Termination of employment

Notice periods

Under Labour Law No. 4857, both employer and employee must give notice before terminating an indefinite-term contract.

These are minimums and may be increased by contract, never reduced. Where notice is not served, payment in lieu of notice is due to the other party in an amount equal to the notice period.

Two types of termination

Termination with notice. Either party may terminate an indefinite-term contract on the notice periods above.

Termination for just cause, without notice, in the cases set out in the Labour Law — reasons of health, conduct that is immoral, dishonourable or malicious or similar behaviour, and force majeure. Both employer and employee have this right, and an employee resigning for just cause retains severance entitlement.

Severance pay (kıdem tazminatı)

An employee whose contract is terminated in qualifying circumstances is entitled to severance calculated on years of service, at 30 days' gross wage per year, pro-rated for part years.

Entitlement requires at least one full year of continuous service with the same employer, and arises where:

• The employer terminates for a reason other than the employee's immoral, dishonourable or malicious conduct
• The employee resigns for just cause under the Labour Law
• The employee leaves to perform compulsory military service
• The employee retires, or becomes entitled to an old age, retirement or disability pension
• The employee resigns having completed 3,600 premium days and 15 years of insurance, on production of the SGK document confirming retirement conditions other than age are met
• A female employee resigns within one year of marriage
• The employee dies — severance is paid to the heirs

The ceiling

Severance per year of service is capped at a statutory ceiling, re-set twice a year in line with the civil servant salary coefficient.

Severance above the ceiling may be agreed contractually, but the excess is treated differently for tax purposes.

Job security and reinstatement

The job security regime applies where all three conditions are met:

1. The employee is on an indefinite-term contract
2. The employee has at least six months' seniority
3. The workplace employs 30 or more employees — counted across the employer's workplaces in the same line of business

Employer representatives managing the whole enterprise are excluded.

Where it applies, termination requires a valid reason relating to the employee's capacity or conduct, or to the requirements of the undertaking, and the reason must be given in writing. The burden of proving the reason falls on the employer.

If the court finds the dismissal invalid it orders reinstatement. If the employer does not re-employ within one month, it pays job security compensation of four to eight months' wages, plus up to four months' wages for the period the employee was out of work.

The 30-employee threshold is the provision foreign-owned companies most often misread — it counts across workplaces in the same line of business, not per site.

Collective redundancy

Where dismissals within a 30-day period reach 10 or more employees in a workforce of 20–100, 10% or more in a workforce of 101–300, or 30 or more in a workforce over 300, the employer must give 30 days' prior notice to the workplace union, İŞKUR and SGK.

Mandatory mediation

There is a further practical trap: if a party fails to attend the first mediation session without a valid excuse, that party bears all trial expenses even if it later wins the case, and may not claim its legal fees.

Practical sequencing for an employer

The order in which you do things determines the outcome far more than the reason itself:

1. Establish and document the valid reason before any conversation
2. Give the reason in writing, with the notice period or payment in lieu
3. Calculate severance, notice, accrued leave and any bonus entitlement before the termination date, not after
4. Complete the SGK exit declaration correctly — the exit code drives the employee's unemployment benefit and is a common source of subsequent dispute
5. Expect a mediation application and prepare the file for it immediately