Your Trademark Can Be Attached but Is Not on the Collateral List: The Asymmetry Inside Law 6183

Legislative Note: This article was prepared as at 16 August 2026 on the basis of Law 6183 on the Procedure for the Collection of Public Receivables (art. 3, 10, 11, 16, 48, 56, 62, 63, 70, 77, 79, 81), Law 6769 on Industrial Property (art. 23, 148), Law 6102 Turkish Commercial Code (art. 128, 342, 581), Law 5520 Corporate Income Tax Law (art. 5/B), Law 213 Tax Procedure Law (art. 269), Law 2577 on Administrative Procedure (art. 7, 10), Presidential Decision No. 11414 (Official Gazette 13.06.2026-33279) and Council of State rulings. It is revised periodically as implementing communiqués are updated.

In May 2019 a tax office attached two registered trademarks. The dispute travelled all the way to the 3rd Chamber of the Council of State and was decided in 2024 — and nobody in the file ever asked “can a trademark be attached?” The only question argued was who owned the trademarks at the moment of attachment.

Had the owner of that same trademark wanted to pay the tax debt in instalments the following year and said “I am offering my trademark as collateral”, the wording of the statute would have been waiting. Law 6183 clearly covers the same asset on the attachment side; on the collateral list it says nothing about intangible rights. Whether the trademark falls outside that list or was simply never written into it — I found neither a provision nor case law settling the question.

The 60-Second Summary

• The attachment side is clear: art. 62 says “from movable property and immovables, receivables and rights”. A trademark is a right, and it is not among the property listed as unattachable in art. 70.
• The collateral side is narrow: art. 10 first paragraph subparagraph (5) says only “movable and immovable property attached on the basis of an attachment order”. Intangible rights are absent from the wording — and no ruling says the trademark is excluded either.
• In immovable collateral the Council of State looks for two elements: attachment plus publicity (9th Chamber E.2023/6576, K.2024/1615). The TÜRKPATENT register can technically perform the publicity function of the land registry; but this is an analogy, and the ruling is not about trademarks.
• Where the trademark is already attached the wording is not against you: art. 48 says “attached property” without qualification, and art. 3 defines that term to cover “all kinds of rights and receivables” — I could not find a ruling applying the provision to a trademark, but the argument is stronger here.
• The collateral-free deferral threshold is TRY 10,000,000, maximum term 72 months. Collateral is required for half of the excess.
• The valuation problem is shallower than assumed: art. 81 regulates expert appraisal in attachment, and that route is in actual use for immovables.

Does the tax office really attach trademarks?

In the case underlying Council of State 3rd Chamber, E.2023/6796, K.2024/5309 (14.10.2024), a tax office attached two registered trademarks of a debtor over an uncollected public receivable. The first-instance summary records it this way: the trademarks were attached “by the defendant administration on 02/05/2019 due to tax debts”, “before the assignment agreements were registered with the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office Register”.

The dispute was not about whether a trademark can be attached. The court found the attachment unlawful on the ground that a notarised assignment agreement suffices to transfer ownership, while registration “is significant for the exercise of the powers arising from trademark registration”; the Council of State upheld it.

The scope basis for attachment sits in two places: Law 6183 art. 62 provides that “so much of the debtor’s movable property and immovables, receivables and rights as suffices for the public receivable” shall be attached, and Law 6769 art. 148/1 expressly states that an industrial property right may be attached. In the Council of State ruling it is established that the tax office attached the trademarks; the text, however, does not detail how the annotation was entered in the register — we will see that procedure in the Court of Cassation ruling below. The paragraph added to art. 77 in 2009 describes a comparable procedure: “Attachment of movable property recorded in an official register may also be effected by notifying the office keeping the register so that it is entered in the register.” But no ruling has established that this provision applies directly to trademarks, or that the annotation constitutes the attachment; the resemblance remains at the level of analogy.

The picture is the same on the private-law side. In Court of Cassation 12th Civil Chamber E.2022/8298, K.2022/12172 the enforcement office is recorded as having “entered an attachment annotation on the trademarks in the register”, followed by a sale request and advance procedures. So the enforced sale of a trademark is not a theoretical debate but a functioning procedure.

The asymmetry inside the statute

Turn to the collateral provisions and the picture changes. Art. 10 lists five subparagraphs, and the fifth reads: “Movable and immovable property offered by the parties concerned or by third parties on their behalf and attached by the creditor public administration on the basis of an attachment order.”

