Learn how secondment and intra-group employee transfers are regulated in Turkey, including written consent, time limits, wage liability, SGK risks, foreign employee issues, data transfers, and dismissal exposure.
Introduction
Secondment and intra-group transfers in Turkey are legally possible, but they are not free-form management tools. Turkish law does not use the international business word “secondment” as a standalone statutory category. In practice, what multinational groups often call a secondment usually maps, in Turkish employment law, onto the temporary employment relationship model in Article 7 of Labor Law No. 4857, especially where an employee is temporarily assigned to another workplace within a holding or within the same group of companies. This is an inference from the statutory structure of Article 7 and the Ministry of Labour’s 2026 handbook, which describes that model as a temporary transfer of an employee to another group company for a limited period.
This matters because many employers assume that if companies belong to the same group, employees can be moved between them informally with little legal risk. Turkish law does not support that assumption. A lawful intra-group temporary transfer requires written employee consent, must be set up in writing, is subject to a time limit, and leaves important responsibilities with the original employer while also creating joint liability for the receiving company in specific areas. In other words, group structure does not eliminate employment-law boundaries.
A second reason this topic is important is that secondment problems are rarely limited to one statute. A flawed intra-group transfer may create risks under the Labor Law, the social security regime, the foreign-work-permit regime for expatriates, and KVKK for employee data sharing. If the arrangement later breaks down, it may also lead to mandatory mediation and labor-court litigation under Law No. 7036. For employers, secondment therefore requires coordinated legal planning rather than a simple HR instruction.
This article explains Secondment and Intra-Group Transfers in Turkey: Employment Law Risks for Employers in a practical, SEO-friendly format. It covers the Article 7 framework, written consent, duration limits, wage and SGK liability, management rights, cross-border expatriate issues, employee-data sharing across affiliates, termination risk, and the procedural path of disputes.
1. What “secondment” usually means under Turkish law
In Turkish legal practice, “secondment” is usually not treated as an autonomous contract type. Instead, the first question is whether the arrangement fits the temporary employment relationship model in Article 7 of Labor Law No. 4857. Article 7 recognizes two main structures: temporary employment through an authorized private employment agency, and temporary transfer of an employee to another workplace within a holding or another workplace belonging to the same group of companies. For intra-group secondments, the second structure is the relevant one.
The Ministry of Labour’s 2026 handbook supports the same reading. It explains that an employer may temporarily employ one of its workers in another workplace within the same holding or group company where that company’s business requires it or where similar work is performed there, and that the relationship can last for up to six months and be extended at most twice. This official explanation is important because it confirms that Turkish law accepts intra-group temporary transfer, but only within a narrow statutory design.
From a practical standpoint, this means a “secondment” in Turkey is not simply a business memo saying “you now work for our affiliate.” If the arrangement is intended to preserve the original employment relationship while allowing work for another group entity, employers should build it around the Article 7 model rather than assuming that group affiliation alone makes the move legally neutral.
2. The statutory conditions for intra-group temporary transfer
The core legal rule appears in Article 7 of Labor Law No. 4857. The law states that an employer may temporarily transfer an employee to another workplace within the same holding or another workplace belonging to the same group of companies, with the employee’s written consent, where that other workplace’s business requires it or where similar work is performed there. The relationship must be established in writing and may last for at most six months, and it may be renewed at most two times.
These requirements are not decorative. Written employee consent is a statutory condition, not a courtesy. Written structure is also mandatory. And the maximum duration rule matters because Turkish law is signaling that this is a temporary arrangement, not a disguised permanent reassignment. Where the transfer continues beyond what the law permits, the employer may lose the ability to describe the arrangement as a lawful secondment and may face disputes about the real employer, the true place of work, and whether the employee’s terms were unlawfully altered. That last point is a legal inference from the temporary design of Article 7 and the fact that the law caps both duration and renewal.
For employers, the operational lesson is simple: do not launch a secondment without a written secondment agreement or secondment addendum, signed by the employee, identifying the group company, the workplace, the start date, the end date, the temporary purpose, and the basic employment terms during the assignment. The statute itself does not prescribe a model template, but its written-consent and written-relationship requirements make careful documentation essential.
3. Secondment is not the same as permanent employer change or workplace transfer
One of the biggest legal mistakes employers make is confusing intra-group secondment with a permanent transfer of the employment relationship. Article 7 keeps the original employer alive inside the legal structure. The employee is temporarily assigned to work for another group company, but the statutory design does not say the employment contract is automatically transferred to the receiving company. In fact, Article 7 expressly preserves the original employer’s wage-payment duty and then adds specific areas of joint liability for the receiving employer. That structure strongly indicates that the arrangement is a temporary deployment, not a silent employer substitution. This is an inference from the text of Article 7 itself.
