Bank Freeze on a Retirement Pension; Adana Regional Court of Appeal Decision

Adana Regional Court of Appeal (final decision)

A precedent from the Adana Regional Court of Appeal; the bank’s receivable has been placed above the state’s tax receivable. The decision is final; the bank may freeze the whole of a retirement pension.

Let us put the picture side by side. For a tax debt you cannot touch a retirement pension; Article 93 of Law No. 5510 is very clear, retirement pensions cannot be attached except for maintenance. The Constitutional Court has treated this prohibition as the core of the right to social security. Even for public receivables, under Article 71 of Law No. 6183 at most one third of a salary may be attached. For a bank debt, however, the whole of the retirement pension is swept away by the one-line charm of the “set-off, netting, retention” clause in the loan agreement; the transaction, it is said, “is not an attachment but a contractual set-off”.

Yet Article 93 of Law No. 5510 is a mandatory provision. Mandatory provisions draw the outer limit of freedom of contract; that limit cannot be crossed with a single line. Article 2 of the Constitution speaks of the social state and Article 60 guarantees the right to social security. It seems that the financial sufficiency of a retirement pension is more than enough for the bank and not enough for the pensioner. In Türkiye the pensioner is condemned to that eight-point consent form bearing his signature.