The phrase “receivables and rights” is absent here. Yet the definition article of the same statute, art. 3, opens the term “property” as follows: “Movable and immovable property ‘including ships’, together with all kinds of rights and receivables”. When the legislator says “property” it means rights too — but art. 10/1-(5) does not say “property”; it qualifies it as “movable and immovable property”.

The only red line in that table is the collateral line. The statute attaches the trademark, builds a dedicated mechanism for converting rights into money, keeps it off the unattachable list, and shows how to appraise it — yet does not mention it on the collateral list.

Whether this is a deliberate legislative choice or a gap left over from 1963 cannot be read off the wording. The favourable reading says the definition in art. 3 must apply to art. 10 as well. The unfavourable reading argues the legislator deliberately used two different formulations in the same statute, saying “rights” in art. 62 and not saying it in art. 10/1-(5). Let me be clear — I could not reach a ruling that answers this question. Across six separate phrase searches, no decision emerged holding that a trademark, or any intangible right, either counts or does not count as collateral under art. 10. That is not a full case-law inventory but the result of a search run with particular selectors. Even so, the silence says something: the issue has not been pressed hard enough in practice.

What the Council of State looks for in immovables, and does it carry over to trademarks?

The 9th Chamber of the Council of State has defined precisely how collateral comes into being for immovable property. From E.2023/6576, K.2024/1615 (28.03.2024):

“…for the immovable offered as collateral to acquire the status of collateral it must be attached by the creditor public administration on the basis of an attachment order; the attachment notices issued for immovables offered as collateral were issued on account of the need to provide publicity in order to prevent the loss of rights that may arise where the immovables are transferred to bona fide third parties, and they form part of the act of accepting collateral.”

There are two elements in that reasoning, which is confined to immovables: attachment and publicity. Attachment creates the collateral; publicity protects it against third parties. The Council of State is not establishing an abstract test for all art. 10 collateral here; it is resolving the immovable dispute in front of it.

Legislation in force shows a trademark could satisfy both elements. Law 6769 art. 148/1: “An industrial property right may be assigned, may pass by inheritance, may be the subject of a licence, may be pledged, may be shown as collateral, may be attached or may be the subject of other legal transactions.” The fifth paragraph of the same article establishes the ground for publicity: rights arising from legal transactions not entered in the register cannot be asserted against bona fide third parties.

And here is the limit of the analogy. The ruling does not decide whether a trademark falls within the phrase “movable and immovable property” in art. 10/1-(5). What can be built is an analogy: the trademark register is structurally capable of performing the publicity function of the land registry. But attachment and publicity having been achieved does not on its own clear the subparagraph’s category requirement — these are separate thresholds, and the second remains open.

That the legislator did not add trademarks when it updated the collateral list should also be recorded: the second subparagraph of art. 10 was amended in 2022 to bring indefinite and unconditional surety bonds issued by insurance companies onto the list. The list was opened, and intangible rights were left out again.

The real lock: valuation, or the wording?

The administration’s reflex here is predictable: “Who will determine the value of the trademark, and how?”

The statute already answers that on the attachment side. Art. 81: “Attached property shall be appraised by the officer effecting the attachment; upon the debtor’s application or where the collection office deems it necessary, it shall be appraised again by an expert.”

There is a ruling showing this provision has not stayed on paper. In the case underlying Council of State 3rd Chamber, E.2022/1721, K.2024/5836 (12.11.2024), a third-party company offered its own immovable as collateral against the tax debts of a debtor company; the administration entered an attachment annotation on the title deed on the basis of a letter of consent; and at the sale stage it was noted that “an expert real-estate valuation report was prepared for the immovable given as collateral”. So the chain runs: letter of consent → attachment annotation → expert appraisal → sale.

The ruling concerns an immovable; it does not show that a trademark can be valued. What it shows is more modest: the administration can resort to an expert report when appraising property offered as collateral — at least it did in this case. One ruling does not make “routine practice”, but the defence that “the administration is unfamiliar with such a process” does not survive it either. The links of that chain — consent, annotation, expert — can technically be assembled for a trademark too. The method of trademark valuation and which report the administration would accept, however, rest on no verified practice.

