Article 57 of the Customs Law No. 4458 lets the customs administration suspend clearance of goods that appear to infringe a trademark, design, patent or copyright protected in Türkiye. Whether an officer at Ambarlı or Kapıkule knows your mark on the day a container is opened depends on one filing, the application for action. Without it, you rely on an officer noticing clear signs of infringement on their own initiative, and on a three-working-day window to catch up. With a valid application on file, the office that stops a suspect shipment notifies you by name on the first working day after the decision. This guide sets out what the application does, what to collect before filing, how the filing runs and how to keep it valid.

What an application for action does

The legal basis is Article 57 of the Customs Law and Articles 100 to 111 of the Customs Regulation (Gümrük Yönetmeliği). The regime covers trademarks, designs, patents, copyright and related rights. It applies to goods under import, export and transit, and to goods in free zones.

An accepted application has four effects.

  1. Your marks, product information and contact details are recorded in the central database that every customs office in Türkiye can consult.
  2. The office that stops a shipment must notify you (or your representative) and the declarant on the first working day after the suspension.
  3. The statutory period to act opens. It is ten working days from notification for ordinary goods and three for perishable goods, and it can be extended by up to ten more working days for good cause (Art. 57/3). Within that period you either obtain a court order or agree destruction with the owner of the goods.
  4. The simplified destruction route under Art. 57/6 becomes available, so goods can be destroyed under customs supervision without a court finding of infringement.

Two limits apply from the start. Under Art. 57/2, acceptance of your application gives you no claim against customs if a shipment is cleared without inspection. Under Art. 57/5, the regime does not cover travellers’ personal effects or non-commercial gifts within the duty-free allowance. Nor does it cover genuine goods made with your consent and shipped without it; overruns and parallel imports are a matter for the courts.

Without an application, customs may still act ex officio where there is clear evidence of infringement. The goods can then be held for three working days so that the right holder can file a valid application (Art. 57/1-b; Ministry of Trade FAQ). Three working days is enough only if the documents below already exist.

What you need before you file

  • Proof of a right protected in Türkiye. A TÜRKPATENT registration, or an international registration under the Madrid system that designates Türkiye and has not been refused. Pending applications do not qualify. Customs checks the owner named on the certificate against the applicant. The entity that owns the marks should therefore be the applicant, or the chain of authority should be documented.
  • A document showing the applicant’s status. For the right holder, the certificate itself. For a licensee or a representative, the licence or authorisation (Customs Communiqué on IP Rights, Series 1, Art. 4).
  • A power of attorney. Right holders established abroad file through a representative in Türkiye who holds a Turkish electronic signature (Customs Regulation Art. 103). In practice the power of attorney is notarised and apostilled in the home country and carries a sworn Turkish translation.
  • A technical description of the goods and how to tell genuine from fake. The application form (Annex 13 of the Regulation) asks for it, and this is the part officers use. A good product identification guide shows, with photographs, the labels, stitching, hardware, packaging, codes and prices that give a copy away. It also lists the countries and routes from which genuine goods are normally shipped.
  • One named contact who can confirm a fake quickly. The form asks for a contact person. The deadlines run from notification, so that person needs an inbox that is read every working day, including in August.

Documents in other languages are normally accompanied by a Turkish translation, and certified copies rather than originals are accepted.

Filing, step by step

  1. Prepare the file. Certificates, status document, power of attorney, product guide and contact details, plus the list of marks and goods to be covered. Decide the period you want the application to run for; it may not exceed one year (Customs Regulation Art. 103; Ministry FAQ).
  2. Submit online. Applications are filed electronically through the Ministry of Trade’s IP rights programme, using the applicant’s or representative’s electronic signature. There is no filing fee and no security deposit (Ministry of Trade FAQ).
  3. Wait for the decision. The Directorate General of Customs in Ankara decides within thirty working days and notifies the result by e-mail. A refusal can be challenged under Art. 242 of the Customs Law. In practice, incomplete files are returned for completion rather than refused outright.
  4. Brief the offices that handle your routes. Once accepted, the application is visible to every customs office. The officers who will use it sit at the offices on your product’s likely routes. For fashion goods that usually means Ambarlı and Haydarpaşa in Istanbul, İzmir, Mersin, the Kapıkule and Hamzabeyli land gates and the express courier hubs at Istanbul Airport. We arrange a training session there with a few genuine and fake samples once the application is accepted.

From a complete file to an accepted application normally takes four to eight weeks. The slow part is almost always the power of attorney, so we ask for it first.

Keeping the application useful

Officers hold goods they recognise as suspect. The application, the product guide and the training at the main ports and border gates are what give them that recognition, and each needs maintaining.

  • Renew before the year ends. Validity cannot exceed one year, and renewal is an online filing on the same basis. Diary the expiry date, because a lapsed application gives the office no basis to notify you.
  • Update when anything changes. New marks, new product lines, a change of owner after a restructuring, a new representative or a new contact person. The Customs Regulation makes the applicant responsible for inaccurate or outdated information and requires notice if a right lapses (Art. 103). Detention notices go to the contact on file, so update it when that person leaves.
  • Refresh the product guide every season. Add the new season’s hangtags, labels and packaging, and remove references to discontinued lines so that officers do not stop genuine stock.
  • Budget for what customs passes on. Testing, laboratory and overtime costs are charged to the right holder (Art. 103), and detained goods are stored at the right holder’s risk and expense (Art. 109). Simplified destruction is also at the right holder’s expense (Art. 105). These sums are modest for a single pallet and significant for a container, so agree internally in advance who approves them.
  • Keep what you learn confidential. Information obtained from customs may be used only for the purposes of the detention procedure (Art. 106). Using shipper or consignee data for anything else can lead to suspension of the application.

What to do next

Check first that your marks are registered in Türkiye, since a pending application does not qualify. Then collect the certificates and the power of attorney, build the product guide while those documents are being legalised, and file with the renewal date already in the diary. An application can be in place within two months of a complete file. Our customs enforcement service covers the filing, the officer training and the response when a shipment is held.