Bitten or injured by a dog in Türkiye: the keeper's strict liability, the municipality's duty for strays, and how a foreign visitor claims.

1. The First Question: Did the Animal Have a Keeper?

Turkish law does not treat all animal injuries alike. The decisive fact is whether the animal was in someone's keeping at the time. A dog on a lead, a dog behind a villa gate, a cat in a café, a horse on a ranch, a camel at a tourist stop: each has a person who has undertaken its care and control, and that person is the defendant under the Code of Obligations. An ownerless dog living on the street or the beach has no keeper; for that animal the law has placed a public duty on the municipality, and the claim runs against the municipality in a different court under different rules.

The distinction matters because the two roads have different defendants, different courts, different pre-action steps and different time limits, and because a claim brought on the wrong road is dismissed for want of jurisdiction rather than decided. A foreign visitor rarely knows on the day which road applies, and the first task of the lawyer is to establish it from the evidence: a collar, a microchip, a kennel or a gate points to a keeper; a municipal ear tag, a feeding point or a shelter record points to the municipality. Since the 2024 amendment to the Animal Protection Law, owners of cats and dogs have been required to register them by digital identification, which makes a chip reading at the veterinary or municipal service the quickest way to identify a keeper.

2. The Keeper's Liability: Article 67 of the Code of Obligations

Article 67 of the Code of Obligations (Türk Borçlar Kanunu, TBK No. 6098) provides that the person who has undertaken the care and management of an animal, permanently or temporarily, is obliged to compensate the damage the animal causes. The keeper (hayvan bulunduran) is not liable if it proves that it exercised the care necessary to prevent the damage from occurring. Where the animal was provoked by another person or by another person's animal, the keeper retains a right of recourse against them.

Three features of the Article determine most claims. First, liability attaches to the keeper, not necessarily the owner: a dog-walker, a boarding kennel, a friend minding the dog for the weekend, a hotel that keeps guard dogs on its grounds, a farm that lets tourists ride, all have undertaken the care and management of the animal, temporarily or permanently, and each answers under Article 67 for what the animal does while in its keeping. Second, the liability is strict: the injured person does not have to prove that the keeper was negligent; it is the keeper who must prove that it took all the care the situation required, which for a dog that has bitten a stranger on a public path is a demanding proof. A leash, a muzzle where the breed or the animal's history called for one, a secure fence, a warning sign at the gate and supervision are the kind of measures a court looks for; their absence usually ends the defence. Third, provocation by the victim reduces or excludes the claim under the general rules on the injured party's own fault, so that a visitor who teased or cornered the animal will recover less or nothing.

The keeper's liability under Article 67 sits alongside any contractual liability. A guest bitten by the resort's dog, or a rider thrown by a horse the operator described as suitable for beginners, may also claim under the accommodation or excursion contract, and the two claims are pleaded together. Where the keeper is a business, its public liability insurer is usually the paying party; the policy is disclosed in the proceedings and the insurer may be joined.

3. Stray Dogs: The Municipality's Duty Under Law No. 5199

Ownerless dogs are a public matter in Türkiye, and the Animal Protection Law No. 5199 (Hayvanları Koruma Kanunu) assigns the responsibility. Article 6 provides that the protection, care and supervision of ownerless animals are governed within the framework of the legislation on the powers and responsibilities of local administrations, that ownerless or infirm animals must be taken as quickly as possible to the animal shelters established or authorised by local administrations, and, since the amendment of 30 July 2024, that dogs taken into a shelter and rehabilitated are kept there until they are adopted. Additional Article 1 obliges metropolitan municipalities, provincial municipalities and municipalities with a population above twenty-five thousand to establish animal shelters for the protection, care and rehabilitation of ownerless, infirm or dangerous animals, and requires other municipalities to take such animals to the nearest shelter; it also makes it an offence, punishable by imprisonment, for a mayor or council members to fail to allocate the required budget or to divert it. Provisional Article 4 sets 31 December 2028 as the deadline for the larger municipalities to build the shelters and requires them to set aside a fixed share of their budget for the purpose until then.

