Multi-defendant Organised Crime Proceedings

In a large Turkish file the specific allegation against a particular defendant is often the smallest part of the case against them. What carries weight is the structure the prosecution proposes — who is said to have directed, who is said to have belonged, and how each act is attributed to the whole.

That is a consequence of how Article 220 of the Turkish Criminal Code operates. Those who direct an organisation may be punished as principals for offences committed within its activity, provided the directing role and the connection of each offence to the organisation’s activity are established. Since December 2025, a separate enhancement also applies to directors where children are used as instruments. The prosecution’s central task becomes establishing the structure and placing each defendant within it. Where that placement is wrong, it needs to be tested before it becomes the organising assumption for the rest of the file. Article 220 and the Structure of Multi-defendant Proceedings in Türkiye examines that structure and the effective-remorse regime that sits alongside it.

These files are built from a small number of recurring evidence streams — intercepted communications produced in summary form, device and platform material, cooperating-defendant statements where they exist, financial records, and link analysis presenting relationships as findings. Each carries its own admissibility questions, and they are not interchangeable. The practical difficulty is volume: the parts of a file that decide the case are rarely flagged as important.

What the defence record must separate

• Structured review of a large file, directed at the organisation allegation rather than at each count in isolation

• Testing the client’s placement within the alleged structure and the evidential basis for it

• Challenges to the acquisition, scope and summarising of intercept and device material

• Where cooperating-defendant statements exist, analysis against the timeline, against each other and against independent material

• Detention and judicial control applications, which in long files are a substantial part of the work

• Coordination where a parallel financial investigation or foreign proceeding runs against the same client

Where a client faces proceedings elsewhere on the same underlying conduct, the Turkish file matters in both directions: it is a source of material the foreign forum may not otherwise reach, and a source of risk, because positions taken in Türkiye may be used elsewhere.

For further information, see Insights.