Limitation period for annual leave in Turkey: when does it start, 5 or 10 years?

An email from accounting contains a request from a former employee’s lawyer: the employee, who left four years ago, is claiming pay for unused annual leave. HR checks the file: the leave spreadsheet is on two old computers, the approval emails are in the mailbox of a manager who has since left, and the balance is on a paper form. The question is no longer just “should we pay?” but “has the period expired, and if so, which record will show it?” This article explains the limitation period for annual leave under Turkish law using the statutory texts, the five-or-ten-year debate and why records matter as much as the period itself.

A limitation period is the time within which a claim can be enforced; once it has expired and the debtor invokes it, the claim can no longer be pursued in court. The judge cannot take the limitation period into account on their own initiative; it must be raised (Art. 161 of the Turkish Code of Obligations). In the Labour Law, the limitation provision relating to annual leave applies to pay for unused leave.

When does the limitation period for annual leave start?

The start date is the clearest rule on this subject. Article 59 of the Labour Law states:

The limitation period for this pay begins on the date the employment contract ends.

While employment continues, unused leave accumulates; the claim for leave pay becomes due when the employment contract ends for any reason (Art. 59). That is why the period also starts running on that day. The general rule, which takes the day the claim becomes due as the starting point, is in the Code of Obligations (Art. 149); because the Labour Law contains a specific provision on this point, the start date for annual leave pay is clear.

Does annual leave become time-barred?

Splitting the question into three separate things makes it easier:

1. The right to leave: it arises one year after the start date and cannot be waived (Art. 53).
2. Taking the leave: leave earned for each year of service is used during the following year of service (Art. 54).
3. The claim for leave pay: it becomes due when the employment contract ends, and the limitation period starts running on that date (Art. 59).

In the articles we reviewed, the limitation provision appears only for the third item, the pay claim. We did not find a separate period that extinguishes the right to leave itself while the employment relationship continues, so it is sensible to carry accumulated leave in the records until the employee leaves. Knowing how many years back the accumulated balance goes directly affects the amount calculated on departure.

Is the limitation period for annual leave 5 years or 10 years?

The texts say five years for wage claims. Even so, whether leave pay counts as a wage claim has been debated in practice, and different periods may come up for past events. If the file in front of you concerns an old departure, be sure to ask your legal adviser which period applies and how the courts currently interpret it. When working out whether five years have passed, consider two things together: the contract end date, which is when the period starts, and whether any event in between has interrupted it. The record that documents both is the basis for the calculation.

When is the limitation period suspended, and when is it interrupted?

The period does not simply keep running; some events suspend it or restart it. Of the interruption provisions in the Code of Obligations, these are the ones most often encountered in working life (Art. 154):

• The debtor acknowledges the debt, in particular by paying interest or making a partial payment.
• The creditor applies to a court or arbitrator by bringing an action or raising a defence.
• The creditor initiates enforcement proceedings.
• The creditor lodges a claim in bankruptcy proceedings.

With an interruption, a new period starts to run (Art. 156). If the debt has been acknowledged in a written instrument or established by a court or arbitral decision, the new period is always ten years. So before sending a departing employee letters such as “we will pay all your remaining leave” or making a partial payment, it is sensible to draft the text with your legal adviser. The situations that suspend the period are listed separately (Art. 153) and do not arise in most employment relationships.

Sample timeline

A fictional example: the employee left on 30 September 2022 with 18 days of annual leave unused and unpaid. If the five-year period is taken as the basis, events unfold as follows; the dates are approximate, and your legal adviser will make the exact calculation.

How long should you keep leave records?

The employer keeps a personnel file for each employee and retains the documents and records it is required by law to prepare (Art. 75 of the Labour Law). The annual leave record is one of them (Art. 20 of the Regulation). We did not find a single retention period for records in the statutory texts; even so, deleting departed employees’ leave history before the period expires weakens your defence. Set the retention period together with your legal adviser and in line with your personal data retention policy. Each departed employee’s file should contain:

• Start and leaving dates
• Leave balance on the leaving date and a breakdown of the calculation
• Signed annual leave record or an equivalent record
• Request and approval correspondence for each period of leave
• Any leave pay paid, and the payment date
• Dates flagged for the limitation period and a note on whether any interruption occurred

Leave history in Excel, folders and email: when does it become a problem?

Keeping annual leave history in a yearly Excel file looks tidy at first. When a limitation question comes up, four things cause problems:

• Each year’s file is separate; finding one person’s full history means opening several files.
• Approvals remain in the mailbox of a manager who has left and become inaccessible once the account is closed.
• Balance corrections were entered retrospectively; it is unclear which figure changed and when.
• Paper forms are filed in order in the archive, but comparing their dates with the spreadsheet is done by hand.

Keeping leave history in one place per employee

In YazSis KurumsalPortal’s Mobile Leave Management module, every leave request is checked against the remaining balance, goes first to the manager and then to HR, and every approval step stays on record. Because the balance is tracked from these approved records, an employee’s leave history sits in one place together with its requests and approvals; leave records can also be exported as XLSX reports. The portal has role-based data scopes and an audit log; these controls help you set up a process focused on KVKK, Turkey’s personal data protection law. How long records are kept and how a departed employee’s data is handled are matters for the company’s own policy; this article does not claim that the portal manages retention periods automatically.

If you would rather read leave history from a single record than search through files, take a look at the Mobile Leave Management module.