A 90-person renewable-energy contractor headquartered in Ataşehir, İstanbul, wins two solar projects at once, one near Konya and one in İzmir. It needs a finance manager who can report under IFRS in English, and twelve field technicians who can start before the construction season. The operations team reuses an old Kariyer.net template: “25–35 yaş arası, askerliğini yapmış erkek adaylar”, candidates aged 25–35, men who have completed military service. Within a day the HR consultant flags it, because age and sex filters in an advert sit badly with Law No. 6701 and invite a complaint to the national equality institution.
The reworded advert brings a strong finance candidate. In the first call she asks only about the net monthly salary, whether that net figure is guaranteed against tax-bracket creep, and whether there is a July raise. She has nine years with her current employer, so resigning means giving up a severance entitlement (kıdem tazminatı) worth several hundred thousand lira. The technicians come through İŞKUR, eleman.net and foremen’s referrals, but two drop out over the lack of a company shuttle (servis). Hiring in Türkiye is fast, relationship-driven and full of details a Western playbook misses.
Türkiye has about 86 million people, a young and educated workforce, a manufacturing base tied into European supply chains, and white-collar pools in İstanbul and Ankara that multinationals increasingly use for regional roles. It also has high inflation, net-negotiated salaries, severance rules that act like golden handcuffs, and equality and data laws that local habits have not caught up with. This playbook covers the clusters, the 2026 platforms, lawful advert wording, and how notice and kıdem shape start dates.
It completes the European series in our Finding the Right Person hub. There is no Expat HR compliance guide for Türkiye yet, so we cover the foreign-hire basics here. Before you start, work through the 50 questions to answer before opening a job posting.
- İstanbul, Kocaeli and Bursa form the deepest industrial and professional corridor. Ankara leads on defence, public sector and technoparks, İzmir on trade, food and renewables, and the Anatolian manufacturing cities on skilled blue-collar work.
- Kariyer.net is the dominant job board, with LinkedIn essential for white-collar and English-speaking roles. Yenibiriş and Secretcv add reach, eleman.net and İşin Olsun cover blue-collar and SME hiring, and Youthall covers graduates.
- Candidates negotiate in net monthly lira. The 2026 minimum wage is 33,030 TL gross and 28,075.50 TL net, and raises are often expected twice a year.
- Age, sex and military-service filters in adverts are still common in practice, but Law No. 6701 and KVKK make them a legal risk.
- Statutory notice is two to eight weeks, but a senior candidate who resigns forfeits accrued kıdem (30 days’ gross pay per year, capped at 73,729.87 TL per year from July 2026). That changes the offer conversation.
Five clusters, one corridor and a long industrial tail
İstanbul is the centre of gravity: head offices, banking and insurance (with the İstanbul Finance Centre in Ataşehir), consulting, e-commerce, logistics and globally successful mobile-game studios. The European side around Maslak and Levent and the Asian side around Ataşehir and Kozyatağı are almost separate labour markets, and a daily Bosphorus crossing is a deal-breaker for many candidates.
East of the city, Kocaeli is the most industrialised province, with the Gebze industrial zones hosting chemicals, automotive and R&D teams. Bursa is the automotive capital, with vehicle makers, a deep supplier base and textiles. The three cities form a corridor where engineers and plant managers move between employers and poaching is routine.
Ankara is different again. Ministries and public banks sit beside the defence industry and university technoparks, making it the place for systems and electronics engineers, many of whom prefer stability to salary. İzmir combines ports, food processing and renewables with a quality of life that attracts professionals. The “Anatolian tigers” such as Konya, Kayseri and Gaziantep run export manufacturing, and Antalya hires seasonally for tourism.
Two forces shape 2026. TÜİK data shows headline unemployment in the high single digits and youth unemployment roughly double that, so entry-level applications are plentiful. Meanwhile many experienced doctors, engineers and developers have moved abroad or work remotely for foreign employers, so for senior tech talent you compete with euro and dollar salaries. Tools such as our passive candidate sourcing guide matter more here than in most markets.
