Investing in property in Türkiye

1. Start with the purchase, not the passport

A property that is a poor purchase does not become a good one because it can support an application, and a property that fails a citizenship condition may be an excellent purchase. Keeping the two questions apart is the single most useful discipline available to a foreign buyer here.

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2. What you actually pay, beyond the price

• Title-deed fee — 4% of the sale price in total, split by statute into 2% for the buyer and 2% for the seller, calculated on no less than the municipal tax value. In practice the buyer is frequently asked to bear the whole 4%; that is a negotiating position, not the statutory position.
• Valuation — commissioned through the official channel. For citizenship-route transactions the designated valuer’s fee applies; we do not publish a figure for it, because we hold only an industry estimate.
• Intermediation — the regulation governing real-estate trading caps the fee on a sale at 4% plus VAT in total, split 2% and 2% unless otherwise agreed.
• Notary, sworn translation, compulsory earthquake insurance (DASK) and per-dependant application fees — each set by official tariff rather than negotiation; your lawyer will itemise them for your specific file before you commit.

None of these counts toward the citizenship threshold, and none of them may appear on the currency-purchase certificate.

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3. VAT

Article 13(1)(i) of the VAT Law exempts the first delivery of new dwellings or workplaces to qualifying non-resident foreign buyers, subject to conditions on how the price is brought into Türkiye and to a three-year holding period extended from one year by Law 7394 in April 2022. It is independent of the citizenship rules, and an early resale triggers a clawback with interest and joint liability.

If both regimes apply, the title carries two annotations with two separate three-year clocks that do not necessarily start on the same day.

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4. Tax while you hold, and tax when you sell

Gains on a sale more than five years after acquisition are exempt; within five years, the cost base may be indexed where the producer price index has risen by 10% or more, and an annually reset exempt amount applies — 120,000 TL for 2025 and 150,000 TL for 2026.

The five-year capital-gains clock is longer than the three-year citizenship commitment and longer than the VAT holding period. All three are separate.

Citizenship is not tax residency. Turkish tax residency follows settlement in Türkiye or presence for more than six months in a calendar year. Acquiring citizenship does not by itself change where a person is tax-resident or what they must report.

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5. The currency mechanics

Since January 2022 a foreign natural person’s purchase runs through a mandatory currency conversion: the foreign currency is sold to a Turkish bank, on-sold to the Central Bank, and the seller is paid in Lira, against a certificate that must exist by the date of the deed.

That has a practical consequence beyond compliance. The exchange rate at conversion is the rate that fixes the dollar figure on the certificate, which is the figure that counts for a citizenship file.

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6. Ownership restrictions that have nothing to do with citizenship

Foreign acquisition is subject to its own restrictions under the Land Registry Law, including limits by nationality and restrictions in military and security zones. These apply to any foreign buyer.

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7. What this page will not tell you

No projection of rental income, no yield figure and no view on where prices are going. Where we publish comparable evidence, it will be sourced, dated and bounded to a named sample; where we do not hold it, we will say so rather than estimate.