Public procurement

Scope and key terms

The Public Procurement Law No. 4734 (Kamu İhale Kanunu) applies to purchases of goods and services and to works by public administrations, municipalities, state economic enterprises, social security bodies, funds and companies in which they hold more than half the capital; the exceptions in art. 3 remain (art. 2, 3). A tender (ihale) is the set of steps by which the work is left with one of the bidders, completed by signing the contract after the tender is approved (art. 4). The signed contract is governed by the Public Procurement Contracts Law No. 4735.

Terms used below: the Authority (Kamu İhale Kurumu); the Board (its decision-making body, Kamu İhale Kurulu, art. 53); the contracting authority (idare); EKAP (the Authority’s Electronic Public Procurement Platform, art. 4); the Regulation and the Applications Communiqué (the Authority’s Regulation and Communiqué on Applications concerning Tenders). Who may apply depends on the stage (art. 4, 54; Regulation art. 5):

• A prospective tenderer (istekli olabilecek) works in the field of the tender and has obtained the tender or prequalification document. They challenge the notice and documents.
• A candidate (aday) applied for prequalification and challenges prequalification steps.
• A tenderer (istekli) submitted a bid and challenges how bids were submitted, evaluated and decided.

The complaint route covers steps from the approval of the tender to the signing of the contract (Regulation art. 3); disputes after signature are dealt with below.

Tender complaints and appeals

A candidate, tenderer or prospective tenderer who says an unlawful act in the tender has caused, or may cause, a loss first makes a complaint (şikâyet) to the contracting authority and, if needed, an appeal (itirazen şikâyet) to the Authority. Both must be used before a court case (Law 4734 art. 54). Once a contract has been properly signed, a complaint is rejected (art. 54); a contract signed in breach of the Law’s time limits and procedure does not stop the Authority examining an appeal (art. 56).

1. Work out the time limit. It runs from the day after the person became aware, or should have become aware, of the act: 5 days in tenders held under art. 21(b) and (c) (urgent cases; defence and security) and 10 days in all others (Law 4734 art. 55; Regulation art. 6, 7). For the notice it starts at the first notice; for provisions of the prequalification or tender document not in the notice, when the document was downloaded from the person’s EKAP account. These complaints must be made no later than three working days before the tender date or application deadline. Holidays count; a last day that falls on a holiday moves to the next working day, but not the three-working-day cut-off.
2. Prepare the petition. A signed petition addressed to the contracting authority gives the applicant’s and any representative’s details, the tender’s name or registration number, the date of awareness, the subject, the grounds and the evidence (art. 54; Regulation art. 8). One petition cannot cover several tenders or several applicants. Complaints and appeals are filed on EKAP with an electronic signature (Regulation additional art. 1).
3. Wait for the contracting authority’s decision. It gives a reasoned decision within 10 days and notifies it within three: cancel the tender, set a corrective step, or reject the complaint (art. 54, 55; Regulation art. 10–13). The contract cannot be signed until 10 days after the last notification and a check for an appeal, or, if an appeal was made, until the Board’s final decision (art. 55).
4. Appeal to the Authority if needed. If the decision is unsatisfactory or none is made in 10 days, the appeal is made within 10 days of notification or of the end of the decision period (art. 55, 56). Against a cancellation taken after a complaint or appeal the period is five days and the appeal goes directly to the Authority (art. 56; Regulation art. 6, 14). It attaches the complaint, any reply and proof that the fee was paid. A point not raised in the complaint cannot be raised unless the contracting authority’s decision dealt with it (Regulation art. 8).
5. Follow the Board’s decision. The Board examines the applicant’s claims, the points in the contracting authority’s decision and whether the challenged acts breached equal treatment, and may hear the parties (art. 56; Regulation art. 18, 20). It decides within 20 days of the tender file being recorded, or 10 working days in art. 21(b) and (c) tenders and in appeals against cancellations (art. 56), by cancelling the tender, setting a corrective step or rejecting the appeal (art. 54). Decisions are notified to the parties within five working days and published on the Authority’s website (art. 56).

