Compulsory Traffic Insurance (ZMSS) in Türkiye: Coverage Limits, Exclusions and Who Covers the Rest

Compulsory traffic insurance in Türkiye carries coverage limits, and those limits — not the size of the loss — decide how much the insurer actually pays. Anything above them still has to come from somewhere: the vehicle keeper, the driver, an employer, a voluntary excess policy, or, where there is no insurer at all, the Assurance Account. This guide sets out what the compulsory policy pays, what it leaves out, when the insurer pays the victim and then recovers the money from the driver, and who is left holding the balance.

What compulsory traffic insurance in Türkiye actually is

Compulsory traffic insurance (zorunlu mali sorumluluk sigortası, or ZMSS) is the liability policy every motor vehicle keeper in Türkiye must hold under the Highway Traffic Act (Karayolları Trafik Kanunu) No. 2918, and it pays injured third parties rather than the insured.

The cover attaches to the vehicle and to its keeper (işleten), not to one named driver. Anyone driving lawfully with the keeper's consent is covered for the liability they create towards other people.

It is not the same thing as kasko, the voluntary own-damage policy. Kasko repairs the insured's own car; ZMSS pays the people and property that car harms.

Article 91 of Act No. 2918 makes the cover mandatory for every vehicle registered for road use. A vehicle without a valid policy can be stopped and taken off the road by an administrative fine and impoundment, and the keeper remains personally liable for everything the missing policy would have paid.

For foreign claimants this is usually the first source of money after a crash. How the underlying claim is built is covered separately in our overview of road traffic accident compensation.

The four coverage limits on a ZMSS policy

A ZMSS policy does not carry a single limit — it carries four, and each one caps a different part of the claim.

The figures behind these headings are reset periodically by the insurance regulator and published with the General Conditions for the cover. They are deliberately not reproduced here, because a figure copied from an older source is worse than no figure at all.

What matters is which figures apply. The limits that count are those written on the policy in force on the day of the accident, not the ones published afterwards.

Where several people are injured in one crash, the per-accident bodily injury cap can be exhausted before any single claimant is paid in full. Claimants are then reduced proportionally, which is why a multi-victim accident often needs a claim outside the policy as well.

Medical treatment costs sit apart from all of this. Since a 2011 amendment to Article 98 of Act No. 2918, the treatment expenses of traffic accident victims are met by the Social Security Institution (SGK), funded from a share of ZMSS premiums, and are not claimed against the insurer's own limit.

What the compulsory policy does not cover

Some losses fall outside compulsory traffic insurance completely, and Article 92 of Act No. 2918 is where the exclusions are listed.

The main ones in practice are:

• Damage to the insured vehicle itself — that is what kasko is for.
• Goods and property carried in the insured vehicle.
• Claims the keeper brings against the people he is legally answerable for.
• Property claims by the keeper's spouse, ascendants and descendants, adopted children and siblings living in the same household.
• Accidents in motor racing events and racing trials, which need their own cover.
• Claims for non-pecuniary damages (manevi tazminat).

The General Conditions add the usual catastrophe exclusions, such as war, nuclear risk and similar events. These are policy-level carve-outs and apply whoever the claimant is.

The non-pecuniary head deserves a sentence of its own, because claimants often assume the opposite. Claims for non-pecuniary damages sit outside the compulsory cover under Article 92 of Act No. 2918, so this part of the loss is pursued against the persons legally liable for the accident rather than against the compulsory insurer, unless a voluntary policy has been taken out that answers for it.

An excluded head of loss is not an unrecoverable one. It simply moves from the insurer to the person who is legally liable, which changes who is sued and how the figures are built. See how compensation is calculated in Türkiye for the calculation side.

Alcohol, no licence, intent: the insurer pays first and recovers later

If the driver was intoxicated, unlicensed or caused the crash deliberately, the insurer still pays the innocent third party — and then turns on the driver or keeper to recover what it paid.

The reason is Article 95 of Act No. 2918. Defences arising from the insurance contract or from the law cannot be raised against the injured third party, so the victim's claim survives the driver's misconduct.

The General Conditions then give the insurer a right of recourse (rücu) against the responsible side. The recognised grounds typically include:

• Driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
• Driving without a valid licence, or without one of the correct class for the vehicle.
• Causing the damage intentionally.
• Leaving the scene of the accident.
• Using the vehicle outside the purpose permitted by law, such as carrying dangerous goods without authorisation.

Recourse is not automatic. Under settled Turkish case law the insurer must show a causal link between the ground it relies on and the accident itself, and the burden of proving that link sits with the insurer.