For an injured visitor the practical meaning is this: the law identifies a public body that was under a statutory duty to collect, shelter and, where dangerous, keep the animal that bit you, and the failure to perform a statutory duty is the classic ground of a compensation claim against the administration. The claim is not that the municipality "owned" the dog, which it did not, but that the public service of collecting and sheltering stray animals was defectively performed or not performed at all in the place and at the time of the attack. Complaints previously made about the same animal or the same location, feeding points tolerated next to hotels or beaches, and the absence of any collection despite reports are the facts on which such a claim is built.

The Animal Protection Law also prohibits the killing of ownerless animals other than in the cases the law allows, and it is enforced by fines and, in some cases, criminal sanctions; none of that is the injured person's concern. What matters for compensation is the public duty and the administrative route described next.

4. Suing a Municipality: The Application, the Silence Rule and the Administrative Court (IYUK 13)

A compensation claim against a municipality for an administrative act or omission is a full-remedy action (tam yargı davası) in the administrative courts, and it has a mandatory pre-action step. Article 13 of the Administrative Procedure Law No. 2577 (İdari Yargılama Usulü Kanunu, IYUK) requires a person whose rights have been infringed by an administrative act to apply to the administration concerned, before suing, within one year of learning of the act by written notice or otherwise and in any event within five years of the act, asking for the right to be satisfied. If the application is refused in whole or in part, or if no answer is given within thirty days, the action may be brought within the period for filing, which under Article 7 is sixty days in the administrative courts, running from the notification of the refusal or from the end of the thirty days.

The application is a letter to the municipality identifying the incident, the injury, the ground of liability and the amount claimed; it is served through a notary or delivered against receipt, because the date of the application starts the clocks. A visitor who has left Türkiye signs a power of attorney at a Turkish consulate or before a notary with an apostille, and the lawyer files the application and, on refusal or silence, the action. Article 13(2) adds a useful safeguard: where a full-remedy action was mistakenly filed in the civil courts and dismissed for want of jurisdiction, the action later brought in the administrative courts does not require a fresh application to the administration.

The administrative court applies the same law of damages as the civil courts. Article 55 of the Code of Obligations states that its rules on bodily damage apply also to claims arising from administrative acts and from other causes for which the administration is responsible; so the treatment costs, the loss of earnings and the non-pecuniary award are computed against a municipality exactly as they would be against a private keeper, and the expert evidence is the same.

5. What Can Be Claimed: Treatment, Lost Earnings, Scarring and Non-Pecuniary Damages (TBK 54, 56)

Whichever defendant is liable, the heads of damage are those of the Code of Obligations. Article 54 lists the bodily damages: treatment expenses, loss of earnings, losses arising from the reduction or loss of working capacity, and losses arising from the shaking of the person's economic future. For an animal injury the first head is usually the largest and the easiest to prove: emergency treatment, wound care, the course of rabies post-exposure prophylaxis, tetanus, antibiotics, any surgery, plastic or reconstructive surgery for facial or hand injuries, physiotherapy, and the same treatment continued at home, evidenced by invoices from the foreign hospital in translation. Travel costs directly caused by the injury, such as a changed flight, an extended stay or a companion's travel, are recoverable as part of the pecuniary loss where they are documented.

Loss of earnings covers the period of incapacity, proven by the medical reports and the foreign employer's statement of lost pay; a self-employed visitor proves it by accounts. A permanent reduction of working capacity, which serious bites to the hand, the face or a tendon can cause, is assessed by an expert on a percentage basis and projected over the working life, and Article 55 provides that the figure so calculated is not increased or reduced on grounds of equity by reference to its amount. Since July 2026 the same Article fixes the starting point of interest on the known-income and projected parts of such an award and the proportional set-off of any advance payment.