Where Turkish candidates actually look
Turkish candidates use local platforms heavily, and the blue-collar and white-collar markets are clearly separated. The table reflects the market in November 2026. Prices are sold as advert packages, credits or subscriptions and change with inflation, so the cost column describes the model only.
For a finance or engineering role in İstanbul, Kariyer.net plus LinkedIn is the core, with Yenibiriş or Secretcv for extra reach. For technicians and operators, use İŞKUR plus eleman.net or İşin Olsun plus referrals from your foremen, which are often the fastest channel of all. For software developers, LinkedIn, GitHub and local developer communities and hackathons beat any board. The job boards by country directory and channel decision matrix help you balance the mix.
İŞKUR, SGK and the incentives that change the cost of a hire
İŞKUR, the Turkish Employment Agency, is free for employers. You post through its employer portal (e-Şube), and job counsellors pre-screen registered job seekers. Its on-the-job training programme (İşbaşı Eğitim Programı) lets you train registered unemployed people at your workplace while İŞKUR pays their allowance and insurance, so many employers use it as a structured trial before hiring.
Disability employment is a hard obligation. Private employers with 50 or more workers must employ disabled workers for at least 3% of their workforce. According to a June 2026 Mondaq briefing, the 2026 administrative fine is 37,748 TL for each missing worker for each month. İŞKUR is the practical channel for these hires, and keeping records of your requests and interviews helps if a fine is ever challenged. The state covers the employer’s social security share at minimum-wage level for disabled employees in the private sector, which makes many of these hires close to cost-neutral.
SGK, the Social Security Institution, is where compliance bites: the start-of-employment notification (işe giriş bildirgesi) must reach it no later than the day before work begins. Premium incentives can cut the cost of a hire. For women, men aged 18–29 and vocational-certificate holders, the Unemployment Insurance Fund covers the employer’s premium share for 6 to 54 months, depending on the profile, for additional hires of people unemployed for six months, made up to 31 December 2026. Ask your payroll adviser (mali müşavir) what applies before the offer.
Agencies, referrals and the power of the network
Recruitment agencies must hold an İŞKUR licence as private employment offices (özel istihdam büroları), and unlicensed brokering carries 2026 fines of more than 340,000 TL, so check the register before you sign. Contingent fees commonly run at about 15–25% of annual gross salary at the time of writing, often quoted as two to three months’ pay. Temporary agency work is allowed only in listed situations and for limited periods. Compare terms using our agency fees by country guide.
Referrals carry unusual weight in a business culture built on trust networks (tanıdık, someone known to you). They are fast but can slide into favouritism, so pay bonuses after probation and assess referred candidates against the same scorecard, as our referral programme guide explains. Campus recruiting peaks in spring, and large employers run management-trainee programmes with tests, English assessments and assessment centres.
Writing a Turkish advert: age, sex and military service versus the law
Turkish adverts have long specified age ranges (“25–35 yaş”), sex (“bay” or “bayan”), completed military service (“askerliğini tamamlamış”) and sometimes appearance or district. Many still do, and the practice is out of line with the law. Article 5 of Labour Law No. 4857 sets an equal-treatment principle for the employment relationship. Law No. 6701, which created the Human Rights and Equality Institution of Türkiye (TİHEK), goes further. It prohibits discrimination on grounds including sex, race, colour, language, religion, belief, ethnic origin, marital status, health status, disability and age, and it explicitly covers job applications and recruitment. TİHEK handles complaints and can impose administrative fines.
In practice, describe the job, not the person. Replace an age range with the experience the role needs (“at least five years in project finance”). Drop sex unless there is a genuine occupational requirement. Replace “military service completed” with a question about availability for the start date, since the real concern is a male candidate being called up mid-contract. Adverts that state an explicitly disability-quota position (“engelli kadro”) are lawful and encouraged.