That is very different from the logic of a workplace transfer under Labor Law No. 4857, where the employment contracts pass to the transferee employer by operation of law. By contrast, Article 7 is built as a temporary employment relationship with written consent and limited duration. Employers who treat an Article 7-type assignment as if it were an invisible full transfer often create avoidable disputes about who the employer really is, who may terminate the employee, and who bears employment debts.
For multinational groups, this distinction matters enormously. If the business intention is a real long-term move from one Turkish company to another, the employer should not automatically rely on secondment language. It may be legally cleaner to terminate one employment relationship lawfully and establish another, or to structure the move through a different legally sustainable method. If the intention is only temporary project-based deployment, Article 7 is the more natural framework.
4. Wage payment and employment debt allocation
Article 7 allocates responsibility in a way employers often underestimate. The statute states that, in the intra-group temporary transfer model, the original employer’s wage-payment obligation continues. At the same time, the receiving employer is jointly liable with the original employer for unpaid wages arising during the period the employee works there, for the duty to protect and supervise the employee, and for social security premiums.
This is one of the most important employer-risk points in Turkish secondment practice. Some companies assume that because the employee is physically working for the receiving affiliate, the receiving company automatically takes over all employment liabilities. Others assume the opposite and treat the arrangement as if the receiving company bears no direct risk at all. Article 7 rejects both extremes. The original employer remains central, especially for wage payment, but the receiving employer is not legally invisible. It shares liability in the specific areas identified by the statute.
From a drafting perspective, this means intra-group secondment documentation should allocate cost reimbursement, payroll handling, benefit continuation, expense approval, and internal indemnity between the group companies clearly. A secondment agreement between companies may regulate who reimburses whom internally, but it cannot erase the employee-facing liability structure that Article 7 imposes. If the assignment fails and wages or premiums are unpaid, the statute already tells the employee where liability can be directed.
5. Management rights and day-to-day control at the receiving entity
Although Article 7 preserves the original employer’s wage obligation, the receiving group company usually becomes the place where day-to-day work is actually performed. That creates a practical split between the employer of record and the entity exercising operational control. Turkish law accommodates this by making the receiving company jointly liable for the duty to protect and supervise the employee during the assignment period.
This matters because secondment disputes often arise when the receiving entity behaves like the “real employer” in every operational sense, while the original employer remains responsible on paper. That split is not unlawful by itself under Article 7, but it requires disciplined management. The receiving company should know what instructions it may give, how working time and leave are tracked, how overtime is approved, how performance issues are escalated, and who is authorized to issue warnings or start dismissal steps. If those lines are unclear, the group may create internal chaos and external litigation risk at the same time. This is an inference from Article 7’s liability structure and from the broader Labor Law rules on working conditions and dismissal.
The safest approach is to define operational authority in the secondment documents. The employee should know who their day-to-day manager is, which workplace rules apply at the host company, how leave requests are handled, and which entity remains responsible for formal HR acts. Secondment works best in Turkey when the operational chain and the legal chain are both explicit.
6. Written consent is essential, and informal consent is risky
The employee’s written consent is one of the clearest statutory requirements in Article 7. That means employers should not rely on assumptions, implied acceptance, or verbal agreement. A manager’s statement that “everyone in the group is mobile” is not a statutory substitute for written consent. Nor is the employee’s mere appearance at the receiving company’s workplace enough to guarantee a legally clean arrangement later.
This is a serious risk area because intra-group transfers often happen quickly in real life. Businesses reorganize, projects expand, and executives may assume the employee will cooperate. But if the arrangement later leads to conflict, the lack of written consent can weaken the employer’s entire secondment theory. The employee may argue that the move was never lawfully agreed, that the original working conditions were altered unilaterally, or that later sanctions imposed by the receiving company lacked authority. That is a legal and practical inference from the statute’s insistence on written consent.
For employers, the safest practice is to obtain the employee’s written consent before the employee starts work at the receiving entity, not after. The secondment document should also make clear that the assignment is temporary, state its expected end date, and describe what happens when it ends. Written consent is strongest when it is informed, specific, and tied to a defined arrangement rather than buried inside generic onboarding materials.
7. Time-limit risk: a temporary transfer cannot silently become permanent
The law’s six-month duration, renewable at most twice, is one of the strongest clues that Turkish law views intra-group secondment as exceptional and temporary. A group that assigns an employee for years while still calling the arrangement a “temporary secondment” is moving away from the statutory design. The Ministry’s 2026 handbook confirms the same structure by explaining that the transfer can last up to six months and be extended at most two times.