Application fee. An appeal requires a fee, set in four bands by approximate cost and revalued each year, effective 1 February, by a Public Procurement Communiqué (Law 4734 art. 53(j), 67). The latest communiqué and the Authority’s table are in the sources; the figure is not repeated here. If the notice does not state the fee, it can be looked up by tender registration number on the Authority’s website; if it cannot be determined, the highest amount for the type of work is paid and the excess is returned later (Regulation art. 8). The President may also decide that a security of up to four times the fee is taken (art. 54); whether such a decision is in force should be checked before filing.

Refund. Since Law 7571 (in force 26 December 2025) and the regulation of 9 April 2026 (art. 18/A), part of the fee is returned in proportion to the claims the Board upholds: claims upheld divided by total claims. The request is made in writing within 30 days of notification of the decision and payment follows within 15 days (art. 53(j)). Nothing is returned if the appeal is rejected, or if the Board cancels the tender or sets a corrective step only through its own equal-treatment review (art. 53(j)).

So the drafting of the petition matters. In complaints about the notice and documents, each criterion or article is a separate matter and several reasons about one matter count as one claim; in complaints about evaluation, each matter concerning each candidate or tenderer is a separate claim (Regulation art. 8, 18; Applications Communiqué art. 11). In the Communiqué’s example, alleging that the experience rules and the turnover rules in a tender document are both unlawful gives two claims.

A case against a Board decision is dealt with in “Which dispute goes to which court?” below.

Debarment from tenders

Debarment (ihalelere katılmaktan yasaklama) bars a person found to have committed a prohibited act in the tender, or in performing the contract, from all public tenders for a period. In the tender stage the prohibited acts are (Law 4734 art. 17): corrupting the process by deceit, threats, influence, bribery or similar means; unsettling tenderers, preventing participation or otherwise affecting competition; making or using forged documents or security; submitting more than one bid where alternative bids are not allowed; and taking part when barred by art. 11. Acts during performance are listed in Law 4735 art. 25, including forged documents, defective work, causing the contracting authority loss and failing to perform without force majeure.

Duration and scope. A person found to have committed a prohibited act is debarred for one to two years, depending on the act; a person on whom the tender was left but who, without force majeure, does not properly sign the contract, for six months to one year. The ban covers all public tenders, including those exempted by art. 2 and 3 (Law 4734 art. 58). For acts during performance the period is one to two years (Law 4735 art. 26). A barred person who takes part is excluded and the bid security (geçici teminat) is forfeited (Law 4734 art. 11). Where the act is also a crime, the court, besides the sentence, bars the person for a further one to three years from the end of the administrative ban, and repeat convictions lead to a permanent ban (Law 4734 art. 59; Law 4735 art. 27).

Partners and decision-maker. If the debarred entity is a partnership of persons, all partners are debarred; if it is a company of capital, partners holding more than half the capital are too. A partnership in which the debarred person is a partner, and a company of capital in which it holds more than half, are also debarred (art. 58). The ownership structure therefore sets the reach of the ban; for company shareholdings see company law. The decision is taken by the ministry that ran the tender or to which the contracting authority is related; by the head of the contracting authority where it has no such ministry; by the Ministry of the Interior for provincial special administrations; and by the Ministry of Environment and Urbanisation, as art. 58 still calls it (now the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change), for municipalities. A contracting authority that meets such a case must report it to the ministry (art. 58).

Time limit and effect. The decision must be taken within 45 days after the day the act is established, sent for publication in the Official Gazette within 15 days, and takes effect on publication; the Authority keeps a register (art. 58). In its General Communiqué the Authority treats the 45 days as a limit on the power to decide, not a disciplinary period, counts them from the day the contracting authority’s letter reaches the ministry, and says no decision can be taken afterwards (General Communiqué art. 28). That is the Authority’s own reading.

Challenging the decision. Debarment is an administrative act. The expedited procedure of İYUK art. 20/A covers tender acts “other than debarment decisions”, so the ordinary rules apply:

• The time limit is 60 days from the day after written notification (İYUK art. 7). An application to a superior authority suspends a period already running (art. 11).
• Bringing the case does not stop the decision. A stay of execution requires both hard-to-repair or impossible loss from applying it and that it is clearly unlawful (art. 27).
• Law 4734 art. 58 makes the decision effective on publication in the Gazette, but İYUK counts time from written notification. Where no notification is made, the start of the period has not been examined for this page.
• If the court stays or cancels the decision and a copy reaches the Authority, the person is removed from the register (General Communiqué art. 28).

