Turkish Citizenship Revoked 2026 ⚖️ What the Crackdown Means for Investors and Families

Turkish citizenship revoked after approval is legally a cancellation (iptal) under Article 31 of Law No. 5901, where a grant rests on a false or hidden fact.

On 4 August 2026 the Ministry of Interior (İçişleri Bakanlığı) announced that 6,134 people who had acquired Turkish citizenship through investment had their citizenship decisions cancelled or withdrawn. The figure covers 1,413 investors together with their spouses and children. Headlines read it as a verdict on the programme. Investors who already hold a Turkish passport read it differently, and more quietly: not as a question about the programme, but as a question about their own file, and whether it would hold if someone opened it today.

Oznur & Partners is an Istanbul-based law firm that works on citizenship by investment files from the purchase stage through to disputes that arise years after approval. The firm is the Exclusive Contributor for Corporate Immigration in Legal 500 EMEA and the exclusive Turkey representative for Corporate Immigration in Chambers and Partners 2026. This page sets out what actually happens in law when Turkish citizenship is revoked, who in the family is affected, what happens to property, and where the law stops.

The vocabulary matters more than it seems. Foreign investors now ask a precise question: what does it actually mean, legally, when Turkish citizenship is revoked? It means one of three different decisions under the Turkish Citizenship Law (Türk Vatandaşlığı Kanunu, Law No. 5901), and the difference decides who in the family keeps a Turkish passport. Cancellation (iptal, Article 31) applies when the grant followed a false statement or the concealment of a material fact. Withdrawal (geri alma, Article 40) applies when the decision was issued although the legal conditions were not met. Deprivation (kaybettirme, Article 29) responds to specific conduct, such as serving a foreign state against Turkey’s interests, and affects only the person concerned.

The 2026 files did not start at a passport office. They started with property valuation reports. How does a problem in a valuation report turn into the loss of citizenship? Through the certificate of conformity (uygunluk belgesi) that confirms the investment met the legal threshold. The Ministry’s own figures show the sequence: the investment conformity certificates of 1,150 investors were cancelled first, and with them the citizenship decisions of 5,391 people, family members included, fell as well. Remove the certificate, and the decision built on it loses its foundation.

Which leads to the question most careful buyers hesitate to say out loud. Which investors are actually exposed? The exposure sits in an honest purchase carrying a false number. A buyer can pay real money for a real apartment and still hold a file whose valuation report was inflated by someone else to clear the USD 400,000 threshold, because the state reviews the file, not only the intentions of the person who signed it. (The line between what the investor declared and what others prepared on the investor’s behalf is exactly where most defences are built.)

Then comes time. When can a cancellation still happen, five or eight years after the passport was issued? At any point, yet never in the past. Law No. 5901 sets no deadline for cancellation, unlike the repealed Law No. 403, which barred it once five years had passed from naturalisation; but under Article 32 a cancellation takes effect from the date of the decision, so what a person did as a Turkish citizen before that date is not reached back and undone by Article 32.

If your file was assembled by an agent you no longer hear from, the unease you feel reading the news is not irrational. It is also not a conclusion. It is a reason to read your own documents before anyone else does.

⚖️ Can Turkish Citizenship Be Revoked After Approval?

Yes. Turkish citizenship acquired by an authority decision, which includes every citizenship by investment grant, can be lost by a later authority decision. Article 24 of Law No. 5901 lists the routes: renunciation with permission, deprivation, and cancellation of the naturalisation. Article 40 adds a fourth mechanism, the withdrawal of a decision issued without its legal conditions. For an investor, only two of these routes are realistic: cancellation and withdrawal.

The three involuntary routes are often reported under the single English word “revoked”. Legally they are not interchangeable, and the consequences for spouses, children and property differ in ways that matter far more than the headline.

