How does maternity leave work in Turkey?

Maternity leave in Turkey totals 24 weeks: eight before the expected birth date and sixteen after, during which the employee must not work (Labor Law art. 74, raised from 16 weeks by Law No. 7578 on 1 May 2026). Expecting twins or more adds two weeks to the prenatal half, for 26 weeks in total. The sixteen weeks after birth are an absolute work prohibition — they cannot be waived or shortened.

The front half is flexible. With a doctor's approval the employee can keep working until two weeks before the due date, and every week not used before the birth shifts to after it (art. 74, as amended by Law 7578). Premature birth works the same way: unused prenatal weeks are added to the postnatal period. Throughout the pregnancy, time off for periodic medical check-ups is paid.

The employer owes no salary during the 24 weeks. The employment contract is suspended, and SGK pays the employee a temporary-incapacity allowance directly: two-thirds of her average daily registered earnings for each day of the leave, or half for days spent in inpatient care (Law 5510 art. 18). The daily figure is computed from the last twelve months of SGK-registered pay (Law 5510 art. 17), so it is capped by the SGK contribution ceiling — 297,270 TL per month in 2026. For high earners the allowance covers noticeably less than two-thirds of real salary.

Eligibility requires at least 90 days of SGK premiums reported in the year before the birth (Law 5510 art. 18). An employee who falls short still gets the full 24 weeks off — the leave comes from labor law, the money from social security — but receives no allowance. SGK also pays a one-time nursing benefit of 1,621 TL in 2026 (Law 5510 art. 16). Many employers voluntarily top the allowance up to full salary, but nothing in the law requires it.

Paternity leave is ten paid days, taken at the birth: the five days introduced in 2015 were doubled by Law No. 7578 from 1 May 2026 (Labor Law supplementary art. 2). That is still short by European standards — plan team cover around it rather than expecting a statutory block of weeks.

Two transfers exist. If the mother dies at or after the birth, the father uses the remaining maternity leave. And when a family adopts a child under three, one of the adoptive parents takes eight weeks of leave from the day the child is placed with them (art. 74).

Back at work, the employee gets 1.5 hours of paid nursing breaks per day until the child turns one. She chooses when to take them, and the time counts as hours worked (art. 74).

Instead of returning full-time, she can work half the weekly hours: for 60 days after a first birth, 120 after a second, 180 after later ones — 30 more for multiple births, 360 if the child is born with a disability (art. 74). İŞKUR pays for the unworked half at the daily gross minimum wage, provided she has 600 days of unemployment-insurance premiums in the last three years and applies within 30 days of the maternity leave ending (Law 4447 supplementary art. 5).

Two longer options follow. The mother can take up to six months of unpaid leave on request, straight after the maternity leave ends (art. 74). And either parent can switch to part-time work at any point until the child starts compulsory primary school — the employer must grant the request and cannot treat it as grounds for dismissal (Labor Law art. 13).

Pregnancy, birth, and taking maternity leave are explicitly invalid grounds for termination (Labor Law art. 18). At workplaces with 30 or more employees, a dismissed employee with six months' tenure can sue for reinstatement, and a dismissal that lands right after a pregnancy announcement or a return from leave will be examined for exactly that. Terminating for a genuinely unrelated reason remains legal — but the burden of proving the reason sits with the employer.