Abnormally low tenders

After evaluating the bids, the commission identifies those whose price is abnormally low against the other bids or the approximate cost. Before rejecting one it asks the tenderer, within a time it sets, for written details of the components it considers important, and takes account of the economy of the method, the technical solutions and favourable conditions the tenderer will use, and the originality of the work. A tenderer whose explanation is found inadequate, or who gives none, has the bid rejected (Law 4734 art. 38).

Who sets the rules. The Authority sets the threshold value and the criteria for the inquiry, and in services and works tenders with an approximate cost up to half the statutory threshold it may also provide for a bid below the threshold value to be rejected without an explanation being asked for (art. 38). The implementing regulations give two options for works and services (Works Tenders Implementing Regulation art. 60; Services Tenders Implementing Regulation art. 59): an explanation is requested from bidders below the threshold value, or such a bid is rejected without one. The notice and documents state which applies. At or above half the threshold in art. 8 of the Law the first is compulsory; below that either may be used; for purchases on the Authority’s published list the second is compulsory. Goods are covered by the Goods Tenders Implementing Regulation art. 58, and General Communiqué art. 62/A applies the services rules (art. 79) to evaluating explanations. The threshold value is calculated under General Communiqué art. 45 (works) and art. 79 (services); this page gives no formulas or coefficients.

The explanation.

• Time. In works, the explanation covers the work items or groups making up 80% of the approximate cost, and the tenderer gets a reasonable time of not less than five working days (General Communiqué art. 45). In services and goods the request is on an e-form, lists the important components one by one with the same items for every tenderer, may not use vague wording such as “and other costs” or “etc.”, and allows not less than three working days (art. 79, 62/A; amendment of 9 April 2026).
• Content. In works the analyses follow the format in the tender documents and include contractor’s profit and overheads of at least 10% of the total of the analysis inputs, excluding profit and overheads (art. 45). In services, accepted methods include price quotations from third parties (art. 79).
• Reasons. In works, a rejection says which provision the explanation breached, not just article numbers (art. 45).

Challenge. Rejecting a bid as abnormally low, or accepting a competitor’s explanation, is an act in the tender process and is raised by complaint. For the fee refund, several reasons why one tenderer’s explanation breaches the rules count as one claim; a competitor’s experience and its explanation are separate claims (Applications Communiqué art. 11).

Termination and payment disputes

The contract. It may not contain terms contrary to the tender documents, can be changed only in the cases the Law lists, and gives the parties equal rights and obligations (Law 4735 art. 4). Where the Law is silent the Code of Obligations applies (art. 36). It must set out payment terms, price differences, termination and dispute resolution (art. 7). How a progress payment (hakediş) is prepared and approved, when it is paid and how objections are made are set by the contract and its annexed general specification, which have to be read; this page does not give them.

When the contracting authority can terminate (Law 4735 art. 20–22):

• The contractor does not perform in line with the documents and contract, or does not finish on time, and the situation continues after a notice of at least 10 days stating the reasons, with delay penalties applied (art. 20(a)).
• A prohibited act under art. 25 is established during performance (art. 20(b)).
• A prohibited act in the tender stage comes to light after signature (art. 21). If at least 80% of the work is done and it is in the public interest, the contracting authority may in the cases the Law lists require completion instead, collecting a penalty equal to the performance security.

On termination, with no protest needed, the performance security and any additional security are forfeited and the account is settled under the general rules. The contract is treated as terminated when the notice period ends or on the day the act is established; the contracting authority decides within seven days and notifies the contractor within five. The security is indexed to the wholesale price index from the date it was taken to forfeiture, and the difference is collected. Forfeited security cannot be set off against the contractor’s debt. The contractor is also debarred and the contracting authority’s loss recovered (art. 22, 26).

The contractor’s side. A contractor that tells the contracting authority in writing that it cannot perform for financial inability has its security forfeited and the contract is terminated (art. 19). For force majeure (natural disasters, lawful strikes, epidemics, mobilisation and similar), an extension or termination requires that no fault of the contractor is involved, that the contractor could not remove the obstacle, written notice to the contracting authority within 20 days following the date of the event, and certification by the competent bodies (art. 10). On termination for force majeure the security is returned (art. 23). Increases and decreases in the work are limited to set proportions (art. 24).

