Can a Foreign Judgment Be Partially Enforced in Turkiye?

Where a foreign judgment contains several distinct rulings, a Turkish court may enforce the parts that satisfy the statutory conditions under Law No. 5718 while refusing enforcement of parts that do not, provided the valid parts can be separated from the rest without altering their legal meaning. Whether partial enforcement is possible depends heavily on how the foreign judgment is structured.

A single foreign judgment often resolves more than one claim: a monetary award, a declaratory finding, an order for specific performance, and sometimes ancillary relief such as costs or interest. Partial enforcement asks whether a Turkish court can give effect to one or some of these components while declining to enforce the rest, rather than treating the judgment as an all-or-nothing package.

Articles 50 to 54 of Law No. 5718 on Private International Law and International Civil Procedure (MOHUK) set out the general framework for recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments, including the conditions of finality, indirect jurisdiction, reciprocity, public policy and due process. These conditions are applied to the judgment as submitted, and where a judgment is severable into independent rulings, Turkish courts can in principle assess each ruling against the statutory conditions separately.

In practice, Turkish courts look closely at the structure of the foreign judgment to determine whether its components are truly independent or so interconnected that they cannot be separated without distorting the original decision. A monetary award that is clearly quantified and stands apart from other elements of the judgment is more readily treated as severable than, for example, a judgment combining a monetary award with a status determination that the Turkish court considers contrary to public policy as a whole.

Commentators differ on how far severability should be pushed, since aggressive partial enforcement risks rewriting the substance of a foreign judgment rather than simply giving effect to what a foreign court decided. There is also debate on whether a Turkish court applying partial enforcement should recompute interest or costs for the enforced portion alone, and how ancillary orders, such as costs awarded against the losing party abroad, should be treated when the main claim is only partly enforced.

A claimant seeking partial enforcement should identify, in the enforcement petition itself, which components of the foreign judgment are sought to be enforced and explain why those components are legally and factually separable from any part that might raise an objection under Article 54. Presenting the request in a structured, itemised way makes it considerably easier for the court to grant enforcement of the unobjectionable portion.

Partial enforcement does not have a separate deadline distinct from the general tenfiz action; the same procedural timetable applies, including the period within which a defendant must respond and raise objections to any or all parts of the claim.

The competent Turkish civil court of first instance hearing the tenfiz action decides whether partial enforcement is appropriate as part of its overall ruling on the enforcement petition.

The claimant should submit the complete foreign judgment together with a certified translation, any supporting documents clarifying how each component of the judgment was calculated or determined, and, where useful, expert input on the procedural law of the rendering state explaining how the judgment's components interact.

Claimants sometimes submit an enforcement request treating the judgment as indivisible, losing the opportunity to secure enforcement of an unobjectionable portion when another portion is challenged. Debtors, for their part, sometimes argue that any defect anywhere in the judgment should block enforcement entirely, which does not reflect how Turkish courts generally approach severable components. A further misconception is assuming ancillary awards such as interest automatically follow the fate of the main claim without separate analysis.

When a foreign judgment includes multiple distinct rulings, it is worth structuring the Turkish enforcement petition to present each component clearly, rather than relying on the court to disentangle them later. This approach improves the chances of securing at least partial enforcement even where one element of the judgment is likely to face an objection.