What is insan kaynakları (HR in Turkey)?
İnsan kaynakları — literally "human resources" — is the Turkish term for the HR function: hiring, onboarding, payroll (bordro), leave, performance, and employee records. In Turkish companies the same team owns statutory compliance too, under Labor Law No. 4857, Social Security Law No. 5510, OHS Law No. 6331 and data protection Law No. 6698 — so İK sits closer to payroll and labor law than HR does in many Western firms.
What İK covers in a Turkish company
Put differently, insan kaynakları is the function that manages an employee's entire lifecycle at a Turkish company, from job posting to exit. Its core areas match HR anywhere — recruiting, onboarding, payroll, leave, performance, record-keeping — but the administrative side carries more weight: employment contracts, social security (SGK) registration, and a personnel file kept for each employee are day-to-day İK work, not edge cases.
What does İK actually do day to day?
The day-to-day İK workload falls into six buckets: running recruitment from posting to offer, completing hires with the SGK employment declaration, the contract and the özlük personnel file, preparing payroll and benefits or coordinating them with the external accountant, operating leave, attendance and shift tracking, planning performance, training and development, and keeping the company compliant with the Labor Law, social security and KVKK data-protection rules.
Roles scale with headcount: an İK uzmanı (HR specialist) runs postings, candidates and records, a bordro uzmanı (payroll specialist) owns salaries and SGK filings, and an İK müdürü or direktörü owns workforce planning, compensation policy and organizational development. In small Turkish companies all of these collapse into one person — often the founder.
Which laws does İK operate under?
Four statutes set the frame for HR work in Turkey. Labor Law No. 4857 governs the employment contract, wages, a maximum 45-hour working week (Art. 63), paid annual leave of 14, 20 or 26 days by seniority (Art. 53) and termination. Article 75 obliges the employer to keep a personnel file — an özlük dosyası — for every employee. Social Security Law No. 5510 covers registration: as a rule the hire declaration reaches the SGK before the insurance start date, and the exit declaration within 10 days of separation, both through the e-Sigorta system (Arts. 8 and 9). Occupational Health and Safety Law No. 6331 (Official Gazette, 30 June 2012) adds risk assessment and mandatory training, and Law No. 6698 (KVKK) governs how employee and candidate data may be processed.
Headcount thresholds decide when several duties switch on. At 30 or more employees, a worker with at least six months' seniority falls under job security and a dismissal must rest on a valid reason (Art. 18). At 50 or more, a private-sector workplace must employ disabled workers at 3% of its workforce. The public-sector quota is 4% disabled plus 2% ex-convicts (Art. 30). Leave law itself changed in 2026: Law No. 7578, published in the Official Gazette on 1 May 2026, raised maternity leave from 16 to 24 weeks in total — 8 weeks before and 16 weeks after birth, 26 weeks for multiple births — and paternity leave from 5 to 10 days. Any İK team planning leave balances now works from those figures.
Who runs İK in Turkish SMEs
Most small and mid-sized Turkish companies have no HR department. Hiring decisions sit with the founder or a line manager, while payroll and social security filings are outsourced to an external accountant (mali müşavir). HR software consolidates what remains — leave requests, employee records, hiring pipelines — into one system: it replaces the spreadsheets, not the decision-makers.
Obligations arrive in steps as headcount grows, and that is usually where an SME's İK has to become formal. Occupational health and safety duties under Law No. 6331 apply from the first employee, with workplace physician and safety expert assignments scaling by hazard class and headcount. Job security starts at 30 employees (Law No. 4857, Art. 18) and the 3% disabled-employment quota at 50 (Art. 30). On the data side a controller is exempt from the VERBİS registry only while annual headcount stays below 50 and the annual balance sheet below TRY 100 million. Crossing either threshold makes registration mandatory. Whoever tracks these lines, the liability attaches to the employer.
Why this matters when hiring in Turkey
A foreign company employing people in Turkey needs the İK function covered from day one, whoever performs it: contracts in place, employees registered with social security, payroll filed on schedule, records kept. That work can live with an in-house team, an outsourced accountant, an employer-of-record, or HR software plus a local advisor — but the obligations attach to the employer regardless of company size.
HR roles: who does what
As a Turkish HR team grows, the work layers by title. HR specialists (insan kaynakları uzmanı) run the operation: posting roles, screening candidates, completing hire and exit paperwork, maintaining personnel files, tracking leave and preparing the data payroll consumes. The HR manager (insan kaynakları müdürü) designs the processes and owns the team: hiring and compensation policy, the HR budget, and accountability to management for labor-law compliance. An HR director adds the strategic layer — organization design, talent strategy and aligning HR with company goals.