The High Technical Board. For construction works and related consultancy, the High Technical Board (Yüksek Fen Kurulu) within the ministry responsible for environment and urbanisation is competent for contract disputes on pricing of items not in the contract, inconsistency between tender documents, programme disputes, price differences, extensions of time, acceptance, delay penalties, and additional and reduced work (Law 4735 additional art. 1). Either party may apply if the dispute has not been brought before a court or the Court of Accounts. The contractor objects in writing to the contracting authority before final acceptance is completed; it forwards the objection within 30 days; the Board decides within 60 days; the contracting authority applies the decision (additional art. 2). Since 22 May 2026, cases arising from the contracting authority’s application of the decision are heard by the ordinary courts between the parties, and the procedure is to be set in a ministry regulation (additional art. 2; Law 7579 art. 25, 31). Whether that regulation has been issued has not been verified for this page.

A contractor’s claims for progress payments, receivables or damages, and other disputes from performing the contract, generally go to the ordinary courts (see the next section).

Which dispute goes to which court?

A case against a Board decision. Tender acts other than debarment follow the expedited procedure (İYUK art. 20/A):

• The time limit is 30 days, and the application to a superior authority under İYUK art. 11 does not apply. In one case the Council of State’s 13th Chamber rejected as out of time a case filed after the last of the 30 days counted from the day after the Board’s decision was notified through EKAP. It treated the date the notice reached EKAP as the date of service and did not apply the five-day rule on electronic service in the Notification Law (Tebligat Kanunu) (E.2021/1490, K.2021/2698).
• The defence period is 15 days, extendable once by up to 15; decisions on stay of execution cannot be challenged; the case is decided within one month of the file being complete.
• There is no appeal to the regional administrative court (art. 45); an appeal on points of law to the Council of State is made within 15 days of notification of the final decision (art. 20/A).
• The competent court is the administrative court where the authority that took the act sits (art. 32); the Authority’s seat is Ankara (Law 4734 art. 53).

The wrong forum costs time. In E.2022/3756 a case about termination and forfeiture based on events during performance had been decided on the merits by the administrative court under the expedited procedure; the Council of State quashed that decision because the dispute belonged to the ordinary courts. The Chamber stated that disputes from acts in the tender stage belong to the administrative courts, and disputes from applying the contract after signature to the ordinary courts. That is the reasoning of one Chamber decision, and borderline cases need to be assessed one by one.

In the ordinary courts. Which civil court has jurisdiction, and whether mediation must come before a money claim, depends on whether the case counts as a commercial case under Commercial Code art. 4 (art. 4, 5, 5/A; Mediation Law art. 18/A). That one party is a public body may affect the question, and this page does not settle it for a contractor suing a contracting authority.

Deadlines in one place

Bidders from abroad

• Participation. The Law distinguishes domestic from foreign tenderers. A price advantage of up to 15% may be given to domestic tenderers (in goods tenders, to those offering domestic goods; compulsory for goods on the list the Authority announces), and tenders below the threshold value may be restricted to domestic tenderers. A joint venture counts as domestic only if all partners are (Law 4734 art. 63). Since 31 July 2026 the President may extend these advantages, on a reciprocal basis, to tenderers based in European Union member states (additional art. 13); the United Kingdom is not one of them.
• Time limits. Time is counted in days, and the Regulation provides no extension for being abroad. Delays in the post are disregarded for applications sent by post (Regulation art. 7, 9).
• Representation. When a lawyer or other representative files the appeal, the power of attorney must list the powers one by one and include authority to use the appeal route (Applications Communiqué art. 11). For a power of attorney given abroad see giving a power of attorney from the UK.

Documents to prepare

• The tender’s name and registration number; the notice, the tender or prequalification document, and a record of when it was downloaded from EKAP.
• The complaint filed with the contracting authority, its reply and the date notified; for the Authority, proof that the fee was paid.
• Proof of authority: signature declaration or circular, joint venture declaration or agreement, and a power of attorney that covers the appeal route.
• The bid file, qualification documents, the explanation of an abnormally low bid, the analyses and the request for an explanation.
• The debarment decision, its Gazette publication, proof of notification, and correspondence from the tender and contract period.
• The contract, tender documents and general specification, progress payment reports, notices, programme of work, acceptance records, security letters, force majeure papers and written objections to the High Technical Board.