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Were you made to work on a Sunday or on your weekly rest day? A new Court of Cassation (Yargıtay) decision has clarified the method for calculating overtime receivables. So does this reduce the money you receive, or does it merely change the way it is calculated? The answer is in our article.
On a matter that directly affects millions of employees in Türkiye, the 9th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation (Yargıtay) has given an important decision on whether time worked on a weekly rest day may be included in the overtime calculation. In its decision dated 18.02.2026, File No. 2025/10180 E. and Decision No. 2026/1424 K., the Chamber held that awarding work performed on a weekly rest day separately both as weekly rest day pay and as overtime pay leads to duplicate payment. This decision clarifies a calculation method that has been disputed for years in employee receivables cases and has practical consequences that both employees and employers need to know.
What Was the Subject of the Decision?
The case was an employment receivables claim brought on the allegation that the employment contract had been terminated unjustly. The claimant employee had claimed both receivable items, asserting that during the period of employment he or she had both worked overtime and been made to work on weekly rest days. The court of first instance and then the regional court of appeal had ruled in the claimant's favour, counting the days worked on weekly rest days both as weekly rest day pay and as overtime.
The 9th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation, however, reversed this calculation method. According to the Chamber's reasoning, if the working hours falling on the weekly rest day worked have already been awarded as “weekly rest day pay”, it is not correct for the same hours to be included in overtime and remunerated a second time. This means that the same work is collected twice under two different receivable items, which the Court of Cassation characterised as “duplicate payment” and found contrary to law.
Legal Framework: The Distinction Between Weekly Rest Day Pay and Overtime Pay
Under the Labour Law No. 4857, weekly rest day pay and overtime pay are regulated as two different receivable items. While Article 46 of the Law provides that the employee must be given an uninterrupted weekly rest of at least twenty-four hours and that pay for that day be paid as if it had been worked, Article 41 defines work exceeding forty-five hours per week as overtime and provides that for such work fifty percent more than the normal hourly wage is to be paid.
A problem frequently encountered in practice is how work is to be characterised where the employee is made to work on the weekly rest day. According to the Court of Cassation's settled practice, if the employee has been made to work on the weekly rest day, he or she is entitled both to weekly rest day pay, because the rest was not granted, and to the pay for that day corresponding to the work actually performed. However, this decision clearly draws a line against the practice of adding the pay for such work to the overtime item as well, thereby inflating total working time and deriving a second overtime receivable from it. In other words, the 7.5 hours worked on a weekly rest day will not be counted again when calculating the weekly 45-hour overtime threshold.
Whom Does This Decision Affect, and How?
This clarification will directly affect, in particular, the method of expert calculation reports in employee receivables cases. Until now, in some expert reports the hours worked on weekly rest days could be included both in the weekly rest day receivable and in total weekly working time and used as the basis for the overtime receivable. Following this decision of the Court of Cassation, it will no longer be possible for the same working time to be assessed under two different items; calculations will have to be redone in line with this distinction.
For employees, this does not mean that the total pay they receive if made to work on a weekly rest day will be reduced; the employee continues to be entitled both to weekly rest day pay and to the pay for the hours actually worked that day. What changes is that this work can no longer be put into the “overtime” category and used in calculating another overtime receivable exceeding the weekly 45-hour threshold. In other words, what the decision prevents is not double remuneration, but the counting of the same period twice so as to give rise to two different legal consequences.
For employers, the decision offers an important basis for defence strategy in pending or future employee receivables cases. Expressly citing this case law when objecting to expert reports may enable erroneous calculations to be corrected.
To Explain with a Concrete Example
Suppose that an employee was made to work 7.5 hours on a Sunday, which is the weekly rest day, and had already completed the 45-hour statutory working time during the same week. The distinction the decision clarifies is as follows: the employee is entitled to one day's weekly rest day pay because he or she could not take the Sunday rest; and, because the employee actually worked that day, is also entitled to the pay corresponding to that work. However, these 7.5 hours cannot be included in calculating the weekly 45-hour working time threshold so that, saying “therefore overtime has also been worked”, a third item of pay is created. This is precisely the calculation error the Court of Cassation sought to correct: preventing the same 7.5 hours from generating money simultaneously under two different legal bases, one being weekly rest day pay and the other overtime pay.
Conclusion and Practical Recommendations
This decision of the 9th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation resolves an uncertainty that has persisted for years in the calculation of weekly rest day and overtime receivables: the same working time cannot be included simultaneously in the calculation of two separate receivable items. It is important for employees who have a pending employment receivables claim, or who are considering bringing one, to review their claims in line with this current case law, and for employers to keep their payroll and attendance records in a way that clearly reflects this distinction. In the event of a dispute, it is advisable to have an expert assess whether the weekly rest day and overtime receivables have been calculated separately and by the correct method, in order to avoid possible loss of rights.