Pay works differently too. No law requires a salary in Turkish adverts, Türkiye is not bound by the EU Pay Transparency Directive, and most adverts carry none. But candidates think in net monthly lira, and they will ask in the first call. Because income tax brackets are cumulative over the year, a gross salary yields a lower net figure in later months as earnings cross higher brackets. Many employers therefore promise a fixed net salary and absorb the difference, while others pay gross and let net pay vary. Decide which you offer, and say so. With inflation still high, candidates also ask when raises happen (often January and July) and whether bonuses are paid as extra salaries (ikramiye). Benefits are part of the comparison: a meal card or canteen, private health insurance, the company shuttle (servis) in industrial zones, and the private pension (BES). Our pay-band question set works in lira as well as euros.
KVKK, references and the checks candidates expect
The Personal Data Protection Law (KVKK, No. 6698) applies from the moment a CV arrives. You must give candidates an information notice (aydınlatma metni) explaining what you collect, why, how long you keep it and who receives it, including foreign group companies and ATS providers abroad. Since the 2024 amendments, cross-border transfers have needed a recognised mechanism such as standard contracts notified to the Authority. Turkish CVs traditionally include a photo, date of birth, marital status and military-service status. Accept them if candidates send them, but do not ask for them: data minimisation applies, and requiring them feeds the discrimination risk above. Health data and criminal records are special categories of personal data. Ask for a criminal-record certificate (adli sicil kaydı, easily downloaded from e-Devlet) only where the role justifies it, and delete what you no longer need.
The process is usually quicker than in Western Europe: two or three interviews, often an English test at larger companies, and a reference call that candidates expect. The SGK service record (hizmet dökümü), printed from e-Devlet, verifies employment dates with consent. The table summarises the checkpoints.
Notice, kıdem and the counter-offer that comes with them
Article 17 of the Labour Law sets notice by length of service: two weeks under six months, four weeks up to eighteen months, six weeks up to three years, and eight weeks beyond that. The periods apply to both sides and can be lengthened, but not shortened, by contract. During notice the employer must give the employee at least two hours a day of paid time to look for a new job. Either side can end the employment immediately by paying the notice amount (ihbar tazminatı) instead. So on paper, Türkiye has the shortest notice periods in this series.
The real constraint is severance. Under the long-standing rules on kıdem tazminatı, an employee with at least a year’s service is generally entitled to 30 days’ gross pay, including regular benefits, for each year worked. The entitlement applies when the employer terminates (except for just cause), on retirement, for military service, for women within a year of marriage, and in a few other cases. Each year counts at no more than the official ceiling, which according to Kariyer.net is 73,729.87 TL for July to December 2026. An employee who simply resigns to take another job generally loses the entitlement. A finance manager with nine years’ service and a salary above the ceiling is therefore walking away from roughly 9 × 73,729.87 ≈ 663,600 TL by resigning. That is the most important number in many senior Turkish hiring negotiations.
Candidates typically try a mutual termination (ikale) with a payment, ask you for a sign-on bonus to offset part of the loss, or wait for a natural exit. Counter-offers are common because the current employer knows what the candidate gives up. Plan around that negotiation rather than the eight-week statute, and have the hiring manager call personally during the notice period.
Hiring foreign nationals, or hiring Turkish talent from abroad
To employ a foreign national in Türkiye, the employer applies online to the Ministry of Labour and Social Security for a work permit. The criteria generally expect several Turkish employees per foreign hire (five is the usual benchmark), capital or turnover thresholds, and a salary set as a multiple of the minimum wage. Exemptions and the Turquoise Card exist, and the criteria change periodically, so check with a local adviser. There is no Expat HR compliance guide for Türkiye on kurums.com yet, so start with our Expat HR and Global Mobility hub for the wider framework.
The more common scenario in 2026 is the reverse: a foreign company hiring Turkish talent to work from Türkiye. You will need a local entity, an employer of record or a compliant contractor structure, plus Turkish payroll, SGK registration and a KVKK-compliant process. Compare the routes in hiring in a country where you have no entity and our employer of record comparison. If you are building a nearshore team across the region, read this alongside the Poland playbook and the Germany playbook.
The Türkiye question set
Use these questions as your gate before any Turkish advert goes live. Several of them would never come up in a Western European playbook.
If you are comparing Türkiye with EU locations for a new team, the UK, France and Germany playbooks show how different the notice and pay-disclosure picture is. For screening once applications arrive, use the CV screening question set.
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