That creates a major employer-risk point. If the real business need is long-term or permanent, but the group continues to operate through rolling “temporary” transfers, the arrangement may become difficult to defend if challenged. The employee may argue that the secondment label no longer matches the facts and that the group has effectively created a hidden permanent reassignment or a disguised employer shift. While Article 7 does not spell out every consequence of overstaying the model in this intra-group setting, the temporary structure of the law strongly supports that risk analysis.
The best employer practice is therefore to track secondment end dates as carefully as contract end dates. If the business still needs the employee after the lawful temporary period, the group should reassess the legal structure rather than simply extending the same model informally. In Turkish employment law, temporary arrangements are safest when they actually remain temporary.
8. Payroll, working time, and annual leave pitfalls
Even where the secondment itself is lawful, employers often mishandle day-to-day employment administration. Because the original employer’s wage-payment duty continues under Article 7, payroll design must remain internally coherent. At the same time, the employee is physically working under the receiving company’s operational environment, which may affect scheduling, overtime exposure, weekly rest practice, and leave usage. If the two group companies do not align these issues, the secondment can generate later wage and working-time disputes.
This is especially important under the broader Labor Law because wage, overtime, and annual-leave disputes usually require mandatory mediation before suit under Article 3 of Law No. 7036. A secondment dispute that begins as an internal mobility arrangement can therefore end as a formal labor receivables case if payroll and working-time administration are not handled correctly.
The safest operational model is one where one entity remains clearly responsible for payroll, but the receiving company supplies reliable and timely attendance, overtime, leave, and local-expense data. Secondment fails quickly in practice when payroll responsibility and operational data collection are separated without control.
9. Social security risk: SGK responsibility does not disappear inside the group
Article 7 expressly states that the receiving company is jointly liable with the original employer for social security premiums during the assignment period. That is a strong statutory warning that intra-group secondment does not sit outside the SGK system. Even if the original employer remains the main payroll employer, the receiving entity still carries legal exposure in the area the statute names.
SGK’s employer-guidance pages show how seriously the Turkish system treats employer registration and notification duties. SGK states that the employer must register the workplace, submit the employee entry notice through e-sigorta in due time, and file the monthly premium report and related notifications within the legal deadlines. In a secondment context, this means the group must make sure the statutory employer structure and the actual SGK filings remain aligned; the existence of a host company does not excuse SGK non-compliance.
From a practical perspective, employers should resist the temptation to improvise social security treatment for seconded employees. The original employer’s continuing role under Article 7 and the receiving employer’s joint premium liability mean the group should align payroll, premium calculation, and reporting from the outset. A legally elegant secondment clause is of little value if the SGK side is handled carelessly.
10. Foreign employees seconded into Turkey need separate work-authorization analysis
A particularly important risk appears where the seconded worker is a foreign national. The Ministry’s official foreign-labor FAQ states that foreigners within the scope of Law No. 6735 must obtain a work permit or work permit exemption before starting work in Türkiye, and that a residence permit alone is generally not enough. That rule applies even where the business sees the move as a group-internal temporary assignment rather than a local hire.
The Ministry’s guidance also states that foreign-worker employers and certain foreign permit holders must notify the Ministry within 15 days of the start and end of work and must fulfil social security obligations within the legal period. This means cross-border secondment into Turkey is not just a contract-management issue. It is also a work-permit and social-security compliance issue.
For employers, this is one of the easiest places to make an expensive mistake. A multinational group may assume that a short-term internal assignment can begin while paperwork follows. Turkish law does not permit that assumption safely. If the worker falls within the work-permit regime, the correct permit or exemption should be in place before work starts, and the group should also review SGK and immigration consequences at the same time.
11. Employee data sharing across group companies is not automatic
Secondment almost always involves sharing employee data between group entities: HR files, payroll data, job descriptions, performance information, access records, and often identification or contact information. Under KVKK, that data sharing is itself a processing activity that must fit the law. Article 4 requires lawful, fair, purpose-limited, and proportionate processing, while Article 5 requires either explicit consent or another lawful basis such as contract performance, legal obligation, protection of a right, or legitimate interest. Article 10 also requires proper notice to the employee.
This matters because group companies often assume that being under the same holding automatically allows unrestricted intra-group HR data sharing. Turkish data-protection law does not create such an automatic group privilege. The receiving company’s need for the data, the purpose of the transfer, the lawful basis, and the employee’s notice rights must still be assessed. Where the secondment is international, the cross-border transfer rules in KVKK may also become relevant.
The safest practice is to include HR-data handling in the secondment planning stage. Employers should determine which employee data truly need to be shared, identify the lawful basis, make sure notices cover the transfer, and limit access at the receiving entity to persons who actually need the information. In secondment arrangements, weak privacy compliance often becomes visible only when the employment relationship later deteriorates.
