Background
The underlying dispute arose from an enforcement proceeding initiated by Turna Madencilik Ltd. Şti. (the creditor) against the plaintiffs at the Gebze 1st Enforcement Office (file no. 2007/2672) based on a promissory note dated 31 August 2005 with a payment date of 30 September 2005 and a face value of 75,500 YTL. The plaintiffs — one individual acting as the note’s principal obligor and another as its aval guarantor, together with the company they represented — brought a negative declaratory action (menfi tespit davası) before the Gebze Commercial Court of First Instance on 8 October 2019, arguing that the signatures on the note were forged, that the note lacked a place of payment and bore a counterfeit company stamp and therefore did not qualify as a negotiable instrument under Turkish law, and that the underlying debt was in any event time-barred.
While the case was pending, the individual plaintiff died on 27 June 2022. A certificate of heirs issued by the Nallıhan Civil Court of Peace (2022/367 E. — 2022/382 K.) identified four heirs. One heir failed to respond to service of process; a second heir formally renounced the inheritance by court order (Nallıhan Civil Court of Peace, 2022/405 E. — 2022/423 K.). The trial court proceeded with only two of the four heirs and, on 15 November 2023, dismissed the plaintiffs’ claim on the merits and ordered them to pay a statutory denial indemnity of 15,000 TL (20 percent of the claimed amount) to the defendant.
The plaintiffs appealed to the Sakarya Regional Court of Appeal, arguing that the expert witnesses had been unable to render a definitive opinion on whether the signatures belonged to the deceased plaintiff and that any such ambiguity should be resolved in favor of the debtor under the applicable burden-of-proof rules. They further maintained that the note lacked the formal elements required for a negotiable instrument and that the trial court had failed to resolve contradictions among the expert reports before rendering judgment.
The Court’s Holding
The appellate chamber vacated the first-instance judgment on public-policy grounds without reaching the merits of the signature-forgery or statute-of-limitations arguments. The court held that upon the death of the plaintiff during proceedings, Turkish Civil Procedure Law (HMK) article 55 required the trial court to identify and notify all heirs, because the claim concerned rights transmissible by inheritance. Under Turkish Civil Code (TMK) article 640, multiple heirs hold estate assets as joint owners (elbirliği mülkiyeti), making them necessary co-parties under HMK article 59. Proceeding to judgment with only two of the four heirs — without either securing the participation of all heirs or appointing a representative for the estate — constituted a fundamental procedural defect touching public order (kamu düzeni), which the appellate court is obliged to examine of its own motion.
The court further held that the trial court had also failed to apply TMK article 611 correctly. Under that provision, when a legal heir renounces an inheritance, his or her share passes to the remaining heirs as though the renouncing heir had predeceased the decedent. Consequently, the renunciation by one heir altered the composition of the legitimate heirs, and a fresh certificate of heirs reflecting that altered composition was required before the case could continue. The trial court neither directed the plaintiffs to obtain a new certificate nor waited for the three-month renunciation period under TMK article 606 to expire before rendering judgment.
As a subsidiary observation (kabule göre), the appellate court also noted that the enforcement file from the Gebze Enforcement Office (2007/2672, also registered as 2020/6314) had never been physically incorporated into the case record, nor was it fully accessible through the UYAP electronic system. Because resolution of the time-bar defence depended on a review of all enforcement acts in that file, the omission was an independent procedural error requiring correction on remand. The appeal was allowed on public-policy grounds, the judgment was quashed, and the case was remitted to the Gebze Commercial Court of First Instance. This decision is final (kesin) and was rendered unanimously without a hearing.
Key Takeaways
- When a plaintiff dies during litigation over a transmissible right, Turkish procedural law requires the trial court to identify all heirs, notify each of them, and wait out the three-month renunciation period before resuming proceedings; failure to do so is a public-order defect that the appellate court must correct of its own motion.
- A renunciation of inheritance under TMK article 611 restructures the pool of heirs: the renouncing heir is deemed never to have inherited, and a new certificate of heirs reflecting the post-renunciation succession must be obtained before the surviving heirs can validly participate as parties.
- In a negative declaratory action challenging a note’s validity and the time-bar of an enforcement claim, the court cannot adjudicate the statute-of-limitations defence without physically incorporating the relevant enforcement file into the record; reliance on an incomplete UYAP electronic entry is insufficient.
- The appellate court declined to rule on the substantive arguments (signature authenticity, negotiable-instrument formalities, expert-report contradictions) because the public-order defect required a complete remand; those issues remain open for reconsideration at first instance.
Why It Matters
This decision illustrates the rigour with which Turkish courts enforce the necessary-joinder rules for heirs in ongoing litigation. Practitioners must treat the death of a party not as a procedural formality to be resolved by simple substitution but as an event that triggers a fresh succession analysis: all heirs must be identified, renunciations must be allowed to run their course, and any alteration in the heir pool must be documented by an updated certificate before the case can move forward. Overlooking these steps will draw a public-order reversal at the appellate stage regardless of the merits.
The case also serves as a reminder about evidentiary completeness in enforcement-related disputes. Courts adjudicating challenges to the timeliness of debt collection proceedings must have the full enforcement file before them — not merely a partial electronic record — because acts interrupting the limitation period may appear at any point in the file’s history. Litigants and lower courts that treat UYAP screen-prints as a substitute for the physical file risk remand on grounds wholly separate from the substantive legal issues in dispute.