Which insurance is compulsory for a hotel in Türkiye? A map of the legal duties

Compulsory insurance means a cover a statute requires, not one an insurer recommends. For a hotel in Türkiye that usually means earthquake cover where Law No. 6305 applies to the building, motor liability for its vehicles, and activity-based covers: passenger seat accident, private security, dangerous substances. Fire and business interruption are rarely statutory under the Insurance Law, but municipal bylaws, tourism regulations or bank covenants often require them, so treat them as necessary for operational continuity even where Law No. 5684 does not name them.

For example, one broker may say fire insurance is compulsory, another that only DASK is. Both answer from memory, and the owner is left with two quotes and no rule. The question of compulsory insurance for hotels in Türkiye has a checkable answer, and it starts with a statute rather than a policy. After reading this article you will be able to sort every cover on your schedule into three boxes: required by law, required by contract, and chosen by you.

Is hotel insurance compulsory in Türkiye?#

Some of it is, but less than the market conversation suggests. A cover is compulsory only where a statute creates the duty; everything else binds through a contract or a business decision.

Keep three sources of duty separate all the way through: a statute, a contract, and the owner's own choice. Only the first is compulsory in the legal sense, and only the first can stop an activity.

The legal sense has a consequence. Under Article 13 of the Insurance Law (Law No. 5684), an authority that grants or inspects a permit or licence for an activity, or for the use of a thing, must check that the required compulsory insurance exists with valid cover. If it does not, the procedure is not carried out and the activity stops until valid cover is obtained. The consolidated text is published by the Presidency's Legislation Information System (mevzuat.gov.tr, 7 November 2026).

Contract duties bind just as hard but through a different mechanism. The sanction is a refused drawdown, a lease dispute or a contract not renewed, not an inspector at the door. Business decisions have no external checker at all: fire, business interruption and theft cover are judged by the owner's balance sheet, not by a rule.

Insurers' product pages describe what the company sells, not what the law requires. The two lists overlap by accident, which is why the same question gets opposite answers. When someone says "compulsory" in a sales conversation, it usually means "we recommend it", "our underwriter insists on it" or "your bank asked for it". Ask which of the three it is.

How do you check whether an insurance is really compulsory?#

Ask for four things: the statute, the article, the trigger and the authority that checks it. A claim that cannot produce all four is a sales claim or a contract term.

Step one is the statute and the article. "It is compulsory" is not an answer; "Law No. 6305, Article 10" is. Write the number down and read the article, not a summary of it.

Step two is the trigger. Every compulsory cover attaches to something specific: a building of a certain kind, a registered vehicle, a licensed activity, a substance held or handled. If you cannot name the trigger, you cannot know whether it applies to your property.

Step three is who checks. DASK cover is checked at the land registry and at water and electricity subscriptions (Law No. 6305, Article 11). Activity covers are checked by the permit authority. A cover with no checker is probably not statutory.

Step four is what happens if it is missing. A stopped activity is the signature of a genuinely compulsory cover. A stern letter is the signature of a contract.

It also helps to know the mechanism that makes the list real. Article 13 of Law No. 5684 lets the President create compulsory insurances where public interest requires, and insurers may not refuse to write a compulsory insurance in a branch they operate in. The narrow exception is an insurer whose portfolio the Minister has restricted, or whose authority to write new policies has been removed, under Article 20(2)(b) and (3). So "my insurer will not write it" is not an answer either.

Do not confuse the Guarantee Account with your own cover. Article 14 of the same law sets up the Account at the Insurance, Reinsurance and Pension Companies Association of Türkiye. In set cases, such as bodily harm caused by an unidentified or uninsured party, it pays up to the valid cover amounts of two groups of compulsory insurance: those created by the Highway Traffic Law No. 2918 and the Road Transport Law No. 4925, and those created under the repealed Insurance Supervision Law No. 7397. It is a backstop for a victim, not a policy for a hotel.

