Turkey (Türkiye) does not provide a general accelerated examination procedure for national patent applications. The Industrial Property Code No. 6769 (IP Code) sets out a single prosecution track, and neither the applicant's commercial urgency nor the technical field changes the statutory sequence of search, publication and examination. Applicants may, however, request the urgent preparation of the search report from the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (TPTO) upon payment of an additional official fee, in which case the search report must be issued within six months (1). A narrow Patent Prosecution Highway route also exists for applications whose counterparts have been found allowable by the Japan Patent Office, the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office or Rospatent (4); that route depends on the existence of a suitable foreign counterpart and is outside the scope of this article.
The question this article addresses is practical: if an applicant needs a Turkish patent as quickly as possible, how should the national application be filed? The urgent search report is the core of the answer, but its effect depends on how it is combined with the choices available at the filing stage.

Legal Framework

The urgent search report is not regulated in the IP Code. The Code's provisions on search and examination remain unchanged: the search request must be filed with the application or within twelve months of the filing date, and the examination request within three months of the notification of the search report (2).
The mechanism is instead based on the TPTO's fee legislation and the administrative rules adopted for its implementation. The TPTO's 2024 fee tariff communiqué, published in the Official Gazette on 24 April 2024 and in force from that date, introduced the additional urgent search report fee: where this fee is paid on top of the ordinary search report preparation fee, the search report is issued within six months of the request or, if the application has formal deficiencies, within six months of their correction (3). The details are set out in the Procedures and Principles on the Preparation of Urgent Search Reports for Patent Applications, adopted by the TPTO's Board of Directors (1).
Because its basis is administrative rather than statutory — the fee tariff issued under Presidential Decree No. 4 and Board-approved internal rules, rather than the IP Code or its Implementing Regulation — the mechanism operates within, rather than outside, the ordinary statutory prosecution framework: the urgent request compresses the search stage but does not create a separate track, and the stages of publication, examination and grant are untouched. The same administrative character gives the TPTO flexibility over the mechanism's operation, including the technology fields covered and the number of urgent requests an applicant may file within a year (1).

The Urgent Search Report Mechanism

The request may be filed together with the search request or at a later stage (1). It requires payment of the urgent search report fee in addition to the ordinary search report preparation fee (1). In practice, the search and examination requests can be filed together with the application, with the fees paid at the same time, without waiting for the later stages of the procedure; the TPTO's filing system allows this. The urgent search report request can be included in the same filing upon payment of the additional fee. The current amounts of these official fees are set out on our page on the official fees of the TPTO.

Once a valid request is on file, the search report must be issued within six months of the request date or, where the application has formal deficiencies, within six months of the date on which they are corrected (1). Urgent search reports are available in all technology and IPC fields (1). The mechanism is limited to patent applications; it does not extend to utility model applications, whose search procedure is governed separately by IP Code Art. 143.
If the TPTO fails to issue the report within the six-month period, the applicant may withdraw the urgent request and claim a refund of the additional fee, in which case the ordinary search process applies (1).
Once the search report is issued, prosecution continues under the ordinary provisions of the IP Code (1). This is the mechanism's key limitation: the six-month period covers only the search report. The examination stage follows the normal course. In TPTO practice, the timing of an ordinary search report varies considerably with the examiner's workload and the technical field; the value of the urgent request lies in replacing that uncertainty with a defined outer limit.
Filing Strategy: Combining the Options
The urgent search report delivers its full effect only when the other waiting periods within the applicant's control are also removed. As explained in our general guide to national patent applications in Turkey, three filing-stage choices matter.
First, the search request should be filed together with the application rather than within the twelve-month statutory period (2). The six-month clock runs from the urgent request, so filing both requests at the outset starts that clock on day one.
Second, in TPTO practice, the examination request may be filed together with the search request, with the examination fee paid at the same time. No separate examination request is then needed after notification of the search report. This removes one procedural step, and one deadline, from the process.
Third, early publication may be requested under IP Code Art. 97(1). The application is otherwise published upon the expiry of eighteen months from the filing or priority date, and the search report is published with the application or separately after it (2). An early publication request removes this waiting period and brings forward the provisional protection afforded to published applications under IP Code Art. 97(4), as well as the window for third-party observations (2).
In our view, where speed is the priority, the strongest combination for a national filing is to submit the application with the search, urgent search and examination requests together, and to request early publication at the same time. Each element removes a distinct waiting period; none of them changes the substantive standard applied to the application.
What remains outside the applicant's control is the examination queue. Each examination notification carries its own preparation time, and the IP Code allows up to three notifications before a final decision (2). A well-prepared application also reduces the risk of successive examination notifications, each of which extends the overall timeline; drafting quality therefore continues to influence overall timing at least as much as any procedural request.
Our Assessment
In our view, the urgent search report is most valuable where the search result feeds a decision with an external deadline. The clearest case is the priority year: an applicant that files first in Turkey may obtain the search report, and with it an initial view on patentability, in time to inform foreign-filing decisions within the twelve-month priority period under the Paris Convention. The mechanism is also useful where an early grant matters for business reasons, for example in investment or licensing discussions, or where infringement is already taking place. In these cases, an early search report shortens the path to grant, particularly where the examination request is already on file and the application can proceed to examination without a further request.
For applications without time pressure, the additional fee is generally harder to justify: the ordinary process leads to the same report, and the urgent request changes its timing, not its content.
Two cautionary notes are warranted. The mechanism rests on administrative instruments, so its terms may change more easily than statutory rules. And the six-month period concerns the search stage only; applicants should not read it as a promise of early grant. From a strategic perspective, the urgent search report is best understood as a tool for converting the least predictable part of Turkish patent prosecution into a fixed, plannable step.
Strategic Takeaway
• Turkey has no general accelerated examination procedure; the urgent search report is the main formal acceleration tool for national patent applications.
• File the urgent request together with the search request at filing; the search report is then due within six months, failing which the additional fee is refundable.
• Combine it with an examination request at filing and an early publication request to remove the waiting periods within the applicant's control.
• The six-month period covers the search stage only; examination follows the ordinary timeline.
• Consider the mechanism in particular for Turkish first filings that will inform foreign-filing decisions within the priority year, and where an early grant matters for business reasons such as investment, licensing or ongoing infringement.
• Utility model applications are outside the mechanism; their search procedure follows the ordinary course.