Cheques and Promissory Notes in Türkiye: A Foreign Operator's Risk Guide

If you run a Turkish subsidiary, one habit will surprise you: a large share of B2B trade still settles with cheques and promissory notes — and very often post-dated cheques used as a credit instrument. Treated casually, they are the single biggest liquidity risk on your balance sheet. This guide explains how the instruments work, the legal exposure of a bounced cheque, and what your finance team must control.

Cheque vs promissory note

Both are negotiable instruments, but their logic differs:

• A cheque (çek) is a payment instrument drawn on a bank, expected to be paid from the drawer's account when presented. In Turkish practice it is frequently post-dated and circulated as a short-term credit tool.
• A promissory note (senet/bono) is a written promise to pay a fixed amount on a fixed date; no bank is required.

Crucially, both can be endorsed — you can transfer a cheque you received to your own supplier. That is exactly where tracking gets hard.

Four states every instrument can be in

A cheque or note in your hands can be in one of four states, and each has different accounting:

1. In portfolio: received from a customer, still held — a receivable to be collected at maturity.
2. Endorsed: transferred to a supplier as payment. No longer in your portfolio, but you are not fully off the hook — as endorser you can be pursued if it bounces.
3. Given for collection / as collateral: handed to a bank for collection or pledged as loan security.
4. Your own issued (payable): you drew it; you must pay at maturity.

Confusing these four is the most common error. If the same cheque drifts between "endorsed?", "collateral?", "collected?", both your cash plan and your books go wrong.

The real game: a maturity calendar

The heart of managing these instruments is the maturity calendar. You must see, on one timeline, the maturities of cheques you will collect alongside the maturities of cheques you must pay. The only question that matters is: "Against the cheque I must pay in 15 days, will the receivable I collect by then be enough?"

If the match fails, you have three options: pull collection forward, push payment back, or arrange bridge financing (e.g., a cheque-backed loan). You can only see which is needed if the maturity calendar is complete and accurate — which is exactly where scattered spreadsheets mislead finance teams.

Bounced cheques: real legal exposure

If a cheque you received bounces, it is not just a collection problem — it opens a legal process. Under Cheque Law No. 5941:

• The person who causes a "non-payment" record on a cheque presented within the legal presentation period faces, upon the holder's complaint, a judicial fine of up to one thousand five hundred days for each cheque.
• The judicial fine cannot be less than the unpaid amount of the cheque.
• The complaint window is limited: the holder must complain within 3 months of the non-payment record. Miss it and the criminal route is closed.
• If the judicial fine is unpaid, it can be converted directly into imprisonment.
• Effective remorse: if the debtor pays the unpaid amount with legal interest in full, the criminal consequences are lifted.

As of 2026, no new legislation altering this has entered into force; the system largely operates as above. For you as the creditor, the practical lesson is simple: don't miss the dates — especially the 3-month complaint window.

Note: this section is general legal information. For any actual cheque dispute, consult a Turkish lawyer.

Reducing the risk before you accept a cheque

You cannot eliminate bounced-cheque risk, but you can reduce it:

• Set a customer risk limit. Cap each customer's open balance plus cheques; route new cheque acceptance to approval when the cap is breached.
• Track drawer history. Prior delays or dishonoured cheques from the same drawer should be visible at the point of acceptance.
• Watch maturity and counterparty concentration. A collection calendar over-dependent on one day or one customer is fragile.

End-to-end tracking in your ERP

The real gain of moving cheque/note management from spreadsheets to an ERP is seeing an instrument's whole lifecycle in one place: who it came from, its current state (portfolio/endorsed/collection/collateral), its maturity, its bank, and the accounting entry it produces when realised.

The Birasyo Finance module tracks every cheque and note you hold or issue by state, and shows the maturity calendar alongside collections and payments so you see a cash gap before it arrives. On the accounts side, each instrument is linked to its customer/supplier, making the risk limit and drawer history visible on one screen. When a cheque bounces, you already hold the record and dates — so you don't lose time against the legal deadlines.

Summary

Managed well, cheques and notes strengthen your cash flow; managed badly, they are your biggest liquidity risk. Track the four states separately, view the maturity calendar with collections and payments together, and never miss the legal deadlines on a bounced cheque — especially the 3-month complaint window. These three disciplines remove most cheque-related surprises.

---

Sources: Cheque Law No. 5941 (in particular Arts. 5 and 6) — the offence of issuing a bad cheque, the judicial fine, the complaint period and effective-remorse provisions. This section is general information; consult a Turkish lawyer for specific cheque disputes.