What Does Turkish Compulsory Motor Liability Insurance Cover?

Whose Loss Does the Policy Pay?

The product Turkish drivers call trafik sigortası is Compulsory Motor Third Party Liability insurance (MTPL). It indemnifies what you do to other people, not what happens to your own car. Article 85 of Highway Traffic Law no. 2918 makes the operator (işleten) liable where the operation of a motor vehicle causes death, injury or property damage, and its final paragraph makes the operator liable for the driver's fault as if it were their own.

Article 91 makes cover for that liability compulsory. Clause A.3 of the General Conditions sets the boundary: the insurer meets third-party claims arising from the operation of the insured vehicle, within the compulsory limits in force on the date of the accident.

Two limits matter from the outset. Clause A.4 confines cover to the territory of Türkiye, and the benefit runs to the injured third party, not the policyholder. The other motor insurance products exist to close what falls outside those two limits.

The Four Heads of Cover

Clause A.5 divides the cover into four heads. Each carries its own limit on the schedule, and exhausting one does not open another.

Medical expenses work differently from what most policyholders expect. Under Article 98 of Law no. 2918 the cost of healthcare provided after a traffic accident is met by the Social Security Institution (SGK), whether or not the injured person has social security cover. Once the statutory transfer is made, the insurer's and the Guarantee Fund's obligation under that head ends, so hospital bills do not go to the motor insurer.

What the Policy Does Not Cover

Clause A.6 sets out the exclusions and Article 92 of Law no. 2918 works to the same effect. These are the ones that surprise policyholders most often:

• Damage to your own vehicle, and to trailers drawn by it, under clause A.6(ğ). If you are at fault, your own repair bill is not a claim under this policy.
• Claims for non-pecuniary (moral) damages, under A.6(f) and Article 92(f); such claims are pursued under the general provisions of law instead.
• Goods carried in the vehicle, under A.6(e), apart from luggage accompanying injured persons. Commercial cargo is a matter for transit (nakliyat) covers.
• Consequential and indirect loss such as loss of income, loss of profit, business interruption and loss of hire, under A.6(k).
• Costs of criminal proceedings and administrative or judicial fines, under A.6(n). A traffic fine is never paid by the policy.

When Can the Insurer Recover From the Policyholder?

Recourse (rücu) means the insurer pays the injured third party and then reclaims that sum from its own insured. The victim's right is preserved; the bill travels back to the policyholder. Clause B.4 lists the grounds: loss caused intentionally or by gross fault; driving by someone without the required licence or whose licence has been withdrawn; driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics; carrying passengers in a vehicle not licensed for them, exceeding the permitted load, or carrying dangerous goods without a permit; breach of notification duties that increases the loss; the insured's fault in a theft; and leaving the scene of an injury accident.

The threshold matters. As clause B.4(b) now stands, it covers licence breaches and "breach of traffic rules by gross fault". What is required is gross fault; an ordinary traffic infraction is not by itself a ground for recourse. An earlier, wider version of this clause was annulled by the courts and the provision was redrawn around the gross-fault test.

How Limits and Premiums Are Set

Clause A.1 fixes the reference point in one sentence: the limits applied are those in force on the date of the accident, not those current when the policy was bought. Because the figures are re-set every year we do not print amounts here; the minimum limits for the relevant year are published in the schedules to the Regulation on Tariff Application Principles.

On price, an agency does not set the rate. Article 1 of that Regulation establishes that tariffs are set freely by the insurers; the no-claims mechanism in Article 5 runs on nine tiers (basamak) from zero to eight, and the table states that discount and loading percentages are determined freely by the companies. Your tier comes from the TRAMER claims record. Under Article 7, for every 30 days a policy is left unrenewed after expiry a 5 per cent loading is added, capped at 50 per cent.

The Claims Timetable

The injured party claims directly against the other driver's insurer. Article 97 of Law no. 2918 requires a written application before proceedings; if there is no written answer within 15 days, or the answer does not meet the claim, the claimant may sue or go to the Insurance Arbitration Commission under Law no. 5684. Article 99 then requires payment within eight working days of delivery of the documents. On the policyholder's side, clause B.1.1 requires notification within ten days.

The limitation period is set by Article 109 of the same Law: claims for compensation of material loss are time-barred two years from the date the injured party learns of the loss and of the person liable, and in any event ten years from the date of the accident. Where the act is subject to a longer limitation period under criminal law, that longer period applies.

What if the other vehicle is uninsured? Article 14 of Law no. 5684 establishes the Guarantee Fund (Güvence Hesabı), a sector-funded body of last resort. It may be approached where the responsible party cannot be identified, where the vehicle was uninsured, and where a stolen vehicle was involved — but in those three cases the Fund answers for bodily injury only. Repairing your own car is not within it. That is what comprehensive cover is for, and we compare the two in kasko versus compulsory traffic insurance.

How We Read This as an Agency

At RYL Sigorta Aracılık Hizmetleri the misconception we meet most often is that the compulsory policy covers everything. The A.6 list above draws the real boundary: your own vehicle, non-pecuniary damages, the cargo you carry, your lost income and your fines all sit outside it, and those gaps are closed by kasko, excess third party liability (İMM) and transit covers. As an insurance agency our work is to prepare quotations from the insurers we are appointed by and to show the limits before anything is signed; the policy is issued on behalf of the insurance company and any indemnity is paid by that company. For businesses running several vehicles we set the same table out in fleet comprehensive motor insurance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• Compulsory Motor Third Party Liability Insurance General Conditions — Turkish Legislation Information System
• Highway Traffic Law no. 2918 — Turkish Legislation Information System
• Insurance Law no. 5684 — Turkish Legislation Information System
• Regulation on Tariff Application Principles for Compulsory MTPL Insurance — Turkish Legislation Information System
• Insurance General Conditions — SEDDK

This article is for information only; the scope of cover is set by the policy’s specific and general terms.