12. Health and safety responsibility at the host entity
Article 7’s joint-liability rule also makes the receiving company jointly liable for the duty to protect and supervise the employee during the secondment. That is highly significant because it means the host company cannot treat the seconded worker as someone else’s problem simply because the wage remains on the original employer’s payroll.
In practical employment terms, this means the receiving company should extend its workplace safety, orientation, local training, access control, and supervisory systems to seconded employees. The seconded worker is still a real worker in the host environment, exposed to the host environment’s actual risks. The host entity’s joint liability under Article 7 strongly supports the need for active protection measures.
This is especially important in industrial, logistics, construction, hospitality, and site-based roles. If the host company directs the work and controls the environment, it should act as though the worker’s safety matters operationally from day one. Group-internal paperwork will not prevent risk if the safety side of the secondment is neglected.
13. Discipline and termination are common failure points
Secondment arrangements become especially risky when performance problems, misconduct allegations, or business restructuring arise during the assignment. Turkish law does not say that the receiving company automatically becomes the sole dismissal actor simply because the employee works there day to day. Because the original employer remains central in the Article 7 model, groups should avoid ad hoc host-company termination steps without checking who the contractual employer is and how the dismissal should be structured. This is a practical inference from Article 7’s design and the original employer’s continuing obligations.
If the employee remains within the ordinary job-security regime, Articles 18, 19, and 20 of Labor Law No. 4857 may still apply to dismissal. That means written notice, clear reason, and, where required, employee defense may be necessary, and the employee may challenge the dismissal by applying to mediation within one month. The fact that the employee was seconded does not suspend those core dismissal protections.
For employers, the safest model is to define in advance which entity will conduct performance management, which entity will gather facts for disciplinary issues, and how final dismissal decisions will be taken and documented. In secondment disputes, uncertainty about who had authority to warn, investigate, or dismiss is one of the most common group-company mistakes.
14. Dispute route: mediation and labor-court exposure
If the secondment arrangement leads to wage, compensation, or termination disputes, Law No. 7036 becomes central. Article 3 states that lawsuits for employee or employer receivables and compensation arising from law or employment contracts, as well as reinstatement claims, are subject to mandatory mediation before filing suit. Article 5 states that labor courts hear disputes arising from the employment relationship between workers and employers or employer representatives.
This means secondment disputes in Turkey do not stay “internal” once they escalate. Unpaid wages, unclear bonus responsibility, severance and notice disputes, or dismissal challenges will usually move first through mediation and then, if unresolved, into the labor courts. The group structure does not displace this process. If anything, it often complicates it because the employee may argue against more than one group entity depending on how the secondment was run.
Employers should therefore draft and manage secondments as if the arrangement may later be tested before a mediator and a labor judge. Clear documents, clean consent, mapped responsibilities, and aligned payroll and SGK treatment are not administrative luxuries. They are litigation-prevention tools.
15. The most common employer mistakes
The first common mistake is treating secondment as an informal group-management decision rather than an Article 7 temporary employment relationship requiring written employee consent and written structure. The second is forgetting the six-month limit and the maximum of two renewals. The third is assuming the receiving company can take over employment responsibilities entirely, even though Article 7 keeps the original employer’s wage duty alive and creates only specific joint liabilities for the host.
The fourth common mistake is poor payroll and SGK coordination. The fifth is starting a foreign-employee secondment into Turkey without checking work-permit or exemption requirements. The sixth is sharing HR data across affiliates as if group membership automatically legalizes the transfer. The seventh is letting the receiving entity manage discipline and dismissal without a clear contractual and procedural framework.
The practical lesson running through all of these is that Turkish law permits intra-group mobility, but it expects that mobility to be organized lawfully. The more a secondment starts to look like a hidden permanent transfer, a disguised outsourcing, or a loose cross-company arrangement without consent or compliance, the more employer risk grows.
Conclusion
Secondment and intra-group transfers in Turkey are legally workable, but only within a structured framework. In Turkish practice, a secondment usually maps onto the Article 7 temporary employment relationship for group companies. That model requires written employee consent, must be established in writing, is limited to six months with at most two renewals, keeps the original employer’s wage obligation alive, and creates joint liability for the receiving company in unpaid wages during the assignment, employee protection duties, and social security premiums.
For employers, the biggest risks are not theoretical. They arise from informal transfers, weak documentation, overstaying the temporary model, poor payroll and SGK alignment, ignoring foreign-work-permit rules for expatriates, careless intra-group data sharing, and unclear dismissal authority. The safest Turkish secondment model is the one that treats the assignment as both a business project and a legal project from the beginning. In short, secondment inside a group may look operationally simple, but under Turkish employment law, it works safely only when the paperwork, timing, consent, liability allocation, and compliance architecture all match the statute.
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