How many days of annual leave do employees get in Turkey?

Turkish law structures annual leave as a three-step seniority ladder that no employment contract may undercut: at least 14 days per year for one to five years of service (year five included), at least 20 days for more than five but fewer than fifteen years, and at least 26 days from fifteen years onward. These are floors, and contracts and collective agreements routinely grant more, with many Turkish employers using extra leave days as a benefit.

Two groups get an age-based floor regardless of seniority: employees aged 18 or younger and those aged 50 or older must receive at least 20 days (art. 53). Employees working underground get four extra days on top of each tier (art. 53). If you are budgeting an offer for a hire in Turkey, the interactive calculator on this site works out the exact entitlement from start date and age.

No statutory leave accrues before the employee completes one full year of service, and the probation period counts toward that year (art. 53). The entitlement then vests all at once on each service anniversary: every subsequent qualifying year is counted from the date the previous entitlement arose (art. 54). This anniversary-vesting model differs from the monthly pro-rata accrual common in other countries, an important nuance for global payroll and EOR accrual bookings.

Service with the same employer is aggregated across all of that employer's workplaces (art. 54), so an internal transfer between entities' branches or locations does not reset the clock. Seasonal and campaign work that by its nature lasts less than a year is excluded from the annual-leave provisions entirely (art. 53).

Leave may be split into parts by mutual agreement, but one part must be at least 10 uninterrupted days (art. 56, as amended in 2016). Weekly rest days, national holidays and public holidays that fall within a leave period are not counted against the entitlement (art. 56), so a 14-day allowance spans more than 14 calendar days. Employees spending their leave away from the workplace's city can request up to 4 days of unpaid travel leave in total for the round trip (art. 56).

Scheduling is ultimately the employer's call: the employee requests dates in writing at least one month ahead (Annual Paid Leave Regulation, art. 7), but the employer may set a different period for operational reasons and is not bound by the requested dates (Regulation, art. 8). Workplaces with more than 100 employees must run this planning through a joint leave board (Regulation, art. 15). Working for pay elsewhere during annual leave is prohibited: if the employee is found to have worked for pay during the leave, the employer may reclaim the leave pay it paid for that leave period (art. 58).

Leave pay is calculated on the employee's bare gross wage: overtime, premiums and social allowances are excluded (art. 57). It must be paid before the leave starts, as an advance if necessary (art. 57), and the employer must keep a leave record for every employee (art. 56).

The arithmetic is simple: daily leave pay equals the monthly bare gross divided by 30, multiplied by the days taken, so an employee on TRY 60,000 gross taking 14 days is owed TRY 28,000 gross for the period. This is the employee's ordinary wage for the leave time, not a bonus on top of it, and the same daily rate is what unused days are paid at when employment ends.

Annual leave cannot be waived (art. 53) and never converts to cash while the employment continues, and unused days do not lapse, they accumulate. Payment in lieu happens only at termination: whatever the reason the contract ends, all accrued unused days are paid out at the final bare gross wage (art. 59), subject to a five-year limitation period running from the termination date. For employers of record this means unused Turkish leave is a real balance-sheet liability that grows with tenure.

Part-time and on-call employees receive annual leave on equal terms with full-time employees and may not be treated differently (Annual Paid Leave Regulation, art. 13), and Turkey does not pro-rate the day count for part-timers. After one full year they qualify for the same 14/20/26-day tiers. Probation always counts toward both the one-year threshold and ongoing seniority (art. 53).

Edge cases such as sick days overlapping leave, how Saturdays are treated, and recalling an employee from leave each have a dedicated Q&A page in this guide.