Fire safety rules for hotels in Türkiye: a checklist before the fire report

Hotel fire safety regulations in Türkiye come from two texts: the building fire protection regulation, which sets walls, exits, detection and sprinkler rules for lodging buildings, and the workplace licence regulation, which requires a fire brigade report (itfaiye raporu) for the licence. Check the current Resmî Gazete text before relying on any deadline.

The inspection is not a surprise visit from a stranger. It is a person with a list, and the list is mostly documents you either have in one file or spend three weeks assembling. This article separates the two texts that decide your duties, walks through the technical thresholds that matter for lodging buildings, and ends with the weekly checks and the document file you control before anyone knocks.

Which rules apply to a hotel in Türkiye?#

Two texts decide your fire duties, and they answer different questions. The building fire protection regulation says what the building must be; the workplace licence regulation says what you must prove, on paper, to keep trading.

The Regulation on the Protection of Buildings from Fire (opens in a new tab) (Decision 2007/12937, Resmî Gazete 19 December 2007, No. 26735, last amended 1 July 2025) covers fire prevention and firefighting measures in every structure, building, facility and business in Türkiye. It classes hotels, motels, thermal facilities, holiday villages, pensions, campsites, student dormitories and camps as lodging buildings, and its rules for them are set by height, floor count, bed count, bedroom count and enclosed area.

The Regulation on Workplace Opening and Operating Licences (2005/9207), amended on 11 December 2025 by Decision 10681, requires lodging places to hold a building occupancy permit (yapı kullanma izin belgesi) and a fire report (itfaiye raporu). Lodging places here include hotels, holiday villages, motels, pensions, apart hotels, rural tourism facilities and campsites.

The fire report comes from the fire brigade; the licence comes from the authority that issued your workplace licence. Keep those two conversations separate and both documented. The regulation is technical and the licence is evidential: one asks whether the building is built and equipped to the rule, the other asks whether you can show it. Neither text is a one-time purchase: both attach to a specific building, a specific use and a specific layout.

Was the 31 May 2026 fire report deadline extended?#

As of the consolidated text (opens in a new tab) checked on 2 November 2026, no amendment or extension appears after Presidential Decision 10852 (Resmî Gazete 10 January 2026, No. 33133). A request for more time, wherever it is reported, is not a rule; only the consolidated text is.

Temporary Article 9 covers lodging places that must hold a fire report and that had been given extra time, under Temporary Article 4 of the fire protection regulation, to fix deficiencies needing materials. The competent authorities inspect these places. A place that cannot present a fire report showing compliance with the fire protection regulation is barred from operating immediately, until 31 May 2026.

That period may be used only for construction and alteration work to fix the deficiencies, and the place may not operate during it. A place that still cannot present the report at the end of the period has its workplace licence cancelled and is closed.

How to check the position today in ten minutes: read the consolidated text on mevzuat.gov.tr, scan the Resmî Gazete index for later decisions, then call your fire brigade and the office that issued your licence. Write down who told you what, and when. If you are reading this after 31 May 2026, the general rule still stands: no fire report, no licence.

What does the regulation require for escape routes, stairs and doors?#

Two exits on every floor in larger hotels, and a protected corridor: bedroom walls that resist fire for at least 60 minutes, and corridor doors that resist for at least 30 minutes and close themselves.

Hotels with more than 20 beds or more than two floors must have at least two exits on every floor, per the fire protection regulation. Hotel bedrooms are separated from internal corridors by walls resisting fire for at least 60 minutes; doors onto the corridor resist for at least 30 minutes and have self-closing devices.

A self-closing door held open with a wedge, a hook or a chair is an open door. The mechanism is the requirement, so check every corridor door on a fixed weekly round and record the result. Walk the route from the furthest bedroom to the open air, at night, with the emergency lighting on, and note what a guest would actually see and touch.

Stairs, fire escapes and their signage follow the regulation and your approved fire project. Do not accept a contractor's verbal assurance in place of the project drawing. Daily use wears the hardware: check the closer, the seal and the frame, not only the leaf.

Which detection, alarm and extinguishing systems does a hotel need?#

It depends on height, area, bedrooms and beds. The regulation sets clear thresholds, and each system you install carries a record you must be able to produce.

Automatic fire detection is required in lodging buildings taller than 6.50 m or with more than 1,000 m² of total enclosed area. A voice announcement system is required in hotels, motels and dormitories with more than 200 beds. Automatic sprinklers are mandatory in multi-storey hotels, dormitories, pensions and guest houses with more than 100 bedrooms or more than 200 beds, and in all lodging facilities taller than 21.50 m. Emergency lighting must last at least 60 minutes, or at least 120 minutes where the occupant load is over 200.

The inspector reads records, not intentions: keep the design approval, the commissioning report, the periodic test records and the name of the person who tested. A system isolated because of a false alarm is a system that is off: log every isolation with a reason, an owner and a return date, and tell the next shift. Portable extinguishers and hose reels are the first response, not a substitute for the fixed system. Check the service tag date, not the label on the cabinet.

Who is responsible for fire safety on the night shift?#

Named people, shift by shift, with a deputy for every role. A fire plan that names departments instead of people is a plan nobody owns at 03:00.

Post a fire team list per shift at reception and in the back office: who detects and raises the alarm, who calls the fire brigade, who meets it at the gate, who takes the in-house list to the assembly point. The night is the thin shift: those four roles may fall to two people, so write the sequence down for that case and rehearse it as written.

The in-house list is the hardest document at night: which rooms are occupied, who is a child, who needs help to move. Make it reachable without the front desk computer. Record every drill with date, scenario, participants, time to clear the building, what failed and who fixed it; a drill with no findings is a drill nobody watched. Keep training records for all staff, including new starters before their first night shift. Pass the fire panel status, open isolations, blocked exits and any planned hot work at every shift handover.

What documents does the fire inspector ask for?#

One indexed file, one named owner, one copy kept off site. The inspector asks for proof, and proof that takes twenty minutes to find reads like proof that does not exist.

The core of the file is the building occupancy permit (yapı kullanma izin belgesi) and the current fire report (itfaiye raporu), with its date and the scope it covers. Next to them sit the approved fire project and every revision, especially after a renovation, a new kitchen or a changed corridor. Add the detection, alarm, sprinkler and emergency lighting test and maintenance records, with dates and signatures, plus drill records, staff training records and the fire team list by shift, with the evacuation plan as posted. Finally, the workplace licence, the last inspection report and evidence that each finding was closed. Seasonal hotels should fold this into their wider pre-season compliance checklist.

How do you keep the fire report valid after the inspection?#

Treat the report as a description of a building at a moment, and manage every change that alters the description. Most lapses are not failures of equipment but changes nobody told the file about.

Thresholds are cliffs, not slopes. Adding bedrooms past 100, beds past 200, or a floor that takes the building past 21.50 m can trigger sprinklers or a voice alarm that were never required before. Keep a change log: what changed, when, who approved it, and whether the fire consultant and the fire brigade were told.

Re-check the file before each season, not after the first inspection letter arrives. Give the file one named owner and one deputy, and put the review date in the calendar like any other recurring task. Keep superseded reports and drawings: they show the history of the building and answer the question a new inspector will ask about why something changed. Fire safety overlaps with occupational safety, so the same walk-round can cover both if you align it with a department-by-department safety checklist.

What to do next#

The next step is a file, not a purchase: print the two texts, list the documents you already hold, mark the gaps in red, and book one conversation with your fire brigade and one with the authority that issued your licence. The regulation tells you what the building must be, the licence regulation tells you what you must prove, and the checklist in between is the part you control.