Drone Insurance in Türkiye: What Is Actually Required?

Which Cover Is the Mandatory One?

An unmanned aircraft can produce two kinds of loss. The first is damage to the aircraft itself: a fall, a collision, a flyaway. The second is damage caused outside it: injury to a person on the ground, damage to a vehicle or a structure. These risks do not have to sit in the same policy, and the legislation sets a floor only for the second.

This article deals with that second risk. Third-party liability cover responds, within the policy limits, to compensation claims made against the operator for bodily injury and property damage caused to third parties during flight; hull damage is a separate heading.

Where Does the Duty Come From?

The source is the Regulation on Third-Party Liability Insurance for Civil Aircraft, published in the Official Gazette of 27 July 2017, No. 30136. Its scope article names unmanned aircraft expressly: it covers the persons who must take out liability insurance for damage that domestic and foreign civil aircraft and unmanned aircraft using Turkish airspace may cause to third parties, the risks to be insured, the minimum sums insured by maximum take-off weight, and the sanctions where the insurance is not taken out or has ceased to be valid.

The sanction sits in the same regulation: flying without complying with these obligations is prohibited, and an aircraft found to be without the required cover is not permitted to use Turkish airspace, to land at airports, or — if on the ground — to take off.

There is a citation chain worth noticing here. The repealed 2016 directive pointed, in its insurance article, to a 2005 regulation that had itself been repealed by Article 10 of the 2017 text. The address the directive gave had been out of date for years.

The new directive contains no insurance article at all. That does not mean the duty has gone. It never rested on the directive: the directive governs operations, registration, licensing and airspace, while the insurance obligation lives in the regulation.

How Is the Minimum Sum Set?

The regulation provides that the cover may not be less, per aircraft and per occurrence, than the sums it states. For unmanned aircraft no figure is written directly; a percentage is applied to the minimum sum set for the first weight category. Because that base figure is expressed in Special Drawing Rights, the applicable value should be read from the official text of the regulation.

For aircraft used commercially the percentages rise with the class: eight per cent for the lightest class, twenty for the second, forty for the third and eighty for the heaviest. For non-commercial use the two classes up to 25 kilograms carry a rate of zero; the 25-150 kilogram band carries ten per cent and the heavier class twenty.

The practical conclusion is that the weight of the obligation follows the purpose of use at least as much as the mass of the aircraft. The same machine may attract no minimum sum when flown as a hobby and fall under the commercial rate the moment it lifts off for a paid shoot. Stating the purpose of use correctly on the policy therefore matters.

The regulation also sets a minimum as to scope: the cover must extend to the risks of war, terrorism, hijacking, sabotage, unlawful seizure and civil commotion. Since a standard liability policy excludes most of these, whether those headings actually appear on a drone policy should be checked line by line.

Classification, Registration and Licensing: What the New Directive Changed

The new Unmanned Aircraft Systems Directive entered into force on the date of its publication and repealed the directive of 22 February 2016 together with its amendments. Users and pilots have until 31 July 2027 to come into full compliance with its operational rules.

The class names changed. What used to run from İHA0 to İHA3 now runs from M0 to M3, with the weight thresholds unchanged. A further category was defined outside the classification altogether.

Registration Now Defines the Flight Envelope

The directive requires every user operating an unmanned aircraft, other than a Simple UA, to register directly through the Unmanned Aircraft Tracking and Traffic Management System. Entry in the aircraft register is a separate step and is required only for aircraft flown beyond 120 metres in height and/or 3,000 metres laterally under a P2 licence.

Registration has moved beyond administrative form-filling. The directive requires the geofencing function to be designed so that, unless the user registration is verified through the system, the aircraft cannot leave a default cylindrical envelope of 10 metres radius and 20 metres height. Once registration is verified, the permitted envelope expands according to the pilot licence level. An unregistered aircraft is not simply unlawful; it can barely leave the spot.

Aircraft already in use must be registered by 31 July 2027; after that date, operators of unregistered aircraft face the penal provisions of Civil Aviation Law No. 2920 and the administrative fines regulation.

For insurance there is an alignment problem here. The regulation that sets the cover percentages still uses the old class names, while the directive that governs flight uses the new ones. Recording in writing which text's class the policy refers to removes the argument before a claim arises.

Where Can You Fly, and Which Licence Do You Need?

The directive describes Turkish airspace as green, red and orange zones published on the system map, plus the areas outside them. A green zone is one where no operational permission is needed within the stated altitude and conditions. A red zone is closed to operations by the competent authorities and flight there requires permission. An orange zone is one where a flight permission or an airspace volume allocation exists in favour of a third party. Everything outside green zones counts as restricted and flight there is subject to permission.

The licence level follows the nature of the operation. Amateur operations flown within visual line of sight require at least P0; commercial operations flown within visual line of sight require at least P1. Beyond visual line of sight operations, flight over crowds, carriage of people or passengers and transport of dangerous goods are carried out under P2.

This distinction feeds straight into the policy. A business filming for a fee is by definition inside an operation requiring at least P1 and falls under the commercial rate when the minimum sum is calculated. Cover bought on the assumption that the flight counts as amateur can fall short on a commercial loss.

The Sequence for a Commercial Operator, and the Agency's Role

In a commercial drone operation insurance is not a document added at the end; it is one link in a chain built together with registration, licensing and permission. The sequence runs as follows:

RYL Sigorta Aracılık Hizmetleri Limited Şirketi is an insurance agency. We prepare quotations from the insurers we act for according to the class of your aircraft, your purpose of use and your operating profile, and set scope and limits side by side. The policy is issued by the insurance company, and the indemnity is paid by the insurance company.

To discuss the right cover for your operation, complete the quotation form.

• Register as a user through the system; this is required for every aircraft other than a Simple UA
• Set the pilot licence level according to the nature of the operation; commercial visual line of sight flight needs at least P1
• Check the intended area on the map and run the permission process for anything outside a green zone
• Establish the maximum take-off mass and the purpose of use; the minimum cover percentage is read from those two together
• Arrange the policy so that war, terrorism, sabotage and civil commotion risks are included
• Keep the insurance document available for registration and airworthiness procedures and for inspections

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• Regulation on Third-Party Liability Insurance for Civil Aircraft (Official Gazette, 27 July 2017, No. 30136)
• Unmanned Aircraft Systems Directive (SHT-İHA) — Directorate General of Civil Aviation
• SHT-İHA publication announcement — Directorate General of Civil Aviation
• SHGM Unmanned Aircraft Registration System
• Turkish Civil Aviation Law No. 2920

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