Do Public Holidays Count Against Annual Leave in Turkey?

Turkish annual leave is measured in working days, and Article 56/5 of Labor Law No. 4857 keeps three categories out of the count: the national holiday, general public holidays and the weekly rest day (normally Sunday). A holiday inside a leave period is not deducted from the balance. The absence just runs longer. The holiday calendar itself is set by Law No. 2429: 1 January, 23 April, 1 May, 19 May, 15 July, 30 August and 29 October, plus the religious holidays — Ramazan Bayramı (3.5 days from 13:00 on the eve) and Kurban Bayramı (4.5 days from 13:00 on the eve). In total, 15.5 days a year.

For an employer planning coverage, the practical consequence is that booked leave and calendar absence are different numbers. An employee who files a two-calendar-week request is away 14 calendar days but spends only 12 leave days by default, and fewer still if a public holiday falls inside the window. Any leave tracker used for a Turkish workforce has to strip these days out per Article 56/5 — deducting them quietly shortens a statutory minimum, which is unlawful.

The day that surprises foreign employers is Saturday. Turkish law recognizes a single weekly rest day, and in practice that is Sunday. A Saturday nobody works is a contractual day off, not a statutory rest day. The Court of Cassation settled the consequence in a leading decision (9th Civil Chamber, E. 2021/897, K. 2021/5272): in a five-day workplace, a Saturday falling inside annual leave still counts against the balance. The exception must be written: if the individual or collective employment contract designates Saturday as a weekly rest day, Saturdays inside leave are excluded like Sundays under Article 56/5.

The drafting cuts both ways: a contract may call Saturday a rest day yet expressly state that it counts as a working day for annual-leave arithmetic, and the courts honor that too. So the correct answer is contract-specific — a full calendar week of leave consumes six days in the default setup and five where Saturday is genuinely a contractual rest day. When taking over payroll or an EOR arrangement in Turkey, read the leave clause before trusting any imported balance.

Take an employee with no special Saturday clause who starts leave on a Monday and stays out two calendar weeks. The two Sundays are excluded, Saturdays count: 12 days leave the balance. If a public holiday — say 30 August — lands on a working day inside the window, it is stripped too, and the deduction drops to 11. The same arithmetic means the statutory 14-day minimum, taken as one block, spans at least 16 calendar days, and more when holidays intervene.

Two edge cases complete the picture. First, a public holiday that falls on a Sunday stays one calendar day: Turkey has no observed-holiday substitution, so nothing is moved to Monday, no second day is excluded, and the leave extends by exactly one day. An employee not working that day simply receives the day's normal pay once. Second, the eves: under Article 2 of Law No. 2429, the afternoons before Ramazan and Kurban holidays are half general holidays from 13:00 — the morning is working time, the afternoon is excluded from leave, and settled court practice keeps that half day out of the leave count.