Cancellation is the route that follows a defect in the file itself. Article 31 of the Turkish Citizenship Law provides that the decision granting citizenship is cancelled by the authority that issued it when the acquisition resulted from the person’s false statement or the concealment of material facts. For citizenship by investment, the issuing authority is the President of the Republic, because exceptional acquisition under Article 12 is granted by Presidential decision.

Withdrawal works on a different logic. It does not ask whether anyone lied; it asks whether the legal conditions for the decision existed at all. Article 12 grants exceptional citizenship only to applicants who present no obstacle in terms of national security and public order. When that condition is later found to have been absent, withdrawal under Article 40 is the provision that fits, and the Ministry’s 2026 statement used exactly that term, geri alma, for the investors flagged on security and public order grounds.

Deprivation is rarely relevant to investors. It responds to conduct after acquisition, not to how citizenship was obtained, and the grounds listed in Article 29 are narrow. It matters here mainly by contrast: it is the one route the law explicitly confines to the individual.

None of these routes is triggered by living abroad. Citizenship acquired through investment carries no residence condition after approval, and absence from Turkey appears nowhere among the grounds in Articles 29, 31 or 40. A Turkish citizen by investment who has not visited Turkey in years is, on that fact alone, in exactly the same position as one who lives in Istanbul.

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⚖️ What Happened in Turkey’s 2026 Citizenship Cancellations?

The Ministry of Interior’s statement of 4 August 2026 reported that inspections carried out by the General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre (Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü), the Tax Inspection Board (Vergi Denetim Kurulu Başkanlığı) and the General Directorate of Security (Emniyet Genel Müdürlüğü) identified investors who had used fake or irregular valuation reports. The conformity certificates of 1,150 of those investors were cancelled, and the citizenship decisions of 5,391 people, investors and family members together, were cancelled with them.

The same statement reported a second group. After citizenship had been granted, 263 investors were assessed as objectionable on public order and national security grounds, and the citizenship decisions of 743 people, again including family members, were withdrawn. Together the two groups account for 1,413 investors and 6,134 people. The Ministry added that the irregularities originated in documents prepared before the citizenship applications were filed, which places the problem in the file rather than in the review of the application.

The review did not stop in August. In its update of 21 September 2026, the Ministry reported that since 11 February 2026 the certificates of 458 investors had been cancelled and 1,393 people had lost their citizenship on that basis, while 7 people had their citizenship withdrawn on public order and national security grounds. The same day, a second wave of operations followed an investigation by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office (İstanbul Cumhuriyet Başsavcılığı) into sham property sales, and the Ministry reported that 1,070 people, family members included, had been identified as having acquired citizenship irregularly through those sales, with the process continuing for 11 more.

Nothing in these files failed on the day it was signed. The inflated valuation sat in the archive, correct in form and silent in substance, for years. Then inspectors compared the reports with the rest of the record, and everything that had quietly settled into the file surfaced in a single decision, for the investor and for every family member whose citizenship rested on it.

For investors whose purchase was genuine, the 2026 figures carry two practical lessons. The first is that the trigger was documentary, not political: the state moved against files whose numbers did not match reality. The second is that the review works backwards through the chain (valuation, certificate, citizenship decision), so the strength of a file depends on its weakest document, not on the passport at the end of it. Recent changes to the rules and the valuation system are tracked separately in our overview of Turkish citizenship by investment regulatory updates in 2026.

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⚖️ When the Deed Is Real but the Money Never Arrived

The September wave pointed at a different weakness from the one described in August. According to the Istanbul prosecutors, 274 of the 734 sales examined in that wave were found to be collusive, and the transactions involved exceeded TRY 3.5 billion. An earlier phase of the same investigation had already led to cancellation proceedings for 687 people. Protective measures were placed on 2,011 properties, a hotel, 86 vehicles, two yachts and 42 bank accounts, and trustees were appointed to 30 companies.

