The employment ratio is where work permit applications fail most often, so it has to be simulated in advance against your hiring and departure calendar rather than discovered at the counter. Under the International Labour Force Law (No. 6735) and its implementing legislation the rule is that a set number of Turkish nationals must be employed at the workplace for each foreign national — five Turkish employees per foreign worker — with the requirement waived for the first five foreign workers where the workplace’s net sales for the last year reach TRY 50,000,000 (as at July 2026). Some statuses and exemptions apply the ratio differently.
The planning is done by putting your existing headcount, your planned hires and your likely departures on one timeline and marking the moment at which the ratio has to be satisfied for each application. That is what stops an application being refused because the ratio had temporarily dipped. Where it matters we recommend the order of hiring too: the local recruitment that completes the ratio first, the foreign application after it. Sequencing costs nothing, and it avoids the price of a refusal and a re-application.
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