Recourse is also capped. The insurer can claim back what it actually paid, no more, and its own recourse claim is subject to a limitation period that starts running from the date of payment.

When the damage exceeds the limit, who covers the rest

Anything above the policy limit is not written off — it remains a personal debt of the people the law makes liable for the accident.

Article 85 of Act No. 2918 places strict liability (kusursuz sorumluluk) on the vehicle keeper (işleten). Where the vehicle is operated under the trade name or the business name of an enterprise, or with a ticket issued by that enterprise, the owner of that enterprise (teşebbüs sahibi) is jointly and severally liable together with the keeper. No fault needs to be proved against them; operation of the vehicle is enough.

The keeper, and the enterprise owner where the article brings one in, also answer for the fault of their own driver and of the auxiliary persons involved in the use of the vehicle as if it were their own fault. The driver's personal liability rests on fault under the general law of tort. In practice claimants sue the keeper, the driver and the insurer together, and the liable side answers for the excess above the limit.

Where the driver was working, Article 66 of the Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098 makes the employer liable for damage caused by the employee in the performance of the work. For a company fleet this is often the deepest pocket in the case.

Article 86 gives the liable side a narrow escape route: force majeure, or the gross fault of the injured party or of a third party, provided the keeper shows no fault on the part of himself or of those he is responsible for. Contributory fault reduces the award rather than removing it.

Many keepers also carry voluntary excess motor liability cover (ihtiyari mali mesuliyet, or İMM), which sits on top of the compulsory policy. Checking whether an İMM policy exists is one of the first practical steps in any large claim, and our traffic accident compensation tool shows how quickly serious injury figures pass the compulsory layer.

No insurer at all: the Assurance Account (Güvence Hesabı)

If the vehicle was uninsured, was never identified, or the insurer itself has collapsed, the claim moves to the Assurance Account (Güvence Hesabı) established under Article 14 of the Insurance Act No. 5684.

The situations it is designed for are:

• The vehicle causing the accident cannot be identified, as in a hit-and-run.
• The vehicle had no valid compulsory policy.
• The vehicle had been stolen or hijacked and the keeper is not liable.
• The insurer's licence has been cancelled or it has become insolvent.

The Account is a safety net, not a wider cover. It pays within the same compulsory limits that would have applied, and in the unidentified-vehicle case it is directed at bodily injury rather than damaged property.

Because the scope differs between these situations, the exact head of loss recoverable from the Account should be confirmed for the specific facts before a claim is built around it.

How a claim is made, and by when

A claim under compulsory traffic insurance starts with a written application to the insurer, not with a lawsuit.

Article 97 of Act No. 2918 requires the injured party to apply to the insurer in writing before going to court. The insurer has fifteen days at the most to answer in writing.

If no answer arrives within that period, or the answer does not meet the claim, the claimant may then file a court action or apply to the Insurance Arbitration Commission (Sigorta Tahkim Komisyonu) under Article 30 of Act No. 5684. Arbitration is generally the faster of the two routes for insurance disputes.

The application is only as strong as the file behind it. The accident report (kaza tespit tutanağı), the criminal investigation file, medical and disability reports, proof of income and, in fatal cases, the inheritance documents are what turn a claim into a number.

Time limits come from Article 109 of Act No. 2918. The claim is barred two years after the injured party learns of both the damage and the person liable, and in any event ten years after the accident. The ten-year period is not an absolute ceiling, however: where the accident arises from an act that is also a criminal offence and the criminal law lays down a longer limitation period, that longer period applies to the compensation claim as well.

Because the starting point is knowledge rather than the crash date, and because the criminal limitation period can displace the ordinary ones altogether, the arithmetic is rarely obvious. Our limitation deadline checker is a useful first pass before assuming a claim is out of time.

Points that catch foreign claimants out

Foreign claimants usually lose value not on the law but on the mechanics of the claim, and three points recur.

The first is the vehicle's plate. A foreign-plated vehicle will normally be covered through the international Green Card system rather than a Turkish ZMSS policy, and the claim is handled through the Turkish motor insurance bureau that administers that system.

The second is documentation. Foreign medical reports, income evidence and death or inheritance documents generally need certified Turkish translation, and often an apostilleApostilApostilleA certificate added to a public document in its own country so that it is accepted as genuine in Türkiye, without consular legalisation.Glossary →, before an insurer or arbitrator will act on them.

The third is representation. Claims are pursued in Turkish, awards are made in Turkish lira, and a power of attorney issued abroad has to be drawn in a form Turkish institutions accept. Preparing that early avoids losing months at the fifteen-day application stage.

None of this changes the substance of the claim. It changes how long the claim takes, which matters when the two-year period under Article 109 is already running.

Frequently asked questions