Employer of Record in Turkey: 17 Providers Compared (2026)

Employing someone in Turkey: key facts

Employment runs on Labour Law 4857, social security on Law 5510, and every lira figure below is nominal: Turkey is a high-inflation currency and we apply no USD conversion to time series.

Minimum wage

One national rate, no regional variation, set under Labour Law Art. 39 and published in Resmi Gazete 2025-12-26 No. 33119.

The ministry table stops at 2025, so the 2026 figure comes from the circular’s text as reproduced by alomaliye.com. We found no mid-year 2026 raise, only press speculation.

Employer contributions

Employer shares of monthly insurable earnings (PEK) for a private-sector employee insured under Law 5510 Art. 4(1)(a), 2026. PEK is floored at the gross minimum wage (TRY 33,030) and capped at 9 times that, TRY 297,270 a month (TRY 9,909 a day), up from 7.5 times in 2017-2025.

The discount is 2 points for employers outside manufacturing from 2026-01-01 (4 points in February-December 2025, 5 before). Manufacturing keeps 5 points through 2026-12-31. It is conditional: monthly documents filed, premiums paid on time and no SGK premium or penalty debt, with instalment plans allowed.

Employer-paid private health or BES pension premiums up to 30% of the minimum wage a month, and a meal allowance up to TRY 300 a day where no meal is provided, are excluded from PEK (Law 5510 Art. 80(b), checked 2026-10-05).

Working hours and overtime

• Maximum 45 hours a week, spread equally over the working days unless agreed otherwise; by agreement up to 11 hours a day with a two-month averaging period (four months by collective agreement). One uninterrupted 24-hour weekly rest day (Labour Law Art. 63, 46, checked 2026-10-05).
• Overtime above 45 hours is paid at the hourly wage plus 50%, or at the employee’s request as 1 hour 30 minutes of time off per hour, used within six months. Hours between a contractual week under 45 hours and 45 are paid at plus 25% (Art. 41, checked 2026-10-05).
• Total overtime may not exceed 270 hours a year per employee (Overtime Regulation Art. 5, checked 2026-10-05).

Annual leave and public holidays

Paid leave starts after one year of service, probation included. Contracts may give more (Labour Law Art. 53-56, checked 2026-10-05).

Holidays and weekly rest days falling inside the leave are not counted as leave days. Under Law 2429 the fixed full-day holidays are 1 January, 23 April, 1 May, 19 May, 15 July, 30 August and 29 October (the last starts at 13:00 on 28 October), plus Ramazan Bayrami (3.5 days) and Kurban Bayrami (4.5 days), each starting at 13:00 on the eve; their dates move each year (Law 2429, checked 2026-10-05).

Probation

• A probation clause of up to 2 months; a collective agreement can extend it to 4 months.
• Either side may terminate during probation without notice and without compensation.

Source: Labour Law Art. 15, checked 2026-10-05.

Notice and severance

Minimum notice for open-ended contracts applies to both sides and can only be lengthened by contract. Pay in lieu is allowed (Labour Law Art. 17, checked 2026-10-05).

• Job security: in workplaces with 30 or more employees, staff with 6+ months’ seniority need a valid reason for dismissal; the remedy is reinstatement or 4 to 8 months’ wages (Art. 18, 21, checked 2026-10-05).
• Kıdem tazminatı: after at least one year with the same employer, and a legally listed way of ending the contract (per a law-firm summary: dismissal without just cause, or resignation for recognised reasons such as unpaid wages), 30 days’ gross wage per full year, pro-rated for part years (Mondaq, checked 2026-10-05).
• Cap per year of service: TRY 64,948.77 from 2026-01-01 to 2026-06-30 and TRY 73,729.87 from 2026-07-01 to 2026-12-31, reset each January and July (Cott Group, checked 2026-10-05). Severance up to the cap is exempt from income tax; stamp tax applies.
• It accrues as an employer liability and is not part of the contribution totals on this page.

13th salary and bonuses

No statutory 13th or 14th salary. Bonuses (ikramiye) exist where the contract, a collective agreement or company practice provides them; we found no statutory bonus provision in the Labour Law text (Labour Law Art. 32, checked 2026-10-05).

