What Is Compulsory Medical Malpractice Insurance in Türkiye?

Which Period and Which Claims Does the Policy Cover?

The wording is claims-made. Under Article B.1 the risk crystallises when the insured learns a claim has been made against them, or the injured party applies directly to the insurer. What matters is not when the incident occurred but that the claim arrives during the policy period.

Cover also reaches backwards: Article A.1 extends to loss caused by activity in the ten years before the contract. Two limits apply to that retroactive reach, and protection does not stop on the day practice ends.

• Trigger: the moment the claim reaches the insured, or the injured party approaches the insurer directly
• Retroactive reach: ten years before the contract, never starting earlier than 30 July 2009
• Gap rule: no cover for notifications tied to events during an uninsured spell longer than one month
• Ceasing practice: claims emerging up to two years after the last policy expires remain covered

Who Must Buy It and Who Arranges the Policy?

The duty attaches to the profession: physicians, dentists and specialists recognised under the medical specialisation legislation. A physician in private practice arranges the policy personally; for those employed by a private health institution the institution arranges it.

The public sector works differently. One policy covering all of them is issued for health facilities within the bodies listed in the schedules to Law No. 5018 on Public Financial Management and Control. Where an insured practises inside such a body after a transfer or temporary assignment, no further contract is issued and no further premium is charged. Assignments outside the usual post and specialty, and family physicians assigned to emergency services, run off the same policy.

One common doubt concerns the address on the policy. The wording states expressly that failing to state the place of practice, or stating it incompletely, does not affect scope: the policy covers all of the insured's professional activity within the framework of the Tariff and Instructions.

Who Pays Half the Premium?

The statute splits the premium: half falls on the physician, half on the employer. In the public sector the employer's share comes from the revolving fund (döner sermaye) where one exists and from the institution's budget where it does not. A physician in independent practice has no employer to share with, so the whole premium is theirs.

The premium depends on the risk group assigned to the specialty and on the no-claims step system, and the same instrument fixes the maximum sum insured per incident. These figures are not static: SEDDK, the insurance regulator, revises both the limit and the premium tables from time to time, most recently in the Official Gazette of 7 August 2025, in force from 1 November 2025. That is why no figure appears here — the tariff in force for the relevant year governs.

Going uninsured has a statutory price. An administrative fine is imposed by the civil administrative authority for each uninsured person; because the amount is revalued annually, the current figure must be checked against that year's legislation.

Exclusions and Grounds for Recourse

Article A.3 groups the exclusions into four limbs. The list is short but wide-reaching, and the limb on fines is the one most often overlooked when expectations of the policy are set.

Exclusion and recourse are different mechanisms: in recourse the insurer pays the injured party, then reclaims from the insured. Article B.6 lists three grounds — any event or conduct intentionally caused during professional practice; events arising while the insured or their staff were under the influence of alcohol, narcotic or psychotropic substances; and failure to request an endorsement where one was needed, in which case the portion matching the premium shortfall is reclaimed.

A change of specialty, a new interventional procedure or a change of workplace may each call for an endorsement. An unreported change means part of the indemnity comes back to the physician.

• Claims from activity outside the practice whose boundaries are set by legal or ethical rules
• Claims from activity outside the sphere of the institutions named in the policy, humanitarian assistance excepted
• Every kind of penalty and contractual penalty, administrative and judicial fines included
• Claims arising from any experiment, other than what medical practice requires under the relevant legislation

What the Policy Does Once Proceedings Begin

Under Article B.3.4, where an action is brought — administrative proceedings included — the insurer joins at any stage on notification and conducts the defence. The insured must give a power of attorney to the lawyer the insurer nominates. Litigation costs and lawyers' fees are paid under the general rules according to the outcome; where the award exceeds the sum insured, those costs are met in the proportion the sum insured bears to the award. In criminal proceedings the insurer takes part with the defendant's consent but pays only its own lawyer's fees.

SEDDK's sector notice 2021/4 of 24 March 2021 closed a practical gap. Where a court admits a physician's application to join proceedings against the administration as an intervening party, the fee for representation and legal advice borne for a single event is paid to the physician, up to the amount set by the minimum lawyers' fee tariff on a risk-group basis, under the wording covering reasonable costs.

The payment timetable is fixed: the indemnity falls due once documents are delivered and investigations are complete, and in any event forty-five days after notification. If investigations cannot be finished within three months, the insurer advances at least fifty per cent of the loss determined by preliminary survey.

How Recourse Works for Physicians in Public Service

In the public sector the administration pays first; the real question is whether that payment returns to the physician. Supplementary Article 18, added to Law No. 3359 by Article 14 of Law No. 7406, gives that decision to the Professional Liability Board (Mesleki Sorumluluk Kurulu) within the Ministry of Health. The Board decides within one year whether recourse will be taken and in what amount; the sum is claimed from the compulsory policy's insurer, in proportion to the professional's fault and within the policy limits.

Part of that provision did not survive. By decision E.2022/90, K.2023/201 of 30 November 2023, published in the Official Gazette of 2 February 2024, the Constitutional Court annulled the wording covering state universities, reasoning from the scientific, administrative and financial autonomy of universities. The part concerning public institutions remains in force.

The practical conclusion is that public employment does not make the policy redundant. The compulsory cover is precisely where the amount the administration would reclaim is met, in proportion to fault.

Five Points to Check at Renewal

Renewal is often treated as reprinting last year's policy. Yet both the tariff and the physician's working pattern can change during the year.

RYL Sigorta Aracılık Hizmetleri is an insurance agency: we do not issue the policy, and any indemnity is paid by the insurance company that is party to the contract. Our work is to prepare quotations from the insurers we act for and to review risk group, endorsements and continuity of cover with you. Tell us your specialty and working arrangement and we will prepare a quotation request.

• Is the specialty and risk group recorded correctly — risk groups are revised from time to time
• Has a gap of more than one month opened between two policies
• Does a new procedure, additional specialty or new workplace call for an endorsement
• Are public assignments and private practice each covered in their own right
• If practice may end, has the two-year extended reporting period been taken into account

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• General Conditions of Compulsory Medical Malpractice Liability Insurance (full text)
• SEDDK — Sector Notice 2021/4 on reasonable costs under the malpractice policy
• Amendment to the Institutional Contribution Communiqué (2010/1) — Tariff and Instructions, Official Gazette of 7 August 2025
• SEDDK — Insurance general conditions
• Law No. 1219 on the Practice of Medicine and Its Branches
• Constitutional Court — decision on the Professional Liability Board (E.2022/90, K.2023/201)

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