Turkish citizenship by property investment

1. What the route is, and what it is not

Exceptional acquisition of Turkish citizenship is granted by a decision of the President of the Republic. Meeting the investment conditions makes a person eligible to apply. It does not create a right to be granted citizenship, and no adviser, developer, agent or lawyer is a participant in the decision.

A separate condition sits on the face of the statute, ahead of the investment conditions rather than after them: an applicant who presents an impediment from the standpoint of national security or public order is rejected. That assessment also operates after a grant.

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2. The threshold

USD 400,000, or its equivalent in foreign currency, as at 24 August 2026. No amendment to the Regulation’s routes or amounts was made in 2024, in 2025, or up to that date; the last amending instrument is the decree of 12 December 2023.

Two figures in circulation are wrong. The reported USD 500,000 property threshold conflates the property route with the six other investment routes, which do sit at USD 500,000. The rumoured USD 600,000 increase was never enacted.

The amount sits in a Cumhurbaşkanı Kararı and can be changed and published on the same day, with immediate effect.

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3. What kind of property qualifies

For acquisitions from 12 December 2023 the property must have kat mülkiyeti or kat irtifakı established, or be arsa-classified land with a building on it. Bare land and agricultural land without a structure do not qualify.

TKGM will not issue the conformity certificate on the basis of a fractional (hisseli) acquisition; that has been the position since 1 January 2023. Usufruct is likewise excluded.

On the purchase limb, more than one property may be combined to reach the threshold — a permission granted by Land Registry guidance rather than by the Regulation, from a version of that guidance that has since been superseded, and one to confirm at the date of a transaction.

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4. Who you may buy from

TKGM will not issue the certificate where the property is registered to a foreign natural person, where a foreigner transferred it to a Turkish citizen or Turkish company within the preceding three years, where the seller is the applicant’s spouse, child or another first-degree relative, or where the seller falls inside the foreign-capital company perimeter of the Land Registry Law.

These are anti-recycling rules, and they sit in administrative guidance rather than in the Regulation. Several further limbs — including the bar on re-using property the applicant’s family transferred away, and the one-property-one-citizenship rule — rest on a superseded text, and their exact perimeter is a question for legal advice on a specific file.

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5. The three values

Three amounts must each independently reach the threshold: the price recorded in the deed, the value in the valuation report, and the total payments documented through the banking system. Land Registry guidance requires them to satisfy the amount ayrı ayrı — separately.

This is the rule that makes a pre-transaction eligibility verdict impossible, and it is the reason no listing on this site carries one. Two of the three figures do not exist until the transaction happens.

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6. Valuation

Since 4 March 2024 the valuation report for a citizenship-route sale or promise-to-sell may be drawn by one designated company only, GEDAŞ Gayrimenkul Değerleme A.Ş. No party to the transaction chooses the valuer, and a privately commissioned report cannot be substituted. Any offer that includes or promises a valuation figure is describing something that cannot lawfully be delivered.

GEDAŞ is itself licensed by the Capital Markets Board. What changed in 2024 is that citizenship-route reports may come from one designated licensed company only.

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7. Payment

Since 24 January 2022 the foreign-currency price is sold to a Turkish bank, on-sold to the Central Bank, and a Döviz Alım Belgesi is required for the deed; the seller is paid in Lira. The certificate must be issued at the latest on the date of the deed and may cover only the property price — VAT, commission, expenses, taxes and fees are expressly excluded from it.

Payment must be bank-documented. Cash does not count, and crypto-assets may not be used in payments at all. TKGM guidance requires the money to run within a defined circle of persons connected to the buyer and to the seller; unconnected third-party payments fall outside it, and the outer boundary of that circle is not defined in any text we hold.

Where the purchase is financed, the loan is deducted and the remainder must reach the threshold on its own.

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8. The annotation, and the certificate

A commitment not to sell for three years is annotated on the title. For a purchase it runs from registration; for a promise-to-sell file, from the date of the annotation.

Once the annotation exists, the Land Registry issues the conformity certificate — the Uygunluk Belgesi, called the Taşınmaz Yatırımı Tespit Belgesi in the 2024 guidance — and transmits it to the migration authority and the civil registry. The certificate does not itself confer citizenship. It records that a qualifying investment has been made.

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9. Family

The investor’s foreign spouse and their minor or dependent foreign children are covered by the main applicant’s file and apply with it. Adult, non-dependent children and parents are not covered.

The extension runs both ways. Where a citizenship decision is annulled, the effects reach the dependants admitted with it — which is why 4,721 of the 6,134 people affected by the August 2026 action were family members.

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10. Residence, presence and dual citizenship

Neither the citizenship law nor the Regulation imposes a minimum-stay requirement for this route; the five-year residence condition belongs to ordinary naturalisation. That is the absence of a statutory requirement, not a promise that no visit will be needed: some steps are attended in person or through a narrowly scoped power of attorney.

The route runs through a short-term residence permit under Law 6458 Art. 31(1)(j), which may be issued for periods of up to five years at a time.

Turkish law permits multiple citizenship and contains no renunciation requirement. Whether the applicant’s own country permits it is a question for a lawyer in that country, before the application.

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11. How long it takes

No official figure exists for the process end to end. Official deadlines exist only at individual certificate stages, and the citizenship decision itself carries no statutory deadline.

Practitioners report totals spanning roughly three to four months at the optimistic end to around twelve months, with six to twelve months most commonly described. That is an observed range with no official basis, not a commitment, and individual files take longer. Anyone offering you a date is offering something they do not control.

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12. Before you act

The counterpart risk pages, the enforcement record, and the standing advice to instruct your own bar-registered Turkish avukat independently of anyone selling you a property.