How is annual leave calculated in Turkey? Days by seniority, entitlement date, example

An employee’s first work anniversary is approaching, and three questions have landed in HR’s inbox: “I’m about to complete a year — how many days of leave do I get?”, “I’m in my fifth year — is it 14 days or 20?”, “Does the time I spent at the company’s other branch count?” All three are part of the same calculation, but under Turkish labour law the answers sit in different articles. If the number of days is typed into Excel by hand, putting someone in the wrong band either short-changes the employee or grants too much leave. This article explains the entitlement date, the length-of-service bands and the calculation, with an example.

Paid annual leave is the right to rest without loss of pay that an employee earns after working for a certain period; it is regulated in Articles 53 to 60 of Turkish Labour Law No. 4857 and in the Annual Paid Leave Regulation. The calculation comes down to two questions: when did the entitlement arise, and how many days are due for the length of service on that date? We address them in turn below.

When does the right to annual leave arise?

The law requires paid annual leave to be granted to employees who have worked for at least one year from the day they started at the workplace, including the probationary period (Art. 53). In other words, the entitlement arises on the first anniversary of the start date, and the probationary period counts towards that year. Because periods worked at one or more workplaces of the same employer are added together, moving between branches does not reset the entitlement date (Art. 54). These provisions do not apply to seasonal and campaign work that by its nature lasts less than a year. The right to paid annual leave cannot be waived; even if an employee signs a statement saying “I don’t need my leave”, the right does not disappear.

How many days of annual leave by length of service?

The words “at least” in the table matter: these periods are minimums and can be increased by the employment contract or a collective agreement. Watch the thresholds too. When the fifth year is completed, the entitlement is still 14 days; to move to 20 days, more than five years must have passed. Likewise, the 26-day entitlement starts on the day the fifteenth year is completed. Periods are counted in leave days; weekly rest days, national holidays and public holidays that fall within the leave are not counted towards it (Art. 56).

Step-by-step annual leave calculation

1. Determine the start date and any earlier periods: periods worked at the same employer’s workplaces are added together.
2. Find the entitlement date: add one year to the start date. Each subsequent entitlement date falls one year later.
3. Separate days that count as worked from those that do not: the situations listed in Article 55 count as worked; other absences push the one-year period forward.
4. Choose 14, 20 or 26 days based on length of service on that date.
5. Apply the age and underground rules: employees aged 18 or under and 50 or over cannot be given less than 20 days, and 4 days are added for underground work.
6. If the employment contract or collective agreement provides a longer period, use that.
7. Deduct the days used and record the remaining days in writing as the balance.

The seventh step is the evidence for the calculation. The sample annual leave record form annexed to the Regulation includes the employee’s start date, the number of days not worked within the one-year period and the reasons, the date the employee became entitled to leave, length of service, leave duration, travel leave, the leave start and return dates, and the employee’s signature. Gathering the information for these fields from the outset makes it easier to answer the question “why was this day counted?” later on.

How is annual leave calculated? Example: an employee who started on 1 March 2021

Let’s take a fictional example. The employee started on 1 March 2021, has no absence that shifts the date, and no age or underground exception applies. They use the leave earned each year during the following year of service (Art. 54). The entitlement dates and numbers of days progress as follows.

The row that causes the most confusion is 1 March 2026: the fifth year is complete, but the move to 20 days happens on the sixth anniversary, i.e. 1 March 2027. If the Excel formula is set up as “5 years or more”, it silently produces an error in this row.

What shifts the entitlement date?

If attendance is interrupted within the one-year period for reasons other than those listed in Article 55, length of service is extended by the length of that gap, and the entitlement date moves into the next year of service (Art. 54). The following periods, by contrast, count as time worked when annual leave is calculated (Art. 55):

• Days absent from work due to a work accident or illness (within the limit set in the article)
• Days before and after childbirth on which female employees are not put to work
• Weekly rest days, national holidays and public holidays
• Paid leave periods listed in Additional Article 2 (such as marriage or bereavement)
• Other leave granted by the employer and paid annual leave already taken

Calculating in Excel: where it works and where it breaks down

In a small team, a start-date column, a date formula and a balance typed in by hand are often enough. The problem arises because the calculation does not depend on the formula alone:

• The band change (from year 5 to year 6) happens on the anniversary; if the formula is based on the end of the month or the start of the year, the number of days comes out wrong.
• Entitlement dates shifted by illness, maternity or absence are kept by hand in the spreadsheet, and it is easy to forget to update them.
• Age thresholds (18 and 50) are missed unless date of birth is kept in a separate column.
• When two copies of the same file circulate, which one is current becomes a matter of debate.
• Requests received on paper or via WhatsApp reach the spreadsheet late; the leave has been taken, but the balance still shows the old figure.

The law requires the employer to keep an annual leave record form for each employee (Art. 56). A paper file meets this requirement, but keeping the balance and the form consistent by hand falls to HR.

How does KurumsalPortal track the annual leave balance?

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 then goes first to the manager, then to HR. The leave is not final until the multi-level approval chain is complete, and every approval step stays on record; approved leave is added to the team calendar and the balance is updated.

There is a clear limit here: applying the length-of-service and age rules above to the balance remains HR’s responsibility; this article does not claim that the module calculates the entitlement date automatically from length of service. In the pre-installation meeting, ask how your rule will be reflected in the portal. Leave records can also be exported as XLSX reports. If data needs to flow to a time-attendance or payroll system, the scope is agreed with you during the project.

If you want to move scattered leave spreadsheets into a single flow, take a look at the Mobile Leave Management module.