In Turkiye’s legislation, certain employers are required to employ interns in their workplaces in accordance with the Vocational Training Law No. 3308.
According to the Article 18 of the Vocational Training Law No. 3308, the obligation to employ interns exists for businesses employing ten or more personnel. In determining the number of students, fractions are rounded to whole numbers.
Again, according to the provision of the Article 18, the number of personnel in the month January is taken into account when determining the number of personnel in the enterprise, and in enterprises that work only in the summer period, the number of personnel in the July period is taken into account.
In January, businesses that employ 10 or more personnel of for the enterprises working in summer which are employing 10 or more personnel in July are obliged to employ interns, not less than 5% of the number of personnel they employ.
Regarding detection, the Social Security Institution (SSI) data is being used by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security to check whether the obligation is being fulfilled. Through the protocols made between public institutions, district governorships and governorships obtain information on the number of workers employed by the enterprise and send notifications to businesses at certain periods regarding their obligation.
According to the Article 18 of the Vocational Training Law No. 3308, the wage payments to be made within the scope of the first paragraph of the 25th Article of the aforimentioned law to students receiving vocational training in enterprises, continuing their internship or complementary education cannot be less than thirty percent of the net amount of the national monthly minimum wage.
In this regard, the practice regarding the application of a lower limit to the wages to be paid to interns, candidate apprentices and apprentices will continue for five academic years starting from the 2021-2022 academic year, with the Presidential Decree published in the Official Gazette dated 05.02.2022 (valid for the 2021-2022, 2022-2023, 2023 2024, 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 academic years).
