Researching Turkish legal scholarship with AI: DergiPark, TR Dizin and YÖK Tez

Short answer: Three free, open-source tools let your AI assistant search Turkish law journal articles and theses: the DergiPark, TR Dizin and YÖK Tez skills. To install one, give your AI app the GitHub link and say “Install the skill at this link, use it and remember it.” The setup is the same in agents such as Claude, ChatGPT’s Codex and Gemini’s Antigravity; the table below shows what your app needs to support for each source to work. You then ask, for example, “find articles and theses on the family home annotation”; your AI runs the search, lists the results with full citations and reads the open-access text.

Three sources, three tools#

All three are MIT-licensed and free; they need no API key or paid service. They are independent projects by Said Sürücü, one of Yargı PRO’s co-founders, and do not depend on a Yargı PRO subscription.

Most of the material is in Turkish. Your AI assistant can search with Turkish terms and translate titles, abstracts and passages for you; check any translation against the original before you rely on it.

Setup: give the link, say “remember it”#

Write this to your AI app:

“https://github.com/saidsurucu/trdizin-skill — Install this skill and use it. Remember the link and use it whenever I ask for a TR Dizin search.”

Do the same for the other two links. Your AI reads the repository and installs the skill in its own skills folder. In apps with memory, “remember it” also saves the link; you can see whether it was saved in the app’s memory settings. After installing, check that the skill appears in the list, then ask in plain language: “Search TR Dizin for ‘aile konutu şerhi’ (family home annotation), most cited first.” If your AI cannot install the skill itself, follow the installation steps in the repository’s README; the YÖK Tez skill is in the repository’s skills/yoktez folder.

What each source needs#

The setup is the same, but the sources work differently. Your app needs to support the capability each source requires:

DergiPark verification: During a search, DergiPark may show a page asking you to confirm that you are a real person. The skill does not try to pass this check; you pass it in your own tab and your AI continues the search. For field-based advanced search (author, abstract, DOI, ORCID) you also need to be signed in to your DergiPark account. A blocked search is not reported as “no results”; the skill tells you why it was blocked.

A real search: the family home annotation#

On 27 October 2026 we searched the literature on “aile konutu” (the family home, protected under the Turkish Civil Code).

TR Dizin: A keyword search for “aile konutu” reported 5,811 results. Entering “aile konutu” in the title field of the advanced search brought the count down to 26. Two of the top keyword results:

Rumeysa Çevik, “Aile Konutu Şerhinin Hukuki Sonuçları” (Legal consequences of the family home annotation), İstanbul Medeniyet Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Dergisi, 2025, DOI: 10.58733/imhfd.1598651. Open access.

Seyda Dursun Karaahmetoğlu, “Ölen Eşin Aile Konutuna İlişkin Ölüme Bağlı Tasarruflarının Sağ Kalan Eşin TMK m. 240 Uyarınca…” (on the deceased spouse’s testamentary dispositions over the family home and the surviving spouse’s rights under Article 240 of the Civil Code), Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Dergisi, 2021, DOI: 10.33717/deuhfd.899908. 4 citations in TR Dizin.

DergiPark: On 28 October 2026, after passing the verification in the browser, we ran the same search on DergiPark. The search for “aile konutu” showed 10,000 results; the first was:

Elif İdil Ertop Yavuz, “Aile Konutuna İlişkin TMK M. 194/I Sınırlaması ve Aile Konutu Şerhinin Hukuki Niteliği” (The restriction under Article 194(1) of the Civil Code on the family home and the legal nature of the family home annotation), Periodicum Iuris, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2025, pp. 123–161.

YÖK Tez: 18 theses had “aile konutu” in the title: 16 master’s and 2 doctoral theses. One example is Oğuzhan Ertekin, “Türk Medeni Hukukunda aile konutu ve aile konutu şerhi” (Matrimonial home and matrimonial home annotation in Turkish civil law), Kırıkkale University, master’s thesis, 2020 (Thesis No 632327).

Yargıtay: On the same day we used Yargı PRO’s tools to search Court of Cassation (Yargıtay) decisions for the phrase “aile konutu şerhi”; the tool reported 6,001 decisions. The first result was Yargıtay 2nd Civil Chamber, E. 2019/1350 K. 2019/3311, 25.03.2019, on a request to remove the family home annotation after divorce.

The literature search shows you the issues under debate and who has written on them; Yargı PRO’s case-law search shows how the courts have resolved those issues. When an article cites a decision, you can find it in Yargı PRO by its citation and read the full text.

What to ask your AI#

• “List open-access TR Dizin articles published after 2020 with ‘aile konutu’ in the title; give each one’s journal, year and DOI.”
• “Find doctoral theses in YÖK Tez in private law on ‘aile konutu şerhi’ and read their abstracts; also read the full text of those whose PDFs are available.”
• “Extract the bibliography of this DergiPark article and list the Yargıtay decisions it cites.”
• “Summarise the main argument of this article and search for recent Yargıtay 2nd Civil Chamber decisions on the issue.”

Points to watch#

• Verify the citation. The AI may summarise an article or thesis inaccurately or mix up page numbers. Check any citation you will use in a pleading or paper against the publication’s own page and its full text. More: AI hallucinations and fake citations.
• Closed access and restricted theses. TR Dizin has no PDF for closed-access publications. In YÖK Tez, the PDF of a thesis whose author has not granted permission cannot be read; the tool reports the reason for the restriction.
• YÖK Tez result limit. YÖK shows at most 2,000 records per query. If the reported total is higher, narrow the search by year or department.
• Scanned PDFs. Scanned PDFs without a text layer are not converted into text.
• Copyright. Open access means you can read the text; follow the usual rules on quotation for long extracts.

Cost and how it relates to Yargı PRO#

All three tools are free; any fees for your AI subscription are separate. Yargı PRO’s case-law, legislation and Official Gazette search is included in every plan; decisions of 18 authorities are in the Pro plan. The 14-day trial includes Pro access and requires no payment details. Details: Pricing.