{"id":10036,"date":"2024-01-29T14:31:51","date_gmt":"2024-01-29T11:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sukrukose.com\/how-to-write-a-will-turkiye\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T22:05:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T19:05:00","slug":"how-to-write-a-will-turkiye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sukrukose.com\/en\/how-to-write-a-will-turkiye\/","title":{"rendered":"How Is a Will Written in T\u00fcrkiye?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A will is the written or oral declaration in which the deceased sets out their last wishes concerning the division of their estate after their death. A will is a disposition upon death and does not depend on a declaration of acceptance by the other side. For this reason it is always possible to revoke it unilaterally. Any provision or condition stating that the deceased may not revoke the will or may not later amend it is invalid. Under article 502 of the Turkish Civil Code, in order to make a will a person must have the capacity of discernment and must have completed fifteen years of age. Capacity of discernment means that the person is able to perceive the reasons for and the consequences of the transaction they are carrying out. The deceased must have the capacity of discernment at the moment the will is made. Whether they lacked that capacity before or after the will was made is of no importance. Furthermore, in making a will the deceased does not have an unlimited power of disposition. They cannot make a will in a way that infringes the reserved shares of the statutory heirs. Nor can the deceased deprive any of their heirs of the inheritance by means of a will. Under the Civil Code a will may be made in official form, in the deceased&#8217;s own handwriting, or orally.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>The Official Will: <\/b>this is governed by article 532 and the following articles of the Turkish Civil Code. Under the Code, a will made before an official officer with the participation of two witnesses is called an official will. The official officer may be a notary, a judge of the Civil Court of Peace, or an official on whom this power has been conferred by law. Certain persons, however, are prohibited from being present as a witness or as the officer while the will is being made. These are: persons lacking the capacity to act, persons who are not literate, persons barred from public service, and the spouse of the deceased, their blood relatives in the descending and ascending line, their siblings and the spouses of those persons. No benefit may be conferred by that will on the officer and the witnesses who took part in making the official will, on their blood relatives in the ascending and descending line, on their siblings or on the spouses of those persons. The officer who makes the official will is obliged to keep it. An official will may be made either &#8220;by being read and signed&#8221; or &#8220;without being read and signed&#8221;.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In wills made by being read and signed, the deceased informs the official officer of the content of their will, that is, of their wishes. The officer then writes the will themselves or has it written and gives it to the deceased to read. The deceased reads the will and, if they find it satisfactory, signs it. The officer then writes the date and signs the will. The date must be written clearly as day, month and year. Both signatures must without fail be in handwriting, and the signature of the officer must come after that of the deceased. Once the signatures have been made, the deceased declares in the presence of the witnesses that they have read the will and find it satisfactory. There is no need for the content of the will to be read out. The witnesses then sign the will, writing that they consider the deceased capable of making the will and that the declaration was made before them. The signatures of the witnesses must also be in handwriting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Wills made without being read and signed arise where the deceased cannot personally read or write the will. This covers situations such as the deceased being unable to read and write or being visually impaired. In such cases the deceased conveys their last wishes to the officer, and the officer may write the declarations themselves or have another person write them. The officer then reads the will to the deceased in the presence of two witnesses, and the deceased declares that the will contains their last wishes. After the declaration, the official officer writes the date and signs the will. This declaration of the deceased takes the place of a signature. Finally, the witnesses sign the will, writing or having written that they consider the deceased capable of making the will, that the declaration was made before them, that the will was read aloud to the deceased by the officer in their presence, and that the will contains the last wishes of the deceased. Here the declarations of the deceased must without fail be read by the official officer; otherwise the will becomes invalid as to form.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>The Holographic Will: <\/b>in a holographic will the whole of the will must be written in the deceased&#8217;s own handwriting. This includes the date to be written on the will and the signature to be made. The will must without fail contain a date; a will on which no date is written will be invalid. There is no objection, however, to more than one date being written. That shows that the will was made over more than one day. Wills written on a computer or signed with an electronic signature are invalid. This type of will may therefore be made only by persons who can read and write and who are also able to write themselves without any impediment. The signature of the deceased must appear at the very end of the will, at the bottom of the text. Once a holographic will has been made it may be delivered, open or closed, to a notary, to a judge of the Civil Court of Peace or to an authorised officer for safekeeping. The person to whom it is delivered may also be a friend.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>The Oral Will: <\/b>the oral will is an exceptional type of will that may be made in extraordinary circumstances. Certain conditions must be present for an oral will to be made. First of all, an extraordinary situation must exist. In addition, the person must be unable, because of the situation they are in, to make an official or a holographic will. The extraordinary situations listed in the Code are such circumstances as imminent danger of death, the interruption of transport, illness and war. In such a case the deceased explains their last wishes to two witnesses and charges them with the duty of writing, or having written, a will in accordance with that declaration. One of the witnesses immediately writes down the last wishes of the deceased, stating the date as day, month and year, and after signing it themselves has the other witness sign it too. Without any delay, and within the most appropriate time, the witnesses deliver the will to a civil court of peace or a civil court of first instance. At the same time they declare to the judge that they consider the deceased capable of making a will, that an extraordinary situation existed and that the deceased explained their last wishes to them at that time. In order not to lose time, the witnesses may, instead of writing down the last wishes of the deceased, apply to the judge at once, state them orally and have them entered in the record. The Code also lists the persons who may take the place of the judge. These are: if the deceased is performing military service, a lieutenant or an officer of higher rank; if they are on a vehicle travelling outside the borders of the country, the responsible manager of that vehicle; if they are being treated in a health institution, the most senior manager of that institution. If, after the oral will has been made, the opportunity arises for the deceased to make an official or a holographic will, the oral will automatically ceases to have effect upon the passing of one month from that date. If the deceased dies before the one-month period has passed, the oral will continues to be valid. Finally, the prohibitions concerning witnesses that we set out for the making of an official will also apply to the oral will.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b style=\"color: #000000;\">Important Notes;<br \/>\n<\/b>* <span style=\"color: #000000;\">Foreign nationals may also make a will in our country.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">*It is not compulsory for the witnesses to hold Turkish citizenship.<\/span><b><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">*<\/span><\/b><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Although they are not listed among those who may not be witnesses to a will, in practice first-degree relatives of the officer executing the will (tenfiz g\u00f6revlisi) are not accepted as witnesses.<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">*The identity numbers of the persons named in the will, and the passport numbers in the case of foreign nationals, must be written out clearly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Our office provides services relating to the making of wills and to legal procedures following a death.<\/span><\/strong><b><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">SOURCE:<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">https:\/\/www.mevzuat.gov.tr\/mevzuatmetin\/1.5.4721.pdf<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; A will is the written or oral declaration in which the deceased sets out their last wishes concerning the division of their estate after their death. A will is a disposition upon death and does not depend on a declaration of acceptance by the other side. For this reason it is always possible to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[153],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-estate-law","aeen-post-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sukrukose.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sukrukose.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sukrukose.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sukrukose.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sukrukose.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sukrukose.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sukrukose.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sukrukose.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sukrukose.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sukrukose.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}