.tr Domain Registration Rules: com.tr and TRABİS Explained

For three decades, registering a .com.tr domain meant paperwork: a trade registry certificate or a trademark registration, submitted to a university department, checked by hand. That changed in September 2022. If your knowledge of Turkish domains predates that, or comes from articles written before it, most of what you know is out of date.

This guide explains how .tr works today, what is still restricted, and what is different from the generic TLDs you may be used to. We deliberately give no prices, fees or processing times, because they are set by the registry and by individual registrars and change; where a number matters, we say who to ask.

Who runs .tr

.tr is Turkey's country-code TLD. From the early 1990s it was administered by "nic.tr" at Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ/METU) in Ankara, under a documented, allocation-by-eligibility model.

Turkish law assigned responsibility for internet domain names to the telecommunications regulator, BTK (Bilgi Teknolojileri ve İletişim Kurumu, the Information and Communication Technologies Authority), which issued the Internet Domain Names Regulation and later a detailed Communiqué. Under that framework BTK built TRABİS (".tr Ağ Bilgi Sistemi", the .tr Network Information System), the registry system for .tr. TRABİS went live on 14 September 2022 and took over from nic.tr.

Two structural changes came with it:

1. A registry–registrar model. You no longer deal with the registry. You register through an accredited registrar, called a KK (Kayıt Kuruluşu), which connects to TRABİS. Domains registered in the nic.tr era were carried over into the new system.
2. Most extensions became "documentless" and first come, first served.

Documentless and documented extensions

Turkish domains are mostly registered at the third level, under a second-level category. They fall into two groups.

Documentless (belgesiz) extensions are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, without proof of entitlement:

• com.tr, net.tr, org.tr — these three are the big change; before TRABİS they required documents such as a company registration or trademark
• gen.tr, web.tr, info.tr, biz.tr, tv.tr, bbs.tr, tel.tr, name.tr — already documentless before

Documented (belgeli) extensions are reserved for specific kinds of applicants, who must prove eligibility:

Extension	Reserved for
gov.tr	government bodies
edu.tr	higher-education institutions
k12.tr	schools
bel.tr	municipalities
pol.tr	police
tsk.tr	armed forces
av.tr	lawyers and law firms
dr.tr	medical doctors
kep.tr	registered electronic mail (KEP) service providers

"Documentless" means nobody checks your entitlement at registration. It does not mean you are entitled to any name you manage to grab: somebody with rights in a name can take it from you through the dispute process described below.

Names directly under .tr (<name>.tr, without com) have also been introduced, opened in phases with priority rules for certain categories and for existing holders of matching names. Because the phases and their conditions have changed over time, check the current state with a KK or on the TRABİS site rather than relying on any article, including this one.

Turkish characters (ç, ğ, ı, ö, ş, ü) can be used in .tr names as internationalised domain names. Remember that ı and i are different letters; a name and its ASCII look-alike are separate registrations.

How to register a .com.tr

1. Choose a KK. BTK publishes the list of accredited registrars. Many international registrars sell .com.tr by acting through a Turkish KK; ask who the KK of record will be, because that is who you depend on for transfers and support.
2. Check availability at the KK. For com.tr, net.tr and org.tr there is no entitlement check.
3. Provide registrant details. Individuals and organisations can both register. Expect to give identifying details (for Turkish residents typically the national ID or tax number). Whether and how non-residents can register a particular extension is something to confirm with the KK before paying.
4. Pick the term. Multi-year registration is available; the permitted range is defined by the registry and offered by the KK.
5. Set nameservers at the KK's panel. The DNS side is ordinary DNS and works exactly as it does for any other TLD.

$ dig +short <name>.com.tr NS
ns1.dns.example.
ns2.dns.example.
$ dig +trace <name>.com.tr A      # follows the delegation chain from the root down to your nameservers

What is different from .com

People get into trouble by assuming gTLD rules apply. They do not; .tr is governed by Turkish regulation and TRABİS rules, not by ICANN consensus policies.

Topic	Generic TLDs	.tr
Policy source	ICANN contracts and policies	BTK regulation, TRABİS rules
Registrar term	registrar	KK (Kayıt Kuruluşu)
Lifecycle after expiry	auto-renew grace, 30-day redemption, 5-day pending delete	Different. Ask your KK how long after expiry a name can be renewed, and what happens next.
Status codes in lookups	EPP codes (clientHold, …)	The registry's own presentation; do not expect the gTLD vocabulary
Registrar transfer	auth code, 60-day locks, 5-day window, adds a year	KK change is possible and is started at the new KK, typically with a transfer code from the current one; the waiting periods, fees and term effects are .tr-specific
Disputes	UDRP / URS	UÇHS arbitration under the Turkish regulation (below)
Public registration data	RDAP, redacted	TRABİS query service; personal data is limited under Turkish data protection law (KVKK)

The gTLD lifecycle and status codes are described in what happens when a domain expires; read that article as a description of .com, not of .com.tr.

Transfers and ownership changes

• Changing KK (the equivalent of a registrar transfer) is initiated at the KK you want to move to. The general advice from how to transfer a domain name holds: find out first whether the old KK hosts your DNS, and treat the transfer code like a password.
• Transferring a name to another person or company is possible through the KK. Before TRABİS, .com.tr names were tied to the document that justified them, which made sales awkward; under the documentless model that tie no longer exists for those extensions. The procedure and any identity verification are the KK's to explain.

Disputes: UÇHS instead of UDRP

Because com.tr names are no longer checked against trademarks at registration, conflicts are resolved afterwards. The regulation provides an alternative dispute resolution mechanism run by accredited UÇHS (Uyuşmazlık Çözüm Hizmet Sağlayıcı), dispute resolution service providers authorised by BTK, where complaints are decided by arbitrators.

The grounds are broadly modelled on the UDRP: the complainant argues that the domain is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark, trade name, business name or other identifying sign they have rights in; that the registrant has no right or legitimate connection to the name; and that the name was registered or is being used in bad faith. Possible outcomes are cancellation of the registration or transfer to the complainant, or rejection of the complaint. Going to court remains open to both sides.

The exact wording of the criteria, the list of providers, the fees and the timelines are in the regulation, the communiqué and each provider's rules. If you are in, or considering, a dispute, read those sources and get advice from a lawyer who handles Turkish IT or trademark law; do not rely on a summary.

Practical consequences for registrants:

• Registering somebody else's brand under com.tr because "it was free" is a good way to lose the name and the fee.
• If you hold a Turkish trademark or trade name, register the matching com.tr yourself rather than planning to win it back later.
• Keep evidence of your own legitimate use (company documents, invoices, dated site content); it is what a panel looks at.

Common mistakes

• Trusting pre-2022 articles that say .com.tr requires company documents.
• Assuming a 30-day redemption period exists and letting the name lapse.
• Registering through a reseller without knowing which KK actually holds the name.
• Confusing "documentless" with "no rules".
• Ignoring the Turkish-character variant, or registering only it and not the ASCII form that people actually type.
• Treating third-party WHOIS sites as authoritative for .tr. Many cannot query the registry at all and show nothing or stale data.

Check it with OrbitProbe

The OrbitProbe WHOIS lookup queries registration data through RDAP, which generic TLDs are required to provide. Country-code registries decide for themselves what they publish and how, so for a .tr name the result may be limited, and the authoritative source for registration details is TRABİS's own query service and your KK. What works the same for every TLD is the DNS side: nameservers, records and mail configuration of a .com.tr domain can be checked exactly like any other. For background on how registration data is published in general, see WHOIS vs RDAP.