What if your employer won’t grant annual leave in Turkey? Notice, split leave, your rights

For two years you have heard the same answer: “We are busy right now, let’s talk later.” You sent your leave request by email but got no reply; your manager said “fine” on WhatsApp, but HR knows nothing about it. Your balance is now over thirty days and you do not know how to take it. On the HR side, the picture is uncomfortable too: which employee asked for leave when, who got what answer, the records are scattered. This article looks at both the employee’s and the employer’s side under Turkish labour law: how to make the request, what the employer can decide and what happens when leave is not granted.

The duty to grant annual leave means the employer must let the employee take the annual paid leave they have earned continuously, without splitting it (Article 56 of Turkish Labour Law No. 4857). On the employee’s side, there is the timely, written request. In a dispute, the evidence each side holds decides the outcome.

How much notice must be given for annual leave?

Under the Regulation on Annual Paid Leave, employees notify the employer in writing at least one month before the time they wish to take the annual leave they have earned (Article 7). The employer or its representative passes these requests to the leave board or, in workplaces without a board, to the persons named in the Regulation. The request must state your full name, your employee number if you have one, the dates of the leave and whether you want unpaid travel leave (Article 8). For the employee, the steps are as follows:

1. Ask HR for the date you became entitled and your current balance.
2. Give written notice at least one month before the date you want to take leave.
3. In the request, state your full name, your employee number if you have one, the leave dates and whether you want travel leave.
4. Keep the date you sent it and the reply: an email, a form or a portal record.
5. If the employer suggests a different date, get the new approved date in writing.

The Regulation sets no separate deadline for the employer to tell the employee the leave date, but it does require a leave schedule to be prepared and announced (Article 19). What is expected of the employer, then, is that the date is not left open and is entered in the schedule. There is one more point for employees: staying away from work on a date that was never approved, just because no answer came, can open a separate dispute if there is no written record. Ask for a written answer first; if none comes, take it forward with HR or a legal adviser.

Can the employer set the leave date itself?

Partly. The leave board or the employer is not bound by the date the employee requests (Article 8); schedules are drawn up taking into account the employee’s request and the needs of the business. If several requests fall on the same date, seniority at the workplace and the date leave was taken in the previous year decide priority. The employer has the following tools:

How do you set up a leave plan as an employer?

Listing employees with high balances at the start of the year, announcing the leave period or collective leave window early and drawing up the schedule from employees’ requests stops requests being put off with “we are busy”. In companies that do not plan, leave piles up in the last quarter of the year; work stalls and employees feel their requests have been turned down. If the plan is in writing and somewhere everyone can see it, the record also shows which date was proposed and why.

What happens if the employer does not grant annual leave?

The short answer: the right is not lost, and responsibility stays with the employer. This is what the text of the Law says:

• The right to annual paid leave cannot be waived (Article 53); a signature or a verbal waiver does not remove the right.
• The employer must grant the leave and keep a leave record document for each employee (Article 56).
• If the employment contract ends before the leave is taken, the pay for the unused leave is paid on the basis of the wage at the date the contract ends (Article 59).
• The limitation period for this pay starts on the date the employment contract ends (Article 59).
• The Law provides for an administrative fine, for each employee affected, against an employer that splits leave contrary to the rules, does not grant it or grants it only in part (Article 103); check the current amount on mevzuat.gov.tr.

The text of the Law does not provide for paying wages instead of leave while the employment relationship continues; leave pay under Article 59 comes into play when the contract ends. So do not apply a “let’s pay them instead of giving the leave” approach without asking your legal adviser first.

Can annual leave be taken in parts?

Under the Law, the employer cannot split annual paid leave and must grant it continuously within the set periods. The exception is agreement between the parties: leave can be taken in parts, provided that one part is no shorter than ten days (Article 56 of the Law, Article 6 of the Regulation). The current text sets no upper limit on the number of parts. For example, an entitlement of 20 days can be planned as 10 + 6 + 4; 5 + 5 + 5 + 5, on the other hand, does not meet this condition, because no part is ten days long.

If an employee wants to split their annual leave, does the employer have to agree?

The Law requires “agreement between the parties”; neither side can split the leave on its own. The employee sends the request to split in writing. If the employer agrees, the dates of the parts are recorded in writing; if it refuses, the leave is granted in one block. The reason for refusal and the alternative date proposed should also be on record; later on, this is where anyone can see who said what.

Managing leave by email, WhatsApp and verbal approval: where it works and where it breaks

In a team of a few people, verbal or WhatsApp approval is practical and rarely causes problems. When a disagreement arises, though, the question changes: when, to whom and through which channel was the request made, and what answer came back? Messages stay on personal phones and disappear when someone leaves; emails are scattered across different subject lines. In a leave dispute, a useful file contains at least the following:

• Request date and the person who received the request
• Requested leave dates and any request for travel leave
• The employer’s answer and the date of the answer
• Any alternative date proposed and the employee’s acceptance
• The agreement to split leave and the dates of the parts
• Leave days actually taken and the return-to-work date
• The leave record document signed by the employee and the current balance

How do requests, approvals and dates stay on record in the portal?

In YazSis KurumsalPortal’s Mobile Leave Management module, employees create leave requests from their phone’s browser without installing an app. The request is checked against the remaining leave balance and goes first to the manager, then to HR. Leave is not confirmed until the multi-level approval chain is complete, and every approval step stays on record; approved leave is added to the team calendar. That way, requests, approvals and dates sit in a single record, not in email inboxes.

Managing the one-month notice period or an agreement to split leave is a matter for the company’s internal rules; in this article we do not claim that the module checks this period by itself. The module helps you keep the dates of the request and the approval on record. Leave records can also be exported as XLSX reports.

If you want to take leave requests out of email and message traffic and into a single workflow, you can explore the modules on the KurumsalPortal page.