In a small company all of these layers usually collapse into one person — or into the founder plus an external accountant. The durable dividing line matters when you hire in Turkey: operational work (records, documents, tracking) can be delegated to software or providers, while decisions that carry authority — hiring, pay, termination — stay with a named manager at every company size. Writing that split down keeps even a one-person HR function orderly and auditable.
| Definition | The company function that runs hiring, onboarding, payroll, leave, performance and employee records |
| Governing statutes | Labor Law No. 4857, Social Security Law No. 5510, OHS Law No. 6331, Data Protection Law No. 6698 (KVKK) |
| Personnel file | An özlük dosyası is mandatory for every employee (Law No. 4857, Art. 75) |
| SGK filing deadlines | Hire: before the insurance start date (Law No. 5510, Art. 8). Exit: within 10 days (Art. 9) |
| Paid annual leave (Art. 53) | 1–5 years: 14 days, over 5 and under 15: 20 days, 15 years and over: 26 days |
| Maternity and paternity leave | 24 weeks total (8 + 16, or 26 for multiple births) and 10 days — Law No. 7578, Official Gazette 1 May 2026 |
Frequently asked
An İK (human resources) department in Turkey runs recruiting and interviews, prepares employment contracts, registers employees with the Social Security Institution (SGK), manages payroll, leave, and performance processes, and keeps the personnel records Turkish labor law requires.
Most Turkish companies with a small headcount have no dedicated HR staff. The founder handles hiring, an external accountant (mali müşavir) handles payroll and statutory filings, and HR software or spreadsheets cover leave and employee records.
Bordro means payroll — the monthly calculation of salaries, taxes, and social security contributions. İK (insan kaynakları) is the broader function that includes bordro alongside recruiting, onboarding, leave, performance, and employee records.
Hiring in Turkey requires the HR and payroll obligations to be owned, not necessarily an in-house team: an employer-of-record, a local accountant, or HR software combined with an advisor can each cover contracts, social security registration, and payroll filings. What matters is that every obligation has an owner from the first day of employment.
İnsan kaynakları yönetimi — human resource management — is the discipline that plans, hires, develops and retains a workforce as one strategy, spanning recruitment, compensation, performance, training and compliance. In Turkey the statutory layer applies whoever performs it: contracts, SGK registrations and personnel files are part of İKY even in a five-person company.
An HR specialist (insan kaynakları uzmanı) runs day-to-day HR operations: publishing job posts, screening applications and coordinating interviews, completing hire paperwork and personnel files, tracking leave and attendance, preparing the monthly data payroll is calculated from, and producing HR reports. With experience the role takes on projects such as process improvement and employer branding. In small Turkish companies one specialist often covers all of it, while in larger teams the specialist reports to an HR manager.
The HR manager (insan kaynakları müdürü) designs and oversees the full set of HR processes — recruiting, compensation, performance, leave and personnel records. The authority side covers managing the HR team, proposing hiring and pay policy to management, owning the HR budget and approving process decisions. The accountability side is compliance: Turkish labor law, social security filings and KVKK data-protection duties, with results reported upward to management.
İnsan kaynakları translates literally as human resources, and İK is its Turkish abbreviation — the equivalent of HR. Job titles map directly: insan kaynakları uzmanı is an HR specialist, insan kaynakları müdürü an HR manager, and insan kaynakları yönetimi corresponds to human resource management (HRM). In Turkish job ads and org charts, İK and HR appear interchangeably.
Four statutes frame Turkish HR work. Labor Law No. 4857 covers the employment contract, wages, a 45-hour maximum working week (Art. 63), annual leave of 14, 20 or 26 days by seniority (Art. 53), termination, and the duty to keep a personnel file for every employee (Art. 75). Social Security Law No. 5510 sets SGK filings — the hire declaration before the insurance start date, the exit declaration within 10 days. Law No. 6331 governs occupational health and safety, and Law No. 6698 (KVKK) governs employee and candidate data.
No. Turkish law imposes no obligation to create a separate HR department: what it imposes are the duties themselves. Employment contracts, the personnel file required for every employee (Law No. 4857, Art. 75), SGK hire and exit declarations, occupational health and safety measures and KVKK notice and retention duties attach to the employer whether or not an HR team exists. In smaller companies the work is split between the founder, an office manager and an external accountant, with HR software holding the records in one place.
Occupational health and safety duties under Law No. 6331 apply from the first employee. At 30 or more employees a worker with six months' seniority falls under job security, so dismissal requires a valid reason (Law No. 4857, Art. 18). At 50 or more, private-sector workplaces must employ disabled workers at 3% of the workforce (Art. 30). Under KVKK, a controller whose annual headcount reaches 50 or whose annual balance sheet exceeds TRY 100 million must register with VERBİS.