Does a hotel need DASK earthquake insurance?#

Often not for the hotel building itself. Law No. 6305 covers dwellings and units used as shops, offices and similar, and Article 10(2) puts buildings used entirely for non-residential purposes outside the scope. Whether your building is inside or outside is a question about the building, not about the business.

What the cover is: the Disaster Insurance Law (Law No. 6305) covers material damage to buildings caused directly by an earthquake, and material damage from fire, explosion, tsunami and landslide caused by an earthquake (Article 2(1)(ğ)). It is not a general fire policy, and the fire element only exists when the fire follows an earthquake. The Natural Disaster Insurance Institution (DASK) gives the cover exclusively; where risk management requires it and the Minister approves, it may be given jointly with insurance companies (Article 7(1)).

Which buildings are in scope: independent units under the Condominium Law No. 634; buildings built as dwellings on registered, privately owned land; units in those buildings used as shops, offices and similar; and dwellings built by the State, or with State loans, because of a natural disaster (Article 10(1)). Which buildings are outside: public housing and public service buildings; buildings of permanent village residents in and around village settlements; and buildings used entirely for non-residential purposes, even where they fall under Law No. 634 (Article 10(2)). A hotel building used entirely for hotel purposes sits in this third group.

Who buys it: the owner or the usufruct holder takes out the policy and renews it every year (Article 10(3)). The duty follows the property right, not the operating company. How it is checked: land registry offices may not carry out a registration or deregistration requested by an owner for a covered unit or building unless insurance valid on the transaction date is documented, and water and electricity subscriptions check that the insurance exists (Article 11). The full consolidated text is on mevzuat.gov.tr (7 November 2026).

The mixed-use case is different. A hotel occupying units inside a Law No. 634 building that also contains dwellings raises a separate question, because Article 10(1) lists units used as shops, offices and similar. Whether a hotel unit falls under "similar" is a reading question for your legal adviser, and it changes who buys what.

Which activity-based compulsory insurances can apply to a hotel?#

Four appear in the material we could open: motor liability for vehicles, seat personal accident cover for road passenger transport, private security liability, and dangerous substances and hazardous waste liability.

Motor liability. Article 14 of Law No. 5684 names the compulsory liability insurances created by the Highway Traffic Law No. 2918 as one of the groups the Guarantee Account stands behind. Any vehicle registered to the hotel sits in that group, whether it carries guests, laundry or the general manager.

Road passenger transport. SEDDK, the insurance regulator, publishes general conditions for compulsory seat personal accident insurance for road passenger transport. The trigger is carrying passengers in a way that falls under road passenger transport rules. For example, a paid airport transfer run by the hotel is a different case from a free courtesy car, and the boundary is worth confirming with the insurer in writing before the season.

Private security. SEDDK publishes general conditions for private security compulsory liability insurance. Whether an in-house team and a contracted provider fall inside the same scope, and which party must be the policyholder, is written in those general conditions: read them, or ask the insurer to confirm in writing.

Dangerous substances and hazardous waste. SEDDK publishes general conditions for compulsory liability insurance on dangerous substances and hazardous waste. The trigger is holding or handling such substances or waste within the rules' scope: for example fuel oil tanks, solvents in a laundry, or chlorine at a pool plant. Read the thresholds rather than assuming a small quantity is outside them. All three sets of general conditions are published on the SEDDK website (seddk.gov.tr, 7 November 2026).

The general rule behind all four: the activity creates the duty, not the building. A hotel with no vehicle, no licensed security and no hazardous substances may hold none of them, and that is a legitimate answer.

What do banks, landlords and tour operators require by contract?#

More than the law does, and usually with a named beneficiary. The contract, not a statute, is what makes these covers binding, and the sanction is commercial.

The lender. A facility agreement typically requires fire and earthquake cover on the building at a sum insured tied to rebuild cost, with the bank named as loss payee or first beneficiary, and evidence of renewal before each drawdown and each anniversary.