Mandatory benefits

• Social security: the employee is registered with SGK for pension, health and unemployment cover (contributions above).
• Parental leave: from 2026-05-01, maternity leave is 8 weeks before and 16 weeks after birth (24 weeks) and paid paternity leave is 10 days (Labour Law Art. 74, Ek Madde 2, checked 2026-10-05).
• Other paid leave: 3 days for marriage or the death of a close relative.
• Disability quota: employers with 50 or more employees must employ 3% disabled staff in the private sector (Art. 30).

Work permits

• Foreigners may not work in Turkey without a work permit (Law 6735 Art. 6, checked 2026-10-05).
• The first permit is tied to a named employer and workplace, valid up to one year, with extensions to 2 and then 3 years. The Ministry of Labour and Social Security decides, with a 30-day target from a complete file. Permanent and Turquoise Card routes exist for long-term residents and qualified workers.
• Whether an EOR can act as the sponsoring employer is not stated in the law and is not confirmed by any ministry or law-firm source we found.
• A law firm reports employer-side criteria (TRY 500,000 paid-in capital and five Turkish employees per foreigner, with exceptions said to apply from 2026-08-03); we could not verify these against the Resmi Gazete (Mondaq, checked 2026-10-05).

Currency and payroll

• Wages are paid in Turkish lira (TRY), at least once a month; a contract or collective agreement can shorten the period to a week. A foreign-currency wage may be paid in TRY at the rate on the payment day (Labour Law Art. 32, checked 2026-10-05).
• Wage claims are time-barred after five years.
• Indicative rate: 1 USD = 48.9699 TRY (CBRT bulletin 2026/186 of 2026-10-02) (tcmb.gov.tr, checked 2026-10-05). It is a point-in-time figure.

Is Employer of Record legal in Turkey?

Grey area. Neither the Labour Law (4857) nor the SGK Law (5510) mentions an employer of record. A Turkish entity that is the genuine employer under its own contract and registers the worker with SGK is an ordinary employment relationship. The question is what happens when a foreign client directs that worker as its own staff. No court decision, regulator statement or law-firm opinion on cross-border EOR was found, and whether Art. 7 reaches a foreign client with no Turkish workplace is untested in the sources we reached. This section is a reading of the statutes, not an authority’s position (Labour Law 4857, checked 2026-10-05).

The rules that matter:

• Art. 7, supply of workers: a temporary employment relationship may be set up only through a private employment bureau permitted by İŞKUR, or inside a group of companies by secondment. In the bureau route the bureau is the employer and the user employer directs the work.
• Listed grounds only: replacing employees whose contracts are suspended; seasonal agricultural work; domestic service; intermittent work outside the daily business; urgent health and safety work; an unforeseeable rise in production capacity; seasonal-type workload peaks.
• Time limits: for the duration of a suspension, or without limit for agricultural and domestic work; otherwise at most 4 months, renewable twice, never beyond 8 months in total (workload peaks excluded). The same job cannot go to temporary staff again for six months.
• Group secondment: needs the worker’s written consent, lasts at most six months and can be renewed twice; the receiving employer is jointly liable for wages, duty of care and premiums for the period worked there.
• Art. 90: mediation between job seekers and employers is carried out only by İŞKUR and the bureaus it permits.
• Art. 2, principal and sub-employer: a sub-employer may take over auxiliary work, or part of the main work only where the business and technology require specialist expertise. A sham (“muvazaa”) arrangement is treated as if the sub-employer’s workers were the principal employer’s from the start, and the principal employer is jointly liable with the sub-employer (Law 5510 Art. 12 adds the social-security side).

An open-ended, full-time EOR placement does not fit the Art. 7 grounds or time limits. What remains is the ordinary-employer reading, with the characterisation risk below.

Risks for the client:

• If the arrangement is held to be a sham sub-employer relationship, the worker is treated as the client’s employee from the beginning, with pay, seniority and severance consequences, and the client is jointly liable for wage, contract and SGK obligations.
• If a temporary placement continues after its term, an open-ended contract is deemed to exist directly between the user employer and the worker.
• Acting as an employment intermediary without the Art. 90 permit carries an administrative fine under Art. 106; the current amount was not determined.
• Registered sub-employer relationships are reviewed by labour inspectors; a finding of muvazaa can be challenged within 30 working days in the labour court.

