Background
The plaintiff company owns a parcel of land in the Çorlu district of Tekirdağ province. A licensed cadastral survey conducted on 5 June 2017 revealed that the neighboring defendant limited liability company — which held a mining licence on an adjacent parcel — had unlawfully excavated into the plaintiff’s land without any legal right to do so. The survey identified two affected zones: Zone A, covering approximately 2,318 m² to an average depth of 4–5 metres, and Zone B, covering approximately 3,596 m² to an average depth of around 12 metres (reaching 18 metres in some spots). The defendant company extracted and removed the stabilised fill material from these zones.
Following a criminal complaint by the plaintiff, the Çorlu Chief Public Prosecutor opened an investigation. Criminal proceedings were brought before the Çorlu 3rd Criminal Court of First Instance (case no. 2019/883), which convicted the defendant company’s authorised representative — its managing director — of theft on 19 April 2022. In parallel, the plaintiff filed the present civil action before the Tekirdağ Commercial Court of First Instance, initially claiming a preliminary sum of TRY 10,000 as an indeterminate claim (belirsiz alacak), with the right to increase it once expert findings were complete.
Court-appointed experts in the civil proceedings measured the excavated volumes as 4,634.56 m³ (Zone A) and 6,021.39 m³ (Zone B) and calculated the total cost of restoring the land — materials, transportation, and compaction — at TRY 3,344,949.40. The plaintiff amended its claim to seek that full amount.
The Court’s Holding
The Tekirdağ Commercial Court accepted the claim against the defendant company in full, ordering it to pay TRY 3,344,949.40 with statutory interest running from 14 June 2017 (the date the tortious act was established). It dismissed the claim against the individual managing director for lack of standing, reasoning that because Turkish criminal law does not allow corporate entities to be accused, the criminal conviction fell on the individual — but the civil liability for the company’s wrongful act lay with the corporate entity itself, not the director personally. Both sides appealed to the Istanbul Regional Court of Appeal.
The appellate court dismissed both appeals on the merits and upheld the first-instance judgment in its entirety. On the plaintiff’s appeal seeking to hold the director personally liable, the court found that no independent personal fault had been established against him and that he could not be made jointly liable merely by virtue of his managerial role. On the defendant company’s appeal, the court confirmed that all elements of tort liability under Article 49 of the Turkish Code of Obligations (TCO) — wrongful act, damage, causation, fault, and unlawfulness — were satisfied. It further held that the expert report, grounded in concrete, verifiable data, was reliable and that the first-instance court’s assessment of the evidence disclosed no error.
The court also rejected two specific procedural and substantive defences raised by the company. First, it dismissed the limitation-period objection, finding that because the excavation simultaneously constituted the crime of theft, the extended criminal limitation period under TCO Article 72 applied, and the action had been brought within that period. Second, it rejected the argument that the applicable standard for calculating the restoration cost was the Regulation on the Rehabilitation of Land Disturbed by Mining Activities, holding that this regulation governs only lawful, licensed mining operations — not tortious excavation — and therefore could not be invoked by a wrongdoer to reduce its liability.
Key Takeaways
- A neighbouring mining operator that excavates onto a private landowner’s parcel without legal authority commits a tort actionable by the landowner, regardless of whether the state also penalises the extraction of minerals; the landowner’s claim is for the cost of physical restoration, not the market value of the extracted minerals.
- When a tortious act simultaneously constitutes a criminal offence (here, theft), TCO Article 72 extends the civil limitation period to match the longer criminal prescription period, preventing the tortfeasor from sheltering behind the shorter general tort limitations.
- The Regulation on the Rehabilitation of Land Disturbed by Mining Activities applies exclusively to lawful mining operations carried out under a valid licence; it cannot be used by an unlawful excavator to cap or reduce its restoration liability.
- In Turkish law, the corporate entity — not its managing director personally — bears civil liability for torts committed in the course of corporate activity, unless the director has committed an independent, personal wrongful act.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies the intersection of property law, tort law, and mining regulation in Turkey when an extraction company strays beyond its licensed boundaries. By confirming that the victim-is-the-state argument does not defeat a private landowner’s restoration claim, the court reinforces that property owners retain the right to demand physical reinstatement of their land irrespective of any state-level administrative sanctions imposed on the wrongdoer. The ruling also has practical significance for damages quantification: courts will rely on independent civil engineering expert reports measuring actual excavated volumes and restoration costs, rather than deferring to regulatory frameworks designed for the mining industry’s own rehabilitation obligations.
The application of the extended criminal limitation period is equally significant for practitioners. Landowners who discover illicit excavation — which may not be apparent for months or years after the fact — gain the benefit of a considerably longer window to bring civil claims, provided the underlying conduct qualifies as a criminal offence. Together, these holdings give private landowners bordering licensed mining operations a robust set of remedies and a meaningful timeframe within which to pursue them.