Pro bono in Turkey: a missing piece in access to justice

Barış Öztürk

TelePerformance, Istanbul

baris.ozturk@teleperformance.com

Introduction

Access to justice in Turkey remains a persistent and under-examined problem. A 2007 national survey found that only 18.5 per cent of urban residents had ever retained a lawyer, citing the cost as a primary barrier. A 2022 EşİD survey reported that 73 per cent of those who experienced a rights violation sought no remedy. Turkey consistently ranks near the bottom of the region in the World Justice Project’s (WJP) Rule of Law Index in regard to the accessibility and affordability of civil justice.

The difficulty is not that Turkish law expressly forbids lawyers from acting without payment. It is that the rules governing fees, professional monopoly and publicity were designed for a conventional market for legal services, not for organised public interest volunteering. Article 164 of the Attorneyship Law prohibits lawyers from agreeing to fees below the minimum attorney fee tariff: a rule designed to prevent unfair competition and protect the economic dignity of the profession. Yet pro bono, by definition, involves providing legal services without charge. In short, the same rules that protect lawyers’ commercial interests make it structurally difficult to act outside them, not because lawyers are unwilling, but because the regulatory architecture has not clearly left room for them to do so.

The legal framework governing pro bono

Article 164 of the Attorneyship Law draws a distinction critical to pro bono: charging below the minimum tariff is a disciplinary offence, while taking a case free of charge is not, provided the bar association is notified. A Turkish Bar Association Disciplinary Board decision confirmed this: silence on gratuitous services was deliberate, not accidental. Unpaid legal work is permissible, but this permissive space is narrow, informal and unstructured.

In practice, this distinction leaves lawyers in an uncertain position. A lawyer may know that taking a case gratuitously is not the same as undercutting the tariff, but the absence of a recognised pro bono category means that unpaid work is still treated as an exception to be justified rather than as a legitimate professional activity. The notification requirement also frames pro bono as an irregular departure from normal fee practice, rather than as part of an organised access-to-justice framework.

Two other provisions add to the uncertainty. Article 35 grants lawyers a broad professional monopoly over legal services, including opinions, advice and document preparation. Leaving non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and university legal clinics uncertain as to whether providing general legal guidance exposes them to professional objections. Article 55 prohibits advertising and client solicitation, which in practice discourages law firms from publicly announcing their pro bono programmes, since the line between professional visibility and solicitation is unclear. The result is not a ban. It is a regulatory environment where pro bono is opaque, under publicised and institutionally underdeveloped.

Structural and institutional barriers

The deeper obstacle is cultural rather than legal. With some important exceptions in moments of crisis, Turkish bar associations have not yet developed a permanent pro bono infrastructure comparable to the referral, brokerage and recognition mechanisms seen in some other jurisdictions. The profession’s regulatory energy has gone elsewhere: fee tariffs, licensing, overcrowding and advertising restrictions. Without a normative frame that separates pro bono from underpriced legal work, unpaid services tend to be viewed with suspicion, as a potential threat to the tariff regime rather than a regulated complement to it.

A further source of confusion is the distinction between pro bono and state-administered legal aid. Turkey does have a legal aid mechanism. The Ministry of Justice funds legal assistance for individuals who cannot afford representation, primarily in criminal proceedings, through the framework established under the Criminal Procedure Code (Ceza Muhakemesi Kanunu or CMK). Bar associations administer this scheme by assigning lawyers (typically newly admitted or junior practitioners) to cases on a rotational basis. Assignment fees are set by the Ministry and are widely considered to be inadequate. It is mandatory, compensated and state directed. It is legal aid, not pro bono. Conflating the two obscures the gap and sustains the comfortable misperception that the problem is already being handled.

The same uncertainty affects civil society and legal education. University legal clinics and rights-based NGOs may be well placed to identify unmet legal needs, but their role remains fragile where the boundary between general legal information and reserved legal advice is unclear. This is especially important in areas such as discrimination, migration, disability rights, consumer disputes and disaster-related claims, where individuals often need early guidance before formal representation becomes realistic. Without a safe channel linking clinics, NGOs, bar associations and volunteer lawyers, these institutions operate in parallel rather than as parts of a coordinated access-to-justice ecosystem.

