A detailed legal guide to cross-border employment and international HR legal risks in Turkey, covering applicable law, foreign work permits, social security, detached workers, remote work, data transfers, and employer compliance.
Cross-border employment is no longer limited to classic expatriate assignments. Turkish companies hire foreign nationals in Türkiye, send employees abroad for projects, manage regional teams across several countries, use foreign payroll and HR systems, and operate hybrid or remote work models with international elements. Each of those models creates legal risk. In Turkey, those risks usually sit at the intersection of employment law, immigration law, social security law, occupational health and safety, and data protection. That is why cross-border employment and international HR legal risks should be treated as a structured compliance topic, not merely as an administrative mobility issue. (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı)
The core Turkish sources are clear enough, but they do not operate in isolation. Labour Act No. 4857 governs the employment relationship and many mandatory employee protections. Law No. 6735 on International Labour Force governs foreign work authorization. SGK rules govern registration, exit reporting, and temporary assignment under social security agreements. KVKK governs employee and candidate data, including cross-border HR data flows. The Remote Work Regulation governs remote working arrangements, including data-protection and equipment rules. On top of that, the Constitutional Court’s 2024/187 decision changed the conflict-of-laws landscape for employment contracts with a foreign element, which makes old assumptions about choice-of-law clauses unsafe in 2026. (natlex.ilo.org)
Why cross-border employment is legally different
A domestic employment relationship usually asks one main question: what does Turkish labour law require? A cross-border employment relationship asks several additional questions at the same time. Which law governs the contract? Is a work permit or exemption required? Which social security system applies? Can HR data be stored or accessed abroad? Does remote work from another country change the legal analysis? And if the relationship ends, which procedural protections still apply? In practice, employers often answer only one of those questions and assume the rest will follow. Turkish law does not reward that approach. (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı)
A common example is a foreign national hired by a Turkish employer. Some employers focus only on the employment contract and forget work authorization. Others obtain the work permit but ignore social security registration timing or data-transfer issues. In remote and hybrid structures, the opposite often happens: the employer treats the relationship as a digital services arrangement and misses the labour-law and immigration consequences entirely. The practical risk is not one big error. It is several medium-sized legal errors accumulating in the same employment file. (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı)
Applicable law after the Constitutional Court’s 2025 change
One of the most important current developments in this field is the Constitutional Court’s decision numbered E.2023/158, K.2024/187. The decision was published in the Official Gazette on 10 March 2025, and the Court expressly annulled Article 27(1) of Law No. 5718, with the annulment entering into force six months after publication. That means the annulment took effect on 10 September 2025. The same decision rejected the challenge to Article 27(2).
This matters because the annulled paragraph had allowed parties to choose the law governing employment contracts, subject to the employee’s minimum protection under the law of the habitual workplace. After the annulment, employers should be much more cautious about assuming that a foreign-law clause in a cross-border employment contract will safely control the whole relationship. In a 2026 decision, the Constitutional Court also referred back to that annulment and emphasized the continuing importance of the “closer connection” analysis and the law of the habitual workplace in foreign-element employment disputes.
For HR, the practical result is significant. Legacy contracts that rely heavily on a broad foreign-law choice clause should be reviewed. As of April 2026, employers should not assume that simply naming another law in the contract will neutralize Turkish protective rules where the employee’s habitual workplace or the contract’s closer connection points toward another legal order. In cross-border employment, conflict-of-laws analysis is now more sensitive than many multinational templates assume.
Even before the annulment, the older text of Article 27 treated the employee’s habitual workplace as central and stated that temporary work abroad did not change the habitual workplace, while employees working constantly in several countries could be linked to the law of the employer’s main workplace, subject to a closer-connection rule. The Constitutional Court’s later reasoning kept those default-structure ideas relevant. In practice, this means HR should distinguish between a true foreign posting, temporary work abroad, and a genuinely multi-country role. They do not create the same applicable-law risk.