The genuine difficulty of valuation lies elsewhere, and a distinction is needed here. Law 213 art. 269 values intangible rights at cost. For a trademark you acquired by paying a price there is a cost value and it appears in the books. For a trademark you grew in-house through advertising and use over the years the position differs: although direct costs such as registration and legal transaction fees may enter the records, the value the trademark has gained in the market finds no place in the books.

For the second situation the Turkish Revenue Administration has a narrow but clear view. In the ruling of the Eskişehir Tax Office Directorate dated 26.07.2012, the answer given to a taxpayer who wished to capitalise, under the heading “trademark rights”, advertising expenditure it had previously expensed and then amortise it, was: “it is not possible for the advertising expenditure incurred by your company to be capitalised under the heading of trademark rights and amortised.” That is the whole scope of the ruling: advertising expenditure already expensed. It does not address how other cost items such as registration, assignment or legal transaction fees are to be treated; and a ruling produces protective effect only for its addressee.

The upshot: your trademark’s market value may be TRY 40 million while its book value is either close to zero (if you grew it yourself) or the net amount remaining after accumulated amortisation is deducted from an assignment price paid years ago (if you bought it). In both cases the book value does not indicate the collateral value — and the figure you present to the administration having no counterpart in your own records tells you in advance where the first objection will come from.

The Commercial Code and tax law treat the same asset in two different ways. Law 6102 art. 342 accepts intellectual property rights as contributions in kind — on condition that they are “free of any limited right in rem, attachment or injunction”. Art. 128/2 then requires those rights to appear in the articles of association “at values determined by an expert” and to be entered in a special register. Commercial law has an expert set a value when a trademark is contributed as capital; tax law stays at cost under Law 213 art. 269 and says nothing about trademarks on the collateral list. So the problem is not that “tax law does not value the trademark”; it is that the value it sets has no bearing on collateral value, and that art. 10 contains no valuation rule specific to trademarks. The industrial property exemption in Law 5520 art. 5/B likewise applies only to “inventions protected by the grant of a patent or utility model certificate”; the trademark falls outside that exemption too.

Gökay GÜL’s Note: If your trademark is already attached, your textual footing is stronger than the debate this article describes. Art. 48: “Where an attachment has been effected, the attached property shall stand in place of collateral up to the amount of its value.” Note that the provision here does not say “movable and immovable property”; it says “property” without qualification — and art. 3 defines the unqualified term “property” to cover “all kinds of rights and receivables” as well. Since an attached trademark is an attachable right under Law 6769 art. 148/1, it is arguable that art. 48 covers that right too. I say arguable because I could not reach a ruling or an administrative view applying “attached property” in art. 48 to a trademark; moreover the Revenue Administration guide reverts to the phrase “movable and immovable property” when listing collateral types. Even so, the difference from the art. 10/1-(5) route is this: there the wording is plainly against you, here it is not. Put this provision in writing in your deferral file and ask for the appraisal to be made under art. 81. Do not assume your need for a bank letter of guarantee has disappeared until acceptance arrives in writing — if the collateral is deemed deficient, the deferral request is refused. In the event of refusal art. 48 leaves an exit: if the debt is paid “within a payment period of up to 30 days that may be granted by the administration as from the date of notification of the refusal”, the receivable is deferred with interest charged up to the date of payment. The period starts with notification of the refusal, the statutory ceiling is 30 days, and how many days are granted is for the administration to decide — check the period stated in the refusal letter.

Risks: where the administration’s reservations are justified

These are the grounds on which the administration may rely in refusing trademark collateral — some of them genuinely strong.

A trademark is collateral that melts. Law 6769 art. 23: “The term of protection of a registered trademark is ten years from the date of application. This term is renewable in periods of ten years each.” If the renewal request is not made in time, a further six months is available against an additional fee; miss that too and the right lapses. In a world where a deferral term can stretch to 72 months, a trademark whose renewal calendar is missed halfway through a six-year instalment plan evaporates as collateral. An immovable can also fall in value and pick up fresh attachments and annotations; but the risk of the right itself expiring by lapse of time does not, as a rule, exist for immovables.

Value fluctuation triggers a top-up. The closing paragraphs of art. 10 are explicit: “If the collateral subsequently loses all or part of its value, or if the amount of the debt increases, completion of the collateral or the provision of other collateral in its place shall be requested.” A trademark’s value depends on the enterprise’s own performance — as the taxpayer runs into difficulty, the collateral loses value too. This is a factor the administration may view unfavourably when assessing sufficiency and the risk of value loss.