Article 56 allows the judge, where a person's bodily integrity has been harmed, to award an appropriate sum of money as non-pecuniary compensation (manevi tazminat), taking the particular circumstances of the event into account, and, in the case of serious bodily harm, to award such a sum also to the injured person's relatives. Fear, pain, the trauma of an attack, permanent scarring and disfigurement, and the anxiety of a rabies exposure are the matters a court weighs; a bite to a child's face is treated far more seriously than a bite to an adult's calf. The amount is in the court's discretion and is not calculated by formula, which is why the medical description of the wound and photographs taken over time carry so much weight.

6. Evidence: What to Collect Before You Fly Home

The claim stands or falls on documents gathered in the first days, when the injured person is least inclined to gather anything. The list is short. First, the hospital or clinic report: it must record that the injury was caused by an animal, its type, the site and depth of the wound and the treatment given, including the rabies and tetanus vaccinations; a Turkish emergency department will issue this on request, and it is the document every later step relies on. Second, dated photographs of the wound on the day and as it heals, and of the place, the gate, the sign or its absence, the animal if it can be photographed safely, and any collar or tag. Third, the names and contact details of witnesses, including the friend or family member present and any local person who says the animal was known.

Fourth, for a stray, a report to the municipality's animal-control service or to the police on the day: it fixes the date, place and animal in an official record, and it creates the paper trail that a later application under IYUK Article 13 will cite. For an animal with a keeper, a written notice to the keeper, or to the hotel or operator, on the day, and the keeper's identity and insurance details. Fifth, all receipts: pharmacy, hospital, taxi, changed flight, extra nights. Sixth, once home, the continuing treatment records and the employer's statement of lost pay.

A microchip reading is worth asking for. Since the 2024 amendment, cat and dog owners were required to register their animals by digital identification by the end of 2025; a veterinary clinic or the municipal service can read the chip and identify the registered owner, which converts a stray-dog case into a keeper case with a private, and usually insured, defendant.

7. Time Limits and the Two Routes Compared

Against a private keeper the claim is a tort claim subject to Article 72 of the Code of Obligations: it is time-barred two years from the date on which the injured person learned of the damage and of the person liable, and in any event ten years from the act; where the act is also a criminal offence for which the criminal law provides a longer limitation period, that longer period applies. The action is brought in the civil courts of the place of the incident or of the defendant's domicile, there is no compulsory mediation for a personal-injury tort claim, and the keeper's insurer is joined where there is a policy.

Against a municipality the claim follows the administrative timetable in IYUK Article 13: application within one year of learning of the act and five years at most, thirty days for the administration to answer, sixty days to file in the administrative court. The two timetables are not interchangeable, and the safest course where the animal's status is unclear is to run both: apply to the municipality within the year, and preserve the civil claim against any keeper who is identified.

Both routes can be run from abroad through a power of attorney, both produce an enforceable judgment in Türkiye, and in both the expert evidence on the injury is the centre of the case. What differs is the defendant, the court and the calendar, and the table below sets the two side by side.

An animal injury in Türkiye is compensable, on one of two roads, by a defendant the law has already named. The visitor's part is to leave the country with the hospital report, the photographs, the witnesses and, for a stray, an official record of the attack; the lawyer's part is to identify the keeper or the municipality, choose the court, keep the calendar and prove the loss. Done in that order, the claim is an ordinary one, and it is paid.

Scope. This page describes the Turkish rules as in force in September 2026: Articles 54, 55, 56, 67 and 72 of the Code of Obligations No. 6098, Article 6, Additional Article 1 and Provisional Article 4 of the Animal Protection Law No. 5199 as amended in July 2024, and Articles 7, 10 and 13 of the Administrative Procedure Law No. 2577. It is general information, not advice on a particular case; amounts of compensation depend on the evidence and on the court's assessment.