Turkey
Min. wage
(x12 payments)
₺33,030 /mo
About the minimum wage
Employer tax
Annual leave
14-26 days
Learn about annual leave
Notice period
2-8 weeks (by tenure)
Termination and notice info
Updated
Sep 2026
The indefinite (open-ended/permanent) contract is the default and most common form of employment under Turkish Labor Law No. 4857. It has no predetermined end date and continues until terminated by either party in accordance with statutory notice, severance, and job-security rules. It may be concluded verbally or in writing, though a written contract is strongly recommended and is mandatory once the relationship exceeds one year. Employees with 6+ months of tenure at workplaces with 30 or more employees benefit from job-security protections requiring the employer to show a valid reason for termination.
Fixed-term contracts are allowed under Article 11 of Law No. 4857 only where there is an objective reason — e.g., a specific project, seasonal work, a temporary increase in workload, or replacement of an absent employee. They automatically terminate at the end of the agreed term without notice or severance obligations (unless the employee has completed at least one year, in which case severance may still apply). Repeated renewal of successive fixed-term contracts without a continuing objective justification is treated by Turkish courts as converting the relationship into an indefinite contract, extending full job-security and severance rights to the employee. Fixed-term contracts must be in writing.
The statutory maximum is 45 hours per week, normally distributed equally across working days, with a daily maximum of 11 hours (including overtime). A weekly rest day (typically Sunday) is mandatory. Overtime is capped at 270 hours per year and is compensated at 1.5x the normal hourly rate (or as additional paid time off of 1.5 hours per overtime hour, at the employee's election); work on official/religious holidays is compensated at 2x. Night work is capped at 7.5 hours.
Turkish law permits a probationary period of up to 2 months, which may be extended to a maximum of 4 months if provided for in a collective bargaining agreement. During probation, either party may terminate the contract without notice and without severance liability (though accrued wages and proportional annual leave must still be paid). Statutory job-security protections and standard notice periods do not apply during probation.
Turkish law does not mandate a 13th or 14th month salary. Where such payments exist, they arise from individual employment contracts, company policy, or (most commonly) collective bargaining agreements — frequently structured as an annual 'ikramiye' (bonus) paid around the two religious holidays (Ramadan Feast and Sacrifice Feast) and/or New Year, sometimes totaling 2-4 extra salary payments per year in unionized or public-sector-linked workplaces. In the general private sector such bonuses remain discretionary and contract-dependent rather than a legal entitlement.
Turkey does not operate a broad statutory job-title classification system for private-sector roles, but the written employment contract (mandatory for fixed-term, part-time, and contracts exceeding one year) must specify the employee's position/job title and job description, since this defines the scope of duties the employer may lawfully assign and affects unilateral-change protections under Article 22 of Law No. 4857. Certain professional titles are legally protected and require registration/licensing to use (e.g., 'avukat' (lawyer), 'mühendis' (engineer), 'doktor' (physician), 'mali müşavir' (certified accountant)), independent of general labor law.
Employers pay a total statutory SGK (Social Security Institution) contribution of 22.5% of gross salary, made up of: 11% long-term insurance (invalidity, old-age, death), 7.5% general health insurance, 2% short-term insurance (work accident and occupational disease — rate is flat regardless of risk class since 2016), and 2% unemployment insurance. Many employers qualify for a government incentive ('5 puanlık indirim') that reduces the long-term insurance portion from 11% to 6%, lowering the effective employer rate to 17.5% where conditions are met. Contributions are calculated on gross earnings up to a monthly SGK ceiling (approx. 7.5x the daily minimum wage x 30).
Employees contribute a total statutory 15% of gross salary to SGK: 9% long-term insurance + 5% general health insurance + 1% unemployment insurance. This is withheld and remitted by the employer alongside separate, uncapped progressive income tax (15%-40%) and a 0.759% stamp duty on gross wages (both waived for earnings at or below the gross minimum wage, per the minimum-wage income tax and stamp-duty exemption in force since December 2021). A separate 3% auto-enrollment private pension (BES) contribution may also apply unless the employee opts out within 2 months of enrollment — this is not part of the mandatory SGK rate.
In addition to statutory leave, employees are entitled to the following statutory benefits:
Turkey's social security system is administered by SGK (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu) and funded jointly by employer and employee contributions on gross salary, up to a monthly earnings ceiling (approximately 7.5 times the daily minimum wage x 30 days).
These SGK contributions are separate from, and in addition to, progressive employee income tax (15%-40%) and stamp duty (0.759%) withheld on gross wages above the minimum-wage exemption threshold.
Work accident and occupational disease coverage is funded entirely by the employer as part of the 2% short-term insurance premium within the overall 22.5% SGK employer rate — employees pay nothing toward this specific coverage.
Employers are additionally strictly liable under the Occupational Health and Safety Law No. 6331 for maintaining a safe workplace, and can face separate civil liability (and criminal liability in serious cases) on top of SGK-funded benefits.
Severance pay ('kıdem tazminatı') is owed to an employee with at least 1 year of continuous service whose employment ends by: employer termination without just cause, employee resignation for statutorily justified reasons (health, employer's immoral/dishonest conduct, non-payment of wages, military conscription, marriage within 1 year for female employees, or reaching retirement age/premium-day eligibility), or death.
There is no statutory 13th or 14th month salary in Turkey. Where extra annual payments exist, they are contractual or CBA-based rather than legally mandated.
P.S. our team speaks multiple languages and we'd love to chat in your preferred language if requested.
Your employee's hours, time off, holidays, bonuses, and commissions are automatically calculated into payroll. RemoFirst will invoice you in either US Dollars (USD), Euros (EUR), British Pounds (GBP), Canadian Dollars (CAD), Australian Dollars (AUD), or Singapore Dollars (SGD) around the 15th of each month to make sure your employees are paid on time. To make it even easier, you can summarize your entire global team's salaries to aggregate them into one payment (instead of many individual payments).
Unlike full-time employees, contractors work on projects with multiple companies at a given time and are technically self-employed. Full-time employees are solely focused on their employer and usually receive benefits (such as health insurance, equity or stock options, and time off) as an additional form of compensation. While it can be cheaper to work with international contractors instead of paying benefits to a full-time employee, you run the risk of misclassification. It's recommended to work with an EOR for contractor onboarding and payments, so you can know that your international contractors are paid compliantly and on time.
Whenever the employee or employer has a question about, or anything else related to international employment, they can speak with our customer support team to get answers from our team of experts.