The landlord. A lease should settle who insures the structure and who insures the fit-out, whether there is a waiver of subrogation so the landlord's insurer cannot pursue the tenant after a loss, and who must reinstate the building and to what standard.

The tour operator and the agency. Contracts commonly set a liability cover with a stated minimum limit, a certificate delivered before the season opens, and sometimes a named additional insured. These are negotiated terms, and they move when the counterparty changes. The same contracts also set payment terms, which is where the tour operator contract also sets payment terms and receivables risk actually sits.

The check is a counterparty, not an inspector. A refused drawdown, a lease dispute or a contract not renewed is how a contractual duty is enforced, and it usually arrives with less warning than an inspection. The trap is that a contract requirement is easily mistaken for a legal one, and then repeated to the next hotelier as law. Keep the two lists apart on paper, because they will be merged in conversation.

Read the lease, the facility agreement and the operator contract before the renewal date, not after a loss.

Who carries the duty in a leased hotel, owner or operator?#

The duty follows what the law names: the building's owner or usufruct holder for DASK, the licence holder for a licensed activity, the registered keeper for a vehicle. A management contract does not move a statutory duty.

DASK. The owner or usufruct holder takes out and renews the policy (Law No. 6305, Article 10(3)). A tenant operating the hotel cannot satisfy that duty on the owner's behalf, although the lease can make the tenant pay for it. Activity covers attach to the activity, so start from who actually holds the licence or runs the operation, and confirm with the insurer which legal person must be the named policyholder. Vehicles follow registration and operation: a leased shuttle with its own driver and a car registered to the hotel may sit with different policyholders; confirm with the insurer which legal person must be named.

What the lease or management agreement should say: who buys each cover, who is named on it, the minimum limits, the evidence and its renewal date, who pays, what happens if a party fails to renew, and how a claim is handled between the parties. The failure mode is always the same: each side assumes the other renewed, the certificate is a year old, and the gap is discovered either at an inspection or after a loss.

Insurance is not the same question as liability. Whether the hotel owes a guest compensation for a lost item is decided by the Code of Obligations, not by whether a policy responds; whether a hotel is liable for guests' belongings is a separate article of its own.

What stays a business decision?#

Fire, business interruption, theft, cyber and employer's liability are not created by a statute we could open. They are decisions about how much of a loss the owner is willing to carry.

Fire. No statute we opened makes fire insurance compulsory for a hotel building. The fire element inside Law No. 6305 only applies when the fire follows an earthquake (Article 2(1)(ğ)). Lenders and landlords commonly require fire cover by contract, which is a different duty with a different sanction.

Employer's liability. It is widely described as voluntary, and we found no statute creating it. If someone tells you it is compulsory, ask for the article number. The separate exposure, the Social Security Institution's recourse after a staff accident, exists whether or not a policy does; employer's liability insurance and SGK recourse deserve their own reading.

Business interruption and loss of profit. This is the cover that decides whether a closed wing is a bad month or a bad year, and its sum insured has to be built from the hotel's own numbers rather than copied from last year's schedule. When you renew, the proposal form, the sums insured and the loss of profit figure are where most of the value of a package policy is won or lost.

Theft, guest belongings and cyber each answer a real exposure and none of them is statutory in the material we opened. The question is the size of the loss the owner can absorb without the policy, not whether a rule demands it.

The working rule: insure what you cannot carry, then check the statute list to make sure nothing on it is missing. Do not build the program from the statute list alone, because it is shorter than the risk.

What to do next#

Make a two-column list on one page. In the left column, write every cover a statute requires for your property, with the law and article beside it, using the four-question test in this article. In the right column, write every cover a contract requires, taken from the lease, the facility agreement and the tour operator contract, with the clause beside it. Then add the risks you carry yourself, and take the whole page to your insurance adviser and your accountant. Dates, penalties and your own case depend on facts about your building, your licences and your contracts that no article can check from outside.