Is Your Overtime Pay Being Calculated Correctly?

Finding your hourly rate is a simpler division than you'd think, but this step gets skipped in a lot of payslips.

Summary

Overtime calculation really comes down to one number: your hourly rate. Get that right and the rest is easy.

Step by step

The standard practice in Turkey is dividing monthly gross salary by 225 to get the hourly rate. Where does 225 come from? A 45-hour work week, an average of 4.33 weeks per month, and some rounding, a divisor that's been in use for years.
Overtime pay is your hourly rate plus a 50% premium, so multiply your hourly rate by 1.5.
Example: someone with a 50,000 TRY monthly gross has an hourly rate of 50,000/225 ≈ 222 TRY. Overtime per hour is then 222 × 1.5 ≈ 333 TRY.
Compensatory time off is a separate matter, some workplaces balance extra hours worked by having you work less on another day, and in that case no premium is paid. If your payslip says "denkleştirme" instead of "fazla mesai", it's worth knowing the distinction.
There's also a yearly cap, the law sets a 270-hour limit on overtime per year.

Why it matters

One month of underpaid overtime looks like small change. Twelve months of it doesn't. Payslip errors usually aren't deliberate either. They tend to come from hours logged wrong or the wrong divisor being used. Once you can run the numbers yourself, you can go to HR with a specific question instead of a vague complaint.

What to check on your payslip

Whether overtime hours appear as their own line item.
Whether the gross salary used for the calculation matches the one in your contract.
Whether work on your weekly rest day or a public holiday has been lumped in with regular overtime. Those follow separate rules.
That deductions come off the gross amount, so the net difference you see will be smaller than the gross one.

Common mistakes

Disputing your pay without your own record of hours. Even notes in a phone calendar help.
Working out overtime from your net salary. The division uses gross pay.
Assuming every extra hour gets the full 50% premium when your contract sets a week shorter than 45 hours. Turkish law treats the hours between your contracted week and 45 as a separate category with a lower premium.
Not knowing you can take time off instead. Under the Labour Act, each overtime hour can be swapped for one and a half hours of free time.

A worked example

An employee earns 45,000 TRY gross a month and works 10 hours of overtime that month. The hourly rate is 45,000 / 225 = 200 TRY, so each overtime hour is 200 × 1.5 = 300 TRY. Ten hours come to 3,000 TRY gross. If the payslip shows 2,000 TRY for that line, the hours were most likely paid at the plain rate with no premium. What reaches your bank account is lower after income tax and social security deductions. Check current rates with SGK (the social security institution) and GİB (the tax authority).

When to get professional advice

If raising it with your employer doesn't fix the gap, or several months of unpaid overtime have piled up, talk to an employment lawyer or your union. In Turkey, wage claims must go through mandatory mediation before a lawsuit, and claims are subject to time limits. Keep your records and don't wait too long.