Hybrid working has been the default arrangement in Turkish technology companies for years without ever appearing in the legislation that governs it. The Remote Working Regulation, published in the Official Gazette of 10 March 2021 under Article 14 of the Labour Law No. 4857, was written for remote work as a mode of its own and said nothing express about a week split between the office and home. That gap closed on 25 September 2026: the Regulation on the Amendment of the Remote Working Regulation, issued by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security and published in the Official Gazette No. 33381, added a second paragraph to Article 9 of the Regulation. It provides that it may be agreed that part of the work obligation is performed at the workplace and part by way of remote working, and that in this case the days on which the employee will work at the workplace and remotely, together with the working hours, are determined in the employment contract. The amendment is one substantive article long and entered into force on the day of its publication. This article explains what changed, what was already implied by the Labour Law, what a hybrid clause must now contain, how a hybrid pattern can and cannot be changed later, and the health-and-safety, equal-treatment and data-protection duties that travel with the arrangement.
What the amendment says
Article 9 of the Regulation is headed “determination of working time”. Its first paragraph, unchanged, provides that the time range and duration of remote work are stated in the employment contract, that the parties may change the working hours subject to the limits in the legislation, and that overtime is worked on the employer’s written request, with the employee’s acceptance and in accordance with the legislation. The new second paragraph adds the hybrid case: “It may be agreed that part of the work obligation is performed at the workplace and part by way of remote working. In this case the days on which the employee will work at the workplace and remotely, and the working hours, are determined in the employment contract.” The amending regulation contains only that provision, a commencement article stating that it enters into force on the date of publication, and an execution article. There is no transition period, no grandfathering of existing arrangements and no separate obligation to notify any authority.
Was hybrid work lawful before?
Yes, and the amendment is best read as making express what the definitions already allowed. Article 14(4) of the Labour Law defines remote working as an employment relationship established in writing and based on the employee performing the work obligation at home or outside the workplace through technological communication tools, within the work organisation created by the employer. Article 4(b) of the Regulation defines a remote worker as an employee who performs “all or part” of the work obligation by working remotely. Part-remote working was therefore within the scheme from the start, and hybrid contracts have been drafted on that basis since 2021. What was missing was a rule on how the split is to be documented, and that is what has been added. The practical significance is therefore not that hybrid working has become lawful but that the allocation of days and hours has become a mandatory content requirement of the employment contract rather than a matter the employer could leave to a policy document or to management discretion.
What the contract must now contain
A hybrid arrangement now has to satisfy three layers of content requirements at once. The first is Article 14(5) of the Labour Law and Article 5(2) of the Regulation, which require the contract, made in writing under Article 5(1), to cover the definition of the work, the manner of its performance, the duration and place of the work, the wage and the arrangements for paying it, the work tools and equipment provided by the employer and the obligations relating to their protection, the employer’s means of communicating with the employee, and the general and special working conditions. The second is Article 9(1), which requires the time range and duration of remote work and preserves the parties’ ability to change working hours within the statutory limits. The third is the new Article 9(2), which requires the specific days at the workplace and remotely and the working hours for each. A clause that says the employee “will work remotely two or three days a week as determined by the manager” satisfies the first two layers and not the third; the days have to be determinable from the contract itself, whether by naming them, by setting a fixed pattern with a defined mechanism for exceptions, or by attaching a schedule that forms part of the contract.
Three neighbouring provisions of the Regulation complete the paperwork for a hybrid employee and are easy to overlook because the employee is in the office part of the week. Article 6 requires any arrangements to the place where remote work will be performed to be completed before work begins, with the method of covering the resulting costs determined jointly by the employee and the employer. Article 7 makes the employer responsible for providing the materials and work tools needed for production unless the contract provides otherwise, requires the rules for their use and the conditions for their maintenance and repair to be communicated clearly, and requires a list of the tools stating their value on the delivery date to be handed to the employee in writing, with a copy signed by the employee kept in the personnel file; the list does not have to be a separate document if it is included in the contract or annexed to it on the date of the contract. Article 8 requires the contract to state how the compulsory expenses directly related to the production of goods or services are to be identified and met, which in a hybrid arrangement raises the question of how home internet, electricity and similar costs are apportioned for the days worked remotely.
Changing the pattern later
The provision that makes the days and hours part of the contract also makes them harder to change unilaterally. Under Article 22 of the Labour Law, a substantial change in working conditions must be notified to the employee in writing; a change that the employee does not accept in writing within six working days does not bind the employee, and the employer that wishes to insist must rely on a valid reason and comply with the termination provisions. Where the office and remote days are written into the contract, a decision to move from two office days to four is a change to a contractual term and will be assessed under that article. Article 9(1) allows the parties to change the working hours, but as a matter of agreement rather than instruction. Employers that expect the balance to shift over time therefore build the mechanism into the contract itself, by agreeing a pattern together with defined circumstances in which it may be varied, a notice period and a procedure, rather than relying on a general reservation of the right to change the arrangement, which Article 24 of the Code of Obligations No. 6098 would in any event treat as an unwritten term in a standard-form contract.
The Regulation also gives the employee a route in the other direction. Under Article 14(5) an employee who has moved to remote working may request, in the same manner, to work at the workplace again, and the employer is to give that request priority. Under Article 14(6) the employee’s request or consent is not required where remote working is to be applied in all or part of the workplace for the compelling reasons provided in the legislation, which is the provision that carried employers through the pandemic and remains available for comparable events.
