Due diligence: what we check, and what nobody can check

1. Two layers, not one

Layer A — the property. Title record and encumbrances, zoning status, building permit and occupancy permit, condominium status, seismic and building-stock risk, developer standing, municipal and service-charge arrears, the site management plan, and independent comparable pricing.

Layer B — the citizenship conditions. Property type, the exclusion of fractional acquisitions, the seller-related and prior-use conditions, the three separate value tests, the payment chain, and the annotation.

A property can pass A perfectly and fail B. It can also fail A and satisfy B. Neither result tells you anything about the other.

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2. Of fifteen citizenship conditions, six can be checked in advance

This is the arithmetic that governs everything we publish. Roughly six conditions are property-intrinsic and checkable from records before a transaction. Three depend on who the buyer is and are unknowable until the buyer is identified. Five exist only at the transaction — the deed price, the valuation, the documented payments, the loan deduction and the annotation. One belongs to the Turkish state alone.

A per-property “eligible” flag would assert fifteen answers while holding six. That is why no such label exists on this site, and why the content schema has no field that could carry one.

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3. What a check is worth, and for how long

Every published check names what it rests on and the date it was made. Encumbrance records carry a thirty-day validity because the land register can change on the same day; most other checks carry ninety. When a check expires it is shown as expired rather than quietly carried forward, and an expired check tells you when we last looked, not what is true today.

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4. Hard exclusions

Named categories that block a property from being presented on the citizenship route at all, or from being carried at all: property outside the qualifying type; fractional structures; ineligible seller categories; a title history showing a prior citizenship annotation or a foreign owner inside the look-back window; missing occupancy permit on completed stock; encumbrances that survive the sale; any counterparty that has proposed a cash-back, a rebate, a two-price structure or a pre-arranged valuation; any offering bundled with a guaranteed rental return or a buy-back; and a price materially above verifiable comparables with no property-specific explanation.

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5. What the 2026 enforcement action teaches about diligence

The mechanism was inflated valuation and a money leg that did not happen: low-value properties presented as high-value through false expertise reports, and funds that should have entered Türkiye and did not. The premium came out of the applicants, who paid for a file rather than for a property.

Designating a single valuer in 2024 did not by itself remove valuation-fraud risk, since the 2026 files post-date it. Saying so is more useful than reassurance.

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6. Off-plan is a stricter gate, not a cheaper entry

The promise-to-sell limb requires full prepayment under a notarised contract, which concentrates delivery risk on the developer, while the three-year annotation restricts the exit. The citizenship clock and the delivery risk run independently of each other.

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7. Your own lawyer, not ours

Legal opinions and the conduct of legal matters are reserved by Turkish law to avukatlar registered with a Turkish bar. Instruct your own, independently of anyone selling you a property, with a narrowly scoped power of attorney — including to review anything we have prepared. Our review is our review. It is not a substitute for yours, and it is not a warranty.