Foreign work permits in Türkiye
For foreign nationals working in Türkiye, work authorization is a threshold issue. The Ministry of Labour states that a residence permit is generally not sufficient to work legally in Türkiye and that a work permit or work permit exemption is required, except for certain protected statuses. The Ministry also states that, in general, a work permit or work permit exemption substitutes for a residence permit, although some categories such as temporary protection and certain international-protection statuses are treated differently. (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı)
The Ministry’s official materials also show that Türkiye recognizes several permit types under Law No. 6735, including fixed-term work permits, permanent work permits, and independent work permits. Separate exemption categories also exist under the implementing regulation. This matters because not every cross-border hire should be forced into the same application structure. The legal route depends on the person’s status, duration, role, and whether an exemption applies. (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı)
Procedure matters as much as entitlement. The Ministry states that domestic applications are generally available where the foreigner already has a valid Turkish residence permit of at least six months, while foreign applications are made in two stages: first through the Turkish embassy or consulate, then through the employer’s application in the electronic permit system using the reference number generated abroad. This means the employment start date should never be promised casually. Start timing depends on the correct channel and completion of the permit process. (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı)
HR should also know that work-permit approval is not purely discretionary in practice; the Ministry publishes evaluation criteria that are operationally important. The current criteria state, as a general rule, that at least five Turkish citizens should be employed for each foreign worker in balance-sheet-based workplaces. The same criteria also set salary floors by role, such as five times gross minimum wage for top managers and pilots, four times for engineers and architects, three times for other managers, and two times for specialized or skilled work, while also listing sectoral and role-based exceptions, including for certain IT positions. These are current administrative rules, so they should be checked case by case rather than assumed from old practice. (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı)
This is one of the main international HR legal risks in Turkey: contract signing does not equal right to work. A company can have a well-drafted cross-border employment contract and still be noncompliant if the foreign national starts work before the permit or exemption is in place, or if the employer assumes a residence permit alone is enough. In a legal review, immigration compliance should be treated as a first-day issue, not an after-hiring cleanup item. (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı)
Social security and detached-worker risk
Cross-border employment also raises social security questions that many employers address too late. SGK’s employer-obligations guidance confirms that insured-entry declarations and exit declarations remain core employer duties. That matters even more in international structures because assignment timing, contract-end timing, and foreign-worker onboarding frequently become misaligned. (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu)
For outbound assignments from Türkiye, SGK uses the concept of temporary assignment to a treaty country. SGK defines this as a situation where an insured person working under Article 4/1-(a) for an employer in Türkiye is sent by that employer to a country that has a social security agreement with Türkiye for a specific job and a specific period. SGK’s current country list shows that Türkiye maintains temporary-assignment mechanisms with many agreement countries, including Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Poland, Switzerland, and others. In practical terms, that means a Turkish employee sent abroad may not always need to exit the Turkish social security framework immediately if the posting falls within the relevant treaty mechanism and certificate process. (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu)
This is a major HR risk area because companies often focus on immigration and ignore treaty-based social security coordination. That can lead to double contribution exposure, reporting errors, or incorrect assumptions about coverage continuity. A cross-border employment review should therefore ask not only “Where will the employee work?” but also “Which social security system applies during that period, and is there a temporary-assignment path under an agreement country?” (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu)
Remote work across borders
Cross-border employment increasingly appears in remote or hybrid form. The Turkish Remote Work Regulation defines remote work as a written employment relationship in which the employee performs all or part of the work outside the workplace using technological communication tools, and it requires remote-work contracts to be in writing. The Regulation also requires the contract to specify the work, how it is performed, duration and place of work, wage rules, employer-provided equipment, communication methods, and the general and special conditions of work.
This matters because cross-border remote work is often treated as if it were legally lighter than a physical assignment. In reality, the Regulation makes clear that remote work still requires formal written structuring. It also imposes specific employer duties on equipment, work-related costs, communication rules, overtime procedure, data protection, and OHS measures. The employer must inform the remote worker about data-protection and data-sharing rules, define the protected data scope in the contract, and take the necessary measures to protect those data. The employer must also inform the worker about OHS measures, provide training, ensure health surveillance, and take equipment-related safety measures.
For international HR teams, this means a Turkish employment relationship does not become legally lighter just because the employee performs work outside the traditional workplace or partly from another country. On the contrary, remote work may multiply legal issues by combining working-time compliance, data-transfer questions, equipment obligations, and applicable-law uncertainty. Cross-border remote work should therefore be documented more carefully, not less.
