel to attack.

Language, translation and interpreters

Turkish is the official language (Constitution, Article 3) and the language Turkish courts work in, so a petition drafted abroad in English needs a Turkish version before it is filed. In civil proceedings HMK Article 263 provides that a witness who does not speak Turkish is heard through an interpreter, and Article 20 of Law 6284 removes costs from protection-order files themselves. Where you are giving a statement to the police or to the prosecutor as a victim, CMK Article 202 requires an appointed interpreter if you do not speak enough Turkish to make yourself understood, at the investigation stage as well as at trial, and under CMK Article 324(5) that interpreter's cost is borne by the State rather than counted as a litigation cost. Insist on the officially appointed interpreter rather than relying on a bilingual relative, who may be closer to the other side than you realise. Foreign-language evidence, including medical records or protection orders obtained in your home country, should be translated into Turkish, in practice by a sworn translator with notarial certification (yeminli tercüman and noter). Prepare those translations in advance where the situation allows, so that the file is complete when the petition is filed.

Immigration and Citizenship Consequences

Your residence permit

The most commonly exploited fear in these marriages is that leaving means deportation. The provision that governs the position after divorce is not the one usually quoted. Article 34(6) of Law No. 6458 on Foreigners and International Protection provides that, on divorce, a foreigner who was married to a Turkish citizen may be granted a short-term residence permit (kısa dönem ikamet izni) provided she has held a family residence permit for at least three years, and that the three-year condition is waived where the foreign spouse's status as a victim of domestic violence is established by a court decision. Two consequences follow, and both are routinely misunderstood. The three years is not a period your existing permit is guaranteed to run for; it is a precondition that domestic violence removes. And what you obtain afterwards is not a continuation of the family residence permit but a different permit, applied for in its own right. Because everything turns on a court decision rather than on the incident, a Law 6284 order — and any criminal judgment that follows it — should be preserved as the documentary basis of that application. Where the permit route needs restructuring altogether, an independent permit application should be prepared in parallel by immigration counsel rather than left until the protection period expires.

Citizenship by marriage

Citizenship acquired through marriage is governed by Article 16 of the Turkish Citizenship Law No. 5901: at least three years of marriage to a Turkish citizen with the marriage still subsisting at the date of application, life within the family unit, no activity incompatible with the marriage union, and no national-security or public-order impediment. A protection order is not itself one of the Article 16 conditions, but a separation that follows it bears directly on the condition of living within the family unit, and meeting the conditions does not by itself entitle you to citizenship (Article 10(1)). Because the marriage must still subsist when the application is made, the timing of the divorce petition can decide whether this route stays open at all. These files are fact-specific and turn on how the separation is documented, so the protection order, the divorce petition and the citizenship application should be sequenced together rather than handled by three unconnected advisers.

Consular notification

Law 6284 contains no rule requiring the authorities, or you, to notify your embassy, so the decision stays with you. Some applicants prefer to secure the emergency order first and approach the consulate afterwards, once an exit plan exists.

Children, Custody and the Cross-Border Trap

Interim custody inside the protection envelope

A Law 6284 order can include a decision on custody under the Civil Code (Article 5(3)), supervised, restricted or suspended contact (Article 5(1)(ç)), and an order not to approach the school (Article 5(1)(c)). It does not decide final custody — only a divorce or custody action does that — but the first order should still be drafted with the eventual custody proceedings in mind. Where psychological assessment is needed, the family court can draw on the psychologists, pedagogues and social workers assigned to the courthouse (Law No. 4787, Article 5), and a party may also file a scientific opinion from an independent specialist (HMK Article 293).

Do not put the children on a plane

This is one of the most damaging mistakes a foreign parent can make. Taking a child out of Türkiye without the other parent's consent or an express court authorisation can constitute wrongful removal under the 1980 Hague Child Abduction Convention, to which Türkiye is a contracting state — and a return order made against you will overshadow everything the protection order achieved. The lawful route is a court-authorised relocation, dealt with in our guides on cross-border child custody in Turkey and on Hague Convention custody proceedings.

Three Ways Foreign Spouses Lose the Protection They Won

The counter-application

Law 6284 protects family members of either sex (Article 1), so the other spouse can apply too, sometimes alleging that the foreign spouse is the aggressor. Mirror orders leave both parties restrained and can undercut your custody position. The defence is a contemporaneous record of the marital dynamic created before the escalation, not reconstructed after it.

Retraction under pressure

Applications and decisions are reported to the Ministry's provincial directorate (Article 10(2)), so an application withdrawn under family pressure does not simply disappear, and the withdrawal can be raised against you later, including in the divorce file. If pressure is being applied, the answer is to report the pressure — which Article 2(1)(d) itself treats as part of violence — not to withdraw.

The order stops at the border

A Turkish protection order has no automatic extraterritorial effect, and it cannot travel under Regulation (EU) No 606/2013: that instrument covers only protection measures issued by the authority of an EU member state, so a Law 6284 order made in Türkiye falls outside it. Whether you move inside or outside the EU, the order has to be recognised under the local law of the destination country, or a fresh protection order applied for there. Even unrecognised, it may still be relevant evidence before foreign custody courts, depending on the law of that forum, and where the perpetrator has fled Türkiye it can be paired with a criminal file capable of triggering international police cooperation.

