How Many Days Is Paternity Leave in Turkey?

Paternity leave (babalık izni) is a paid excuse leave granted to a male employee whose wife gives birth, anchored in Additional Article 2 of Labor Law No. 4857. The article entered the law in 2015 with 5 days. Law No. 7578, published in the Official Gazette on 1 May 2026, raised it to 10. Any employment handbook, EOR playbook or leave policy for Turkey written before mid-2026 is now understating the entitlement — the update is worth making before the next birth in the team, not after.

The same article gives an adopting employee 3 paid days, and Law No. 7578 added a further right: an employee who becomes a foster parent may take 10 days of unpaid leave from the day the child is placed. Civil servants already had 10 days of paternity leave under Article 104/B of Law No. 657, so the 2026 change equalized the private and public sectors for the first time. Contracts and collective agreements can grant more than the statutory floor — never less.

The statute sets the duration but not the mechanics, and settled practice fills the gap: the leave is tied to the birth, cannot be taken before it, and is used in the days following delivery — normally as one continuous block rather than scattered single days weeks later. The employer may ask for the birth certificate as supporting evidence. The law is also silent on whether the 10 days are working or calendar days. Workplace practice and the contract govern, and most employers run the block consecutively from the birth.

Payment is the clean part: paternity leave is paid excuse leave, so the employer continues the normal wage for all 10 days, no salary deduction is allowed, and the days run through payroll like ordinary worked time with social security contributions reported as usual. This is the mirror image of maternity leave, where the employer owes no wage and SGK pays a daily allowance instead. For budgeting, paternity leave therefore costs the employer 10 days of gross salary plus contributions — there is no state reimbursement.

Paternity leave is short next to the maternity package. Since Law No. 7578, maternity leave (analık izni) totals 24 weeks — 8 before and 16 after the birth — with the wage replaced by SGK's temporary incapacity allowance rather than employer pay (Law No. 5510, Articles 15 and 18). If the mother dies at or after the birth, the father uses her remaining leave (Labor Law No. 4857, Article 74).

Two father-side questions come up constantly. Nursing breaks — 1.5 hours per day until the child turns one — belong to the female employee under Article 74, and Turkish law grants no nursing break to fathers. And after the 10 days, a father has no further birth-specific statutory leave: what remains is annual leave, unpaid leave by agreement, or the right of either parent — father included — to switch to part-time work until the child reaches compulsory school age (Article 13), a request the employer must accommodate.