HR data transfers abroad
Global HR operations almost always involve cross-border data movement. Candidate files, payroll information, performance records, disciplinary documents, work-permit files, and internal reporting data are often stored in foreign systems or accessed by regional HR teams abroad. Under current KVKK Article 9, personal data may be transferred abroad if one of the conditions in Articles 5 or 6 is met and there is an adequacy decision. In the absence of an adequacy decision, transfer may still be possible if the Article 5 or 6 condition is met, the data subject retains enforceable rights and effective legal remedies, and one of the recognized safeguards is used. (KVKK)
This is not theoretical. The Personal Data Protection Authority specifically announced in 2024 that Article 9 had been amended and that English translations of the new by-law and standard contract texts for cross-border transfers were made available. That matters a great deal for international HR because it means older assumptions about consent-based transfer or informal group-company sharing are no longer enough. Cross-border HR systems should now be checked against the amended Article 9 framework and the available safeguard models. (KVKK)
The risk is especially high where multinational groups treat Turkish employee data as if they were freely available to foreign headquarters, regional shared-service centers, or global platforms. A Turkish HR file may involve ordinary personal data, but it may also include special category data such as health information, union data, disciplinary material, or criminal-record information connected to work-permit or compliance issues. The more sensitive the file, the more important it becomes to identify the exact legal basis, transfer route, and access limits. (KVKK)
OHS and role assignment in cross-border work
Cross-border employment is also an occupational health and safety issue. Law No. 6331 places a general duty on the employer to ensure the safety and health of workers in every aspect related to work. It requires preventive measures, organization, information, training, and risk assessment, and it requires health surveillance before assignment and in other specified situations. That matters in cross-border employment because international work often involves travel, relocation, remote work, hazardous environments, or changing equipment and work processes. (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı)
The legal point here is simple: internationality does not dilute the employer’s OHS obligations. If anything, it tends to increase them. A company sending employees abroad, hiring foreign specialists into Turkish operations, or moving employees into remote international roles should treat OHS review as part of mobility planning, not as something left to the receiving manager after start date. (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı)
What HR should review before using a cross-border model
A sound HR review in this field should start with the employment model itself. Is this a Turkish employment contract with a foreign employee working in Türkiye, a Turkish employee posted abroad, a multi-country employee, a remote worker spending time abroad, or a foreign contractor misclassified as something other than an employee? Each model raises a different combination of risks. After that, the employer should review applicable-law assumptions, work authorization, SGK registration and treaty coordination, payroll timing, remote-work documentation, OHS planning, and data-transfer architecture. (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı)
The second review point is document design. Global templates often assume wide party freedom over choice of law, permit timing, handbook changes, post-employment restrictions, or privacy notices. In Turkey, those assumptions can be wrong. The 2025 Constitutional Court annulment alone is enough reason to re-check older cross-border contract forms. A company should also ensure that its work-permit offer letters, remote-work addenda, privacy notices, and assignment letters are aligned rather than contradictory.
The third review point is internal coordination. Cross-border employment fails most often when legal, HR, payroll, IT, and business units work in parallel instead of in sequence. The business promises a start date, HR drafts the contract, payroll assumes local registration, legal assumes foreign-law protection, and IT uploads the file to a foreign system. That is exactly how separate compliance failures accumulate. A good cross-border HR process should have one intake, one classification, and one sign-off path before work starts. (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı)
Conclusion
Cross-Border Employment and International HR Legal Risks in Turkey are best understood as a layered compliance problem. Work authorization under Law No. 6735, social security timing and treaty-based temporary assignment under SGK rules, remote-work structuring, OHS duties, and KVKK transfer rules can all apply to the same employee at once. Added to that, the Constitutional Court’s 2025 annulment of Article 27(1) of Law No. 5718 has made older conflict-of-laws assumptions less reliable, especially for contracts that once relied heavily on party choice of law. (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı)
For employers, the safest conclusion is clear: cross-border employment should never be treated as a standard HR file with a foreign address attached. It requires a separate legal review of governing law, permit status, social security coverage, data movement, remote-work structure, and role-specific risk. Companies that build that review into their hiring and mobility process usually avoid the biggest problems. Companies that treat international work as an administrative afterthought often discover that the real legal risk was never the border crossing itself, but the assumptions made before it. (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı)
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