The 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquake illustrated this gap in practice. The Turkish Bar Association mobilised hundreds of volunteer lawyers across affected provinces to preserve evidence, provide legal information and assist those affected. The response was real and significant. But it left no lasting structure: no referral system, no definition of eligible work, no framework for bar associations, law firms, NGOs and clinics to cooperate beyond the crisis.

The lesson is straightforward: professional willingness exists. But willingness alone does not build a system. What is missing is precisely the mechanism the previous sentence describes: one that can register, refer, supervise and sustain volunteer capacity outside a crisis.

Other models, other lessons

Pro bono does not grow from goodwill alone. It grows when institutions give it structure, language and a place within professional culture.

Brazil’s system started from resistance. As recently as the early 2000s, the Brazilian Bar Association (Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil or OAB) treated organised pro bono by law firms as ethically suspect. Sustained internal advocacy changed that position. In 2015, the OAB adopted Provimento No. 166/2015, formally defining pro bono as free, occasional and voluntary legal assistance to non-profit institutions and individuals who are unable to afford representation. Turkey is already ahead of where Brazil started: its law does not prohibit unpaid work. The obstacle is the absence of institutional will and regulatory design, not an outright prohibition.

Other models offer further tools. The American Bar Association’s Model Rule 6.1 establishes an aspirational benchmark of 50 pro bono hours per lawyer per year, linking professional status to public obligation. England and Wales relies less on formal obligations and more on coordination: LawWorks and Advocate broker volunteer lawyers to clients and NGOs, while the Attorney General’s Pro Bono Recognition List (which in 2025 recognised 4,780 lawyers) demonstrates that visibility can itself be an institutional incentive. Australia’s National Pro Bono Target links voluntary benchmarks to public procurement: firms seeking federal legal work must report their pro bono performance. The pattern is consistent: pro bono becomes reliable only when it is defined, coordinated, measured and recognised.

For Turkey, reform should begin with the Attorneyship Law. Article 164 should be amended to provide an explicit statutory basis for pro bono, distinguish unpaid public interest work from fee undercutting and replace the notification requirement with a workable documentation procedure. Article 35 should be clarified to allow NGOs and supervised university clinics to provide general legal information without triggering professional monopoly objections. Article 55 should also permit legitimate pro bono visibility, the public announcement of related programmes and opportunities, while continuing to prohibit client solicitation.

Law reform is a start. But it is not enough. Bar associations must lead: establishing pro bono committees, maintaining referral lists, publishing guidance and recognising pro bono hours. Corporate legal departments could also play a practical role. In-house lawyers may not always be positioned to represent individuals directly, but they can help build partnerships between companies, law firms and civil society organisations, support legal information projects and encourage external counsel to treat pro bono as part of professional services rather than occasional charity work. Law schools should introduce supervised clinical programmes and credit-bearing pro bono placements, making public service a visible part of legal education before students enter practice.

Conclusion

Pro bono in Turkey does not lack a legal basis. The Attorneyship Law already permits lawyers to undertake unpaid work. What it lacks is the necessary architecture: a definition, an institutional home and a norm that separates pro bono from the commercial floor the tariff exists to protect.

Turkey’s 2025–2029 Judicial Reform Strategy acknowledges pro bono for the first time as a policy objective, referring to ‘public-interest (pro bono) legal services’ under its access-to-justice pillar. That reference matters. But a mention is not a framework. The strategy does not define eligible pro bono work, address the minimum fee tension or assign a coordinating role to bar associations.

The access-to-justice gap cannot be closed by pro bono alone. State-funded legal aid remains indispensable, and the state cannot shift that responsibility onto individual lawyers or private firms. But this is not an argument against pro bono: it is an argument for regulating it properly. A structured pro bono system would complement, not replace, legal aid by reaching those the existing system cannot serve. Turkey has the lawyers, the legal need and now, at least, policy-level recognition that the issue deserves attention. What remains is the will to act on it.