Moving an existing employee to hybrid
Article 14(1) of the Regulation provides that the employment relationship may be established directly by a remote working contract or that the contract of an employee already working at the workplace may be converted into a remote working contract by agreement between the employee and the employer. Where the employee asks for the change, Article 14(2) requires the request to be made in writing, to be assessed in accordance with the procedure laid down at the workplace, and to be evaluated by reference to the suitability of the work and the employee for remote working and the other criteria the employer determines; Article 14(3) provides that the result is, as a rule, notified to the employee within thirty days in the same manner as the request, and Article 14(4) that a contract complying with Article 5 is made if the request is accepted. For an employer introducing hybrid working across a team, the sequence is therefore an amendment agreement signed by each employee, not a circular: the new Article 9(2) requires the days and hours to be in the contract, and Article 14 requires the conversion to rest on agreement.
Equal treatment, health and safety, and data
Three duties apply to the hybrid employee exactly as they do to the fully remote one. Article 14(6) of the Labour Law provides that remote employees may not be treated differently from a comparable employee solely because of the nature of the employment contract, unless there is a substantial reason; in a hybrid organisation this is the provision to keep in mind when promotion, bonus, training and office-based benefits are allocated, and it sits alongside the general equal-treatment duty in Article 5 of the Labour Law. On health and safety, Article 12 of the Regulation obliges the employer, taking into account the nature of the work, to inform the employee about occupational health and safety measures, to provide the necessary training, to arrange health surveillance and to take the necessary safety measures in relation to the equipment it supplies, which repeats Article 14(6) of the Labour Law and operates within the employer’s general duties under the Occupational Health and Safety Law No. 6331. Article 13 keeps certain work outside remote working altogether: work with hazardous chemicals and radioactive materials, the processing of such substances or work with their waste, and work involving a risk of exposure to biological agents; a hybrid arrangement cannot be used to perform those tasks at home on the remote days.
On data, Article 11 of the Regulation requires the employer to inform the remote employee about the business rules and legislation on the protection and sharing of data concerning the workplace and the work, and to take the necessary measures for that protection; the employer defines the scope of the data to be protected in the contract, and compliance with the rules is compulsory for the employee. Those rules sit on top of the employer’s own obligations as a controller under the Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698, including the security duties in Article 12, and they interact with any monitoring the employer carries out on company devices. Two further points matter for technology employers in particular: the employer’s intellectual property position for work created by employees does not change with the place of work but the evidence does, since code written on personal equipment is harder to attribute; and where hybrid work involves access to systems hosted abroad, the cross-border transfer rules we set out in our article on the five-business-day standard contract filing apply in the ordinary way.
What employers should do now
The amendment is in force, so the exercise is a review rather than a project. Employers already running hybrid teams should identify which employees have a written remote or hybrid contract and which are working on an unwritten or informal basis; add to each contract, by an amendment agreement, the days at the workplace and remotely and the working hours, with a mechanism for temporary variation; check that the contract covers the Article 5(2) content, the Article 6 arrangement of the remote workplace, the Article 7 equipment list with values and a signed copy in the personnel file, and the Article 8 treatment of compulsory expenses; align the internal remote working policy with the contracts so that the policy explains the process and the contract carries the binding terms; confirm that no task performed on remote days falls within Article 13; and record the health-and-safety information and training given for remote working, together with the data-protection rules the employee has been told to follow. Employers planning to introduce hybrid working should run the Article 14 procedure properly, with written requests where the initiative comes from employees, a documented assessment and a response within thirty days, and a signed contract or amendment before the arrangement starts.
Can we set the hybrid days in a company policy instead of the contract?
No. Article 9(2) requires the days at the workplace and remotely and the working hours to be determined in the employment contract. A policy remains useful for the process, for equipment and expense rules and for security requirements, but the binding allocation of days and hours belongs in the contract or in an annex that forms part of it.
We want more office days than the contract provides. Can we simply announce the change?
Not unilaterally. Once the days are a contractual term, increasing the office days is a substantial change in working conditions under Article 22 of the Labour Law: it must be notified in writing and does not bind an employee who does not accept it in writing within six working days. Agreeing a variation mechanism in the contract at the outset is the practical answer.
Does a hybrid employee count as a remote worker for the rest of the Regulation?
Yes. Article 4(b) defines a remote worker as one who performs all or part of the work obligation remotely, so the contract, equipment, expense, communication, data-protection and health-and-safety provisions of the Regulation apply to the remote part of the arrangement, and the Labour Law’s ordinary rules continue to apply to the days spent at the workplace.
Related: employment terms · key employee · personal data · IP from founders and employees.
Sources. Remote Working Regulation (Official Gazette 10 March 2021, No. 31419; Articles 4–14, Article 9(2) added by the Regulation published in the Official Gazette of 25 September 2026, No. 33381); Regulation on the Amendment of the Remote Working Regulation (Official Gazette 25 September 2026, No. 33381); Labour Law No. 4857 (Articles 5, 14, 22); Occupational Health and Safety Law No. 6331; Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698 (Article 12); Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098 (Article 24). Statute links open the official Turkish texts on mevzuat.gov.tr.
This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Please seek legal support for an assessment of any specific matter.
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