Precautionary attachment brings a separate filter. The wording of art. 16 is: “Where the debtor provides collateral in accordance with the said article, except the movable property specified in subparagraph 5 of article 10, the precautionary attachment shall be lifted by the authority that imposed it.” Note: the exception covers not the whole of subparagraph 5 but the movable property within it — a precautionary attachment can be lifted with immovable collateral under the same subparagraph; cash, a bank letter of guarantee, a surety bond and government borrowing securities lift it in any event. For trademarks the question locks here too: without answering “is a trademark movable property”, one cannot say whether the art. 16 exception applies to it. So even if your trademark is accepted as collateral, whether the precautionary attachment will be lifted is a separate uncertainty — do not build your plan on it.

Collateral changes the enforcement route. Council of State 3rd Chamber K.2024/5836: “the determination of the method to be applied in the enforced pursuit and collection of the public receivable depends on whether collateral has been provided in return.” If you have given collateral, art. 56 applies rather than the payment-order route of art. 55: if the debt is not paid, notice is served within fifteen days, after which the collateral is converted into money. How a trademark is to be converted into money is a separate question — art. 85 ties the sale of movable property to public auction, while art. 63 provides for rights to be converted into money “in accordance with general provisions”. Which applies has not been resolved for trademarks.

Return of the collateral can become uncertain. Council of State 9th Chamber E.2023/5337, K.2025/3747 held that collateral remaining with the administration in an unforeseeable manner amounts to “an interference of indefinite duration with the right to property”. That ruling concerned a letter of guarantee. For trademarks the picture is this: Law 6769 art. 148 continues in principle to permit licensing, assignment and pledge, but an attachment annotation sitting in the register makes those transactions difficult in practice — the position of a buyer, licensee or pledgee becomes uncertain once the annotation is there. Exactly what effect the annotation produces on those transactions as against the public creditor has not been examined in the sources I searched; assess it separately on the specific transaction.

What can be done today: the art. 10/1-(5) route

There is no guarantee of acceptance. A caveat at the outset: the collateral debate is not the only threshold for deferral. Art. 48 ties deferral to the condition that collection “would place the debtor in serious difficulty” and to the request being made “in writing”; even after those it says the receivable “may be deferred”, meaning the administration is not obliged. Nor does the collateral requirement arise on every debt: under the second paragraph of the same article no collateral is sought for debts below the collateral-free deferral threshold (today TRY 10,000,000), and above it collateral is required only for half of the excess. So even if your trademark is accepted as collateral, the deferral request may be refused on the serious-difficulty condition; and acceptance of the collateral does not automatically bring the deferral decision, the term, the number of instalments or the deferral interest rate. The steps:

1. Extract the register status of the trademark. TÜRKPATENT register record, expiry date of the protection term, any pledge/licence/attachment annotations on it. The renewal window is narrow: under Law 6769 art. 23/2 the request is made within the six months before the protection term expires; miss it and a further six months is available against an additional fee. There is no such thing as early renewal — so the move is not to bring the renewal forward but to put the renewal date in the calendar alongside the deferral term.
2. Obtain an independent trademark valuation report. It does not bind the administration, but it provides a basis for the appraisal to be made under art. 81 and shows that your request is serious. Do not rely on the cost value in the books under Law 213 art. 269; that figure does not reflect the trademark’s real value.
3. Submit the request in writing — and inside the deferral file. Ask for the trademark collateral not as a standalone question but as an element of the concrete deferral request under art. 48. The reason is procedural: a refusal answering “will you accept this type of collateral” may, if detached from the deferral application, be treated as a preparatory act and lead to the action being dismissed without examination. Ask that the refusal letter contain a reasoned and final decision on the deferral request.
4. Complete the letter of consent correctly. Where the trademark belongs to a third party, the elements sought in Council of State Plenary Session of Tax Law Chambers E.2021/1348, K.2022/1017 are: an express reference to art. 10/1-(5) “by stating in the letter of consent the name of the creditor collection office, the type, period and amount of the debt, and the characteristics of the movable and/or immovable property that is the subject of the collateral, such that the collateral covers the principal and ancillary receivables”. For a trademark the “characteristics of the property” field is completed with the registration number, classes, registration date and owner.
5. Request the attachment and the register annotation. For immovables the Council of State says collateral is created by attachment based on an attachment order and by the notice entered on the title deed (9th Chamber K.2024/1615). Building the same chain for a trademark — an attachment order and a request for an annotation in the TÜRKPATENT register — at least fits your file into the mould of that ruling. I could not find a provision settling whether the annotation counts as a constitutive element of collateral for trademarks; so read this step not as “indispensable” but as “not to be left out”.
6. The clock runs even if no answer comes. Where there is a definitive and enforceable act such as refusal of your deferral request, an annulment action in the tax court within thirty days of notification — that period comes from Law 2577 art. 7/1. Assess amenability to judicial review against the content of the actual refusal letter. If the administration does not respond at all, Law 2577 art. 10/2 applies: “If no answer is given within thirty days, the request is deemed refused” — and the litigation period runs from the date the thirty days expire. If the answer received is not final you may wait for the final answer; while you wait the litigation period does not run. But the wait cannot exceed four months from the date of application — once it expires the period starts running, even if no final answer has arrived. Do not read silence as “the file is progressing”. The backbone of the petition is ready: the scope gap between art. 3, art. 62 and art. 10/1-(5).

