Since the 19 December 2020 regulation, no participation insurer in Turkey may operate without an advisory committee of at least three scholars approving its products, contracts and investments. That makes 'we have Shariah oversight' a legal baseline, not a selling point. The real differentiator is visibility: which companies name their scholars, publish their icazet certificates and print their committees' workload, and which ones ask you to take compliance on faith. We pulled every committee from primary disclosures, verified August 7, 2026. Here they are.
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The committees, company by company
| Company | Committee members | What is published |
|---|---|---|
| Neova Katilim Sigorta | Prof. Dr. M. Abdurrezzak Tabtabaei (chair), Prof. Dr. Abdullah Durmus (vice chair), Mehmet Odabasi, Yunus Huyut | Signed annual fiqh opinion in the annual report, with meeting and decision counts |
| Bereket Sigorta / Bereket Emeklilik | Prof. Dr. Servet Bayindir (chair), Doc. Dr. Abdurrahman Yazici, Dr. Yahya Senol | Committee page and annual fiqh opinion in the annual report |
| Turkiye Katilim Sigorta / Turkiye Katilim Hayat | Prof. Dr. Isak Emin Aktepe (chair), Dr. Mehmet Gayretli (vice chair), Dr. Salih Guner | Named in launch disclosures; thin website documentation |
| HDI Katilim Sigorta | Doc. Dr. Muhammed Fatih Turan (chair), Doc. Dr. Mucahit Ozdemir (vice chair), Ayse Boztas | Icazet certificate and annual conformity opinions downloadable from the website |
| Katilim Emeklilik ve Hayat | Prof. Dr. Hamdi Donduren (chair), Dr. Mustafa Dereci (vice chair), Mehmet Odabasi | Published product icazet certificates plus a signed annual compliance report |
A few things jump out of that table. Mehmet Odabasi sits on both Neova's and Katilim Emeklilik's committees, a normal pattern in a market where qualified participation-fiqh specialists are scarce. One committee serves both Bereket companies, and one serves both state companies. And the four-member committee at Neova exceeds the three-member statutory minimum, the only operator that does.
What the committees actually do all year
The best window into committee workload is Neova's 2025 annual report, the most granular disclosure in Turkish insurance: 12 meetings, 95 agenda items, 38 decisions and 57 contract approvals, with the committee's signed fiqh opinion published in the report. That is roughly one meeting a month and a contract approval nearly every week. Committees approve product wordings, review investment channels, rule on operational questions (how to handle late payment penalties, what to do with impermissible incidental income), and sign the annual conformity opinion the regulation requires. When Neova launched its NeoPrestij kasko in November 2025, that wording went through the committee first.
The disclosure ranking
Since oversight is universal, we rank operators on how much of it you can verify without being a shareholder:
- 1. HDI Katilim: the only operator whose icazet certificate and annual conformity opinions sit on the public website, downloadable before you buy. Ironic, given its model is the one serious fiqh objections attach to.
- 2. Katilim Emeklilik: published icazet certificates per product family, plus a signed annual Report on Compliance with Participation Principles, latest dated 31 December 2025.
- 3. Neova: the deepest disclosure by content (workload counts, surplus provision figures), but you must open the annual report to find it, and it is in Turkish only.
- 4. Bereket: named scholars on the website and an annual opinion in the report, but thinner participation-specific financial detail.
- 5. Turkiye Katilim Sigorta and Hayat: compliant and the scholars are known specialists in Islamic commercial law, but the public paper trail is the thinnest of the group. For a sovereign-backed operator built to mainstream the segment, publishing the icazet should be trivial. It has not happened.
Does the scholar roster change what you should buy?
Mostly no, and that is worth saying plainly. All five committees are staffed by credentialed specialists, and no serious allegation of rubber-stamping attaches to any of them. The committees converge on the same big judgments: interest-free investment, subject screening, accommodation of mandatory state pools as necessity. Where rosters genuinely matter is edge cases: HDI Katilim's committee has approved a non-pool model that some scholars outside the company reject, so if your own scholar requires tabarru pool economics, the committee's approval will not settle it for you. Our model explainer covers that fault line.
Three documents to ask for by name
If you want to pressure-test any operator's governance before buying, ask for these in writing. Companies with real paper produce it quickly.
- The icazet certificate covering the specific product you are quoted, not the company generally.
- The latest annual conformity opinion (uygunluk gorusu) signed by the committee.
- The company's written description of its fund model: does a participant risk fund exist, what fee does the operator take from it, and who keeps investment returns?
Compare providers in your region
See side-by-side comparisons of Shariah-compliant products, or let our matcher recommend the best options for your situation.
The 2020 regulation did its job: scholars are in the room everywhere. The next stage of this market's maturity is those scholars' work being readable by the people whose premiums fund it. Two operators are most of the way there; the state, oddly, is furthest behind. Compare all operators on the takaful hub, and if you are new to the segment start with our state of play.
A closing note on independence, because it is the question skeptics reasonably ask: these committees are appointed and paid by the companies they supervise. Turkey's answer is structural rather than personal. Circular 2021/3 requires committee independence and hierarchy-free access to the board, a participation compliance unit monitors day-to-day conformity with committee decisions, and an annual internal participation audit reports on the whole apparatus. None of that makes capture impossible; it makes it auditable. The strongest consumer-side check remains the simplest one: committees whose decisions, meeting counts and signed opinions are published are committees that can be embarrassed, and the possibility of embarrassment is most of what independence means in practice. Weight your trust toward the operators that publish.