Who actually employs your hire in Turkey

Turkey’s company registry (Türkiye Ticaret Sicili Gazetesi, ticaretsicil.gov.tr) requires a login, so we could not search it, and no vendor has a registry record in our data. Everything below rests on what each vendor says on its own pages. “Own entity” means the vendor states, or defines itself as, an owner of a Turkish entity; global-only claims count as not disclosed.

All pages checked 2026-10-05. Several vendor pages were read from web.archive.org snapshots.

Thirteen of the 17 do not say who employs your hire in Turkey, and none of the four that do could be confirmed in a registry. Atlas rests on a definition and Justworks on a list archived a year ago. That matters because Art. 7 turns on who the employer is and what permit it holds, and none of the vendor pages we checked states an İŞKUR permit. Before signing, ask for the legal name and MERSIS number of the Turkish entity that will sign the contract, and for the provider’s written legal position on Art. 7.

How to choose an EOR in Turkey

Want the strongest entity evidence? Deel and Remote make first-person statements about owning a Turkish entity. Deel also publishes a Turkey fee, but Remote’s $699 is a global list price. Atlas and Justworks rest on weaker evidence: a definition and an archived list.

Hiring a foreign national? No law or ministry source we found says an EOR can be the work-permit sponsor. Remote People says it sponsors permits under Law 6735, and Rivermate says an EOR can sponsor work visas; both are vendor claims. Native Teams offers relocation services including work permit and visa support. Ask for a named case, not a feature list.

Price or completeness? Turkey-page prices are Playroll from $399, Skuad $199 (promo), Borderless AI $579, Remote People $300-600 and Atlas $299-699. The rest quote global rates or none. Oyster says a refundable deposit is required, amount unpublished; Remote states no EOR setup fee, RemoFirst no setup, onboarding or termination fees, and Rivermate no onboarding costs.

How fast? Stated onboarding times range from 1-2 business days (Borderless AI) through 5 to 10 business days (Playroll) to one to two weeks (Atlas, Remote People, Safeguard Global). Deel’s page gives three different figures, from 1 to 3-5 business days. These are vendor claims.

What it costs to employ someone in Turkey through an EOR

The EOR is the legal employer, so contributions apply at their standard rates. The basis: a non-manufacturing employer, a private-sector IT or office employee, 12 monthly salaries and no bonus, with the 2-point State discount applied as a separate line because it is conditional on timely filing and payment and on having no SGK debt. The 5-point manufacturing discount is not applied.

Source: Law 5510, checked 2026-10-05. FX: 1 USD = 48.9699 TRY, CBRT, 2026-10-02.

The lower salary of TRY 204,166.67 a month is under the TRY 297,270 cap, so the base is the whole salary. The higher one is TRY 408,333.33 a month, so the base is capped at TRY 297,270 x 12 = TRY 3,567,240. Not included: kıdem tazminatı accrual (30 days’ wage per year of service, capped at TRY 73,729.87 per year in H2 2026), leave and bonus costs, and any collective-agreement terms. Remote People says it accrues kıdem tazminatı monthly.

The EOR’s own fee is on top. Published prices run from $99 to $699 per employee per month. Turkey pages state Skuad $199 (promo against a $349 list price), Atlas $299-699, Remote People $300-600, Playroll from $399 and Borderless AI $579; the rest are global list prices, from Native Teams at $99 to Remote and Oyster at $699. Deel prices Turkey in lira: TRY 285,938 per worker per year (about TRY 23,828 a month), against a global list price of $599. Rippling is quote-based; G-P and Safeguard Global publish no price.

Hidden costs, where published: Deel’s own cost table shows TRY 0 for one-off EOR costs. Remote states no EOR setup fee. RemoFirst states no setup, onboarding or termination fees and no minimums. Rivermate states no onboarding or offboarding costs. Oyster states no setup or termination charges but requires a refundable deposit, amount unpublished. Remote People states no setup fees, no lock-in and zero deposit, though one plan is worded “hire 5+ employees with no deposit”, which suggests a deposit may apply to smaller deals. Everywhere else, blank means unpublished, not zero.