It is highly likely that the administration will refuse by relying on the wording of art. 10/1-(5), the illiquidity of the trademark and the volatility of its value. I write that not as verified practice but as an inference drawn from the statutory text and the logic of collateral; I could not reach any record showing settled administrative practice on trademark collateral. In the already-attached-trademark scenario, by contrast, the wording is not against you: art. 48 says “attached property” without qualification.

What to do

1. Extract the register status of your trademark portfolio today. Expiry of the protection term, annotations, classes. When a tax debt arises there will be no time to hunt for this.
2. If your tax debt is approaching the TRY 10,000,000 threshold, set up the collateral plan in advance. Collateral will be needed for half of the excess; discuss the cost of a bank letter of guarantee and your guarantee limit now. If there is no bank limit, put art. 11 on the table as well: “Those who cannot provide collateral under article 10 may show a reliable person as joint and several surety and joint and several debtor.” The collection office is free to accept or refuse the suretyship.
3. If there is an attachment on your trademark, expressly invoke the art. 48 rule that “attached property shall stand in place of collateral up to the amount of its value” in the deferral application — anchor it in the unqualified definition of “property” in art. 3 — and request in writing that the appraisal be made under art. 81.
4. If there is a risk of precautionary attachment, do not rely on trademark collateral. The art. 16 exception concerns the movable property in subparagraph 5; whether a trademark falls on that side is unclear. To make lifting a precautionary attachment certain you need cash, a bank letter of guarantee, a surety bond, government borrowing securities or immovable collateral.
5. If you are refused, put the thirty-day litigation period in Law 2577 art. 7/1 in your calendar; run the same calendar if no answer comes at all. Under Law 2577 art. 10/2, if no answer is given to your application within thirty days the request is deemed refused and the litigation period starts there. A reasoned refusal may well produce the first ruling to close the case-law gap in this area.

Sources

• Law 6183 on the Procedure for the Collection of Public Receivables — art. 3, 10, 11, 16, 48, 56, 62, 63, 70, 77, 79, 81, 85 (mevzuat.gov.tr consolidated text)
• Law 2577 on Administrative Procedure — art. 7, art. 10 (mevzuat.gov.tr consolidated text)
• Presidential Decision No. 11414 — Official Gazette 13.06.2026, 33279
• Law 6769 on Industrial Property — art. 23, 148
• Law 6102 Turkish Commercial Code — art. 128, 342, 581
• Law 5520 Corporate Income Tax Law — art. 5/B
• Law 213 Tax Procedure Law — art. 269
• Council of State 3rd Chamber, E.2023/6796, K.2024/5309, 14.10.2024
• Council of State 3rd Chamber, E.2022/1721, K.2024/5836, 12.11.2024
• Council of State 9th Chamber, E.2023/6576, K.2024/1615, 28.03.2024
• Council of State 9th Chamber, E.2023/5337, K.2025/3747, 25.09.2025
• Council of State Plenary Session of Tax Law Chambers, E.2021/1348, K.2022/1017, 14.09.2022
• Court of Cassation 12th Civil Chamber, E.2022/8298, K.2022/12172, 23.11.2022
• Turkish Revenue Administration, Eskişehir Tax Office Directorate ruling, 26.07.2012 — amortisation rate applicable to trademark rights
• Turkish Revenue Administration, Guide to Deferral and Instalment under Article 48 of Law 6183, March 2025