Feeding the Order into the Divorce File

The facts behind a protection order can be relied on in the divorce action, in particular under TMK Article 162 (attempt on life, very bad treatment or gravely degrading conduct) and TMK Article 166 (irretrievable breakdown), and the judge assesses the evidence freely (TMK Article 184). A claim under Article 162 must be brought within six months of learning of the ground and in any event within five years, failing which the right of action lapses. Fault is not merely symbolic in Turkish law: a spouse whose fault is heavier cannot claim poverty alimony (yoksulluk nafakası, TMK Article 175), and material and moral compensation (maddi and manevi tazminat) are claimed from the spouse at fault (TMK Article 174). Where the marriage involved assets, the order also buys the time needed to trace them before they move. Those downstream questions are covered in our guides on contested divorce for foreign nationals, alimony in Turkey for foreign spouses and matrimonial property division.

Treat the protection order as the first move in a sequence, not as the end of the matter. A first order runs for up to six months (Article 8(2)); what you do inside that window — the medical documentation, the residence-permit filing, the custody positioning, the asset trace — determines whether the position holds when it expires. Our family and divorce practice acts for foreign spouses in Türkiye in English, and in most matters under a power of attorney, so that the legal steps can proceed while you concentrate on being somewhere safe.

Common questions about Law 6284 protection orders

Can a foreign spouse without legal residence in Turkey apply for a protection order?

Yes. Law 6284 sets no nationality or residence-permit condition, and its implementing regulation defines a victim as a person exposed to violence irrespective of nationality, within the framework of the principle of reciprocity (Regulation, Article 3(1)(n)).

Do I need to file for divorce to obtain a protection order?

No. Protection orders under Law 6284 are independent of any divorce proceeding, so you can obtain protection first and file for divorce later. When you do file, the date matters: if the divorce is granted, the matrimonial property regime ends as of the filing date (TMK Article 225), and once the case is filed the judge takes interim measures on housing, maintenance, property and the children of the court's own motion (TMK Article 169).

Will a protection order affect my Turkish citizenship application?

A protection order is not one of the conditions in Article 16 of the Turkish Citizenship Law No. 5901, which requires at least three years of marriage to a Turkish citizen with the marriage still continuing, life within the family unit, no activity incompatible with the marriage union and no national-security or public-order impediment. A separation that follows the order bears on the family-unit condition, and meeting the conditions does not by itself entitle you to citizenship (Article 10(1)).

What happens if my spouse violates the protection order?

Article 13 of Law 6284 provides for coercive detention (zorlama hapsi) ordered by the judge: three to ten days for a breach, fifteen to thirty days for each repetition, and no more than six months in total. It applies even where the breach is also a crime, so you do not need to file a criminal complaint for it; a breach recorded by the police is sent through the public prosecutor to the family court (Regulation, Article 38(1)). Where the breach involves additional criminal conduct (assault, threats, weapons offences), criminal proceedings may be opened in parallel.

Can the protection order include my children?

Yes. Article 5(1) lets the judge order the perpetrator not to approach the protected persons' home, school or workplace and have existing contact with the children supervised, restricted or suspended, and Article 5(3) lets the same judge rule on custody, curatorship, maintenance and contact under the Civil Code. Where psychological evaluation is needed, the family court can draw on the psychologists, pedagogues and social workers assigned to the courthouse (Law No. 4787, Article 5), and a party may file a scientific opinion from an independent specialist (HMK Article 293).

How quickly can your office act in an emergency?

Do not wait for a lawyer in an emergency: under Article 8(1) you can ask the nearest judge, district governor's office or police unit directly, and in urgent cases the police can take the key measures on the spot (Articles 3(2) and 5(2)). Once you are safe, a lawyer can take over the family court file, the translations, any objection and the extension stage; you can reach our office in English through the WhatsApp line.

Does my spouse have to be notified before the protection order is issued?

No. Law 6284 does not require the respondent to be heard before an order is made. The order is announced or served on him afterwards (Article 8(4)), and the absence of service does not prevent its enforcement (Article 10(5)). Under Article 9 he may object to the family court within two weeks of the order being announced or served; the objection authority decides within one week and its decision is final.

Can my Turkish spouse obtain a counter-protection order against me?

Yes. Law 6284 protects family members of either sex (Article 1), so the other spouse can also apply. Mirror orders restrain both parties and can weaken your custody position, which is why a contemporaneous record of the marital dynamic should be built before matters escalate, not reconstructed afterwards.

How do I enforce a Turkish protection order if my spouse leaves the country?

A Turkish order has no automatic effect abroad, and it cannot travel under Regulation (EU) No 606/2013, which covers only protection measures ordered in an EU member state. Whether you move inside or outside the EU, the order must be recognised under the local law of that country, or a fresh protection order applied for there. Even unrecognised it may be relevant evidence in foreign custody proceedings, depending on local law, and it can be paired with a Turkish criminal file where the perpetrator has fled.

Will I lose my residence permit if I divorce a violent Turkish husband?

Not automatically. Article 34(6) of Law No. 6458 allows a foreigner divorced from a Turkish citizen to be granted a short-term residence permit (kısa dönem ikamet izni), and the usual requirement of three years' prior family residence permit is waived where a court decision establishes that you were a victim of domestic violence. What you obtain is a new permit applied for in its own right, not a continuation of the family permit, so the Law 6284 order should be preserved as the documentary basis of that application.

This guide is general information on Turkish law, not legal advice on your own matter. Rules and practice change; check the position before you act.