When you don’t need an EOR

• A genuinely independent contractor. If the person works on their own terms and you do not direct them as staff, a contractor avoids the employer questions above. See how to hire contractors in Turkey and how to pay them; on the line between the two, see contractor misclassification.
• A licensed bureau for short, listed needs. For the Art. 7 grounds, such as replacing a suspended employee, an İŞKUR-permitted bureau is the statutory route: up to 4 months, renewable twice, 8 months at most.
• Your own Turkish entity. For an open-ended role you direct, an entity makes you the direct employer, so no third party stands between you and the worker. Vendors put the cost of setting one up at 8 to 12 weeks and $8,000 to $15,000 (Playroll’s estimate) or 20+ weeks (Deel’s claim); both are vendor figures.

What changed in 2026

• 2026-01-01: employer MYÖ share rises from 11% to 12% (Law 7566).
• 2026-01-01: insurable-earnings ceiling raised from 7.5 to 9 times the minimum wage: TRY 297,270 a month.
• 2026-01-01: State support on the employer MYÖ share cut from 4 points to 2 for employers outside manufacturing; manufacturing keeps 5 points through 2026-12-31.
• 2026-01-01: gross minimum wage TRY 33,030 a month, up 27.01% from TRY 26,005.50.
• 2026-01-29: minimum-wage support of TRY 42.33 per premium day for insured people with prior-year daily earnings up to TRY 1,300 (Law 7573); not applicable to the salaries above.
• 2026-04-17: employer-paid private health and BES premiums up to 30% of the minimum wage, and meal allowance up to TRY 300 a day, are excluded from insurable earnings (Law 7577).
• 2026-05-01: maternity leave becomes 24 weeks and paid paternity leave 10 days, up from 5 (Law 7578).
• 2026-07-01: severance ceiling reset to TRY 73,729.87 per year of service, from TRY 64,948.77.
• 2026-08-01: Law 7590 repealed two paragraphs of Law 5510 Art. 81 and removed “Devlet katkisi” from its heading; the rates used on this page are unchanged in the consolidated text, and we did not read the repealed paragraphs.

Sources: Law 5510, SGK Genelge 2026/1, Labour Law 4857, Cott Group, checked 2026-10-05.

Numbers vendors haven’t updated

• Minimum wage: Deel’s Turkey page gives TRY 26,005.50 gross a month, the 2025 rate. Remote and RemotePass give TRY 33,030, the rate in force since 2026-01-01.
• Employer contribution rate: vendors state 18.75% (Deel), 20.5% (RemotePass), 22.5% (Oyster), 22.75% (Remote People), 23.75% or 21.75% (Playroll) and roughly 20 to 24% (Skuad). For a non-manufacturing employer, Law 5510 gives 23.75% before and 21.75% after the conditional State discount.
• Severance ceiling: Deel’s page gives a cap of TRY 41,000 a month “for 2025” and Oyster’s gives TRY 6,730.15 a year; the cap is TRY 73,729.87 per year of service from 2026-07-01.
• Public holidays: vendors count 7 (RemotePass), 14 (Remote) and 15 plus 2 half days (Deel). Law 2429 lists 7 fixed full-day holidays plus Ramazan Bayrami (3.5 days) and Kurban Bayrami (4.5 days), so the count depends on how the religious holidays are counted.
• Parental leave: Rivermate, RemoFirst and Boundless give 5 days of paternity leave and RemoFirst and Remote 16 weeks of maternity leave; since 2026-05-01 they are 10 days and 24 weeks.

Sources: vendor pages linked in the table above, Law 5510, Law 2429, checked 2026-10-05.

How we built this page

Data was collected and checked on 2026-10-05 against statutes (Labour Law 4857, Law 5510, Law 6735, Law 2429), the CBRT and ministry publications, with law-firm summaries named where used. Turkey’s company registry needs a login, so we could not check any vendor’s entity there; entity status rests on what vendors state on their own pages, and several of those pages were read from archived copies. Providers are ordered with stated own entities first, then those that do not disclose, by Turkey-specific price and completeness of data. Nobody pays for placement on this page.