What sets the September file apart is the mechanism. The prosecutors describe purchases in which the foreign currency required by the programme was never actually brought into Turkey: the money was made to look like the buyer’s, while it came from intermediary companies or from the sellers themselves. In that structure the valuation can be entirely accurate. What is missing is the investment.

A discount on a citizenship property is rarely a discount. It is usually the gap between the price written on the deed and the money that actually moved, closed by the seller in a way the buyer was never shown. The buyer experiences a good deal. The file records a transfer that did not happen in the amount declared, and that is exactly the kind of record the 2026 inspections were built to find.

Our citizenship files are built on two questions, asked before a contract is signed and asked again after approval. Is the sale real? That means knowing who the seller is, where every payment comes from, where it goes, and whether anything flows back. What is the property really worth? That is measured against comparable sales in the same building and district, not against the threshold the appraisal needs to reach. A valuation that lands exactly on USD 400,000 is where our review begins, not where it ends.

The work does not stop at approval. For the three years the holding condition runs, and whenever the authorities change how they inspect files, we return to the documents our clients’ citizenship rests on. The 2026 inspections asked the same two questions our files are built on, which is why, for our clients, this crackdown has been news rather than a notice.

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⚖️ Will My Spouse and Children Lose Their Turkish Citizenship Too?

If the decision is a cancellation, yes: under Article 32 of Law No. 5901, a cancellation decision also applies to the spouse and children who acquired Turkish citizenship through the person whose citizenship is cancelled. In a citizenship by investment file, that normally means every family member included in the main application. The investor’s file carries the whole family, and when the file falls, it falls for all of them.

Deprivation works the other way. Article 30 states that deprivation decisions are personal and do not affect the spouse or children. Withdrawal under Article 40 sits in between: the text says nothing about family members, yet the Ministry’s 2026 figures (263 investors, 743 people) show that family members were counted in the withdrawals in practice. Whether that extension rests on solid ground is a legal question in its own right, and it is one of the first points to examine in any withdrawal file.

Two features of Article 32 surprise most families. The first is that the law offers no good-faith protection for a spouse in an investment file. Law No. 5901 does contain such a protection, but only in Article 16, for a spouse who acquired citizenship by marriage and acted in good faith when the marriage is later annulled. A spouse included in an investment application has no equivalent rule. (Good faith is still relevant in litigation, but it is an argument to be made, not a protection written into the statute.)

The second is statelessness. When a Turkish citizen renounces citizenship with permission, Article 27 prevents the loss from extending to children if it would leave them stateless. Article 32 contains no such safeguard for cancellation. A family member who gave up an original nationality after becoming Turkish therefore carries a sharper risk than one who kept it, and that difference should be known before any decision about a second nationality is made.

Family members are not bystanders in the litigation that follows a cancellation. Council of State (Danıştay) case law has recognised that a spouse and children whose Turkish citizenship ended because of the Presidential decision concerning the investor have a direct interest in challenging that decision. Each family member’s 60-day filing period runs from that person’s own notification, so a family facing a cancellation should decide early whether the investor, the family members, or all of them together will file.

Children born after the parent became a Turkish citizen deserve separate attention. Such a child acquired Turkish citizenship by descent at birth under Article 7, not through the parent’s investment decision. Article 32 reaches those who acquired citizenship through the person concerned, and a cancellation operates only from the decision date. The position of a child born during the parent’s citizenship is therefore legally distinct from that of a child included in the original application, and it should be analysed as such rather than assumed to follow the parent’s file. The broader rules on including family members in an application are covered in our guide to Turkish citizenship for spouse and children.

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⚖️ Is There a Time Limit for Cancelling Turkish Citizenship?

No. Law No. 5901 sets no time limit for cancelling a citizenship decision under Article 31. A citizenship by investment file approved in 2018 can be cancelled in 2026 if the grant is found to have followed a false statement or the concealment of material facts. The age of the file offers no legal protection by itself.

The repealed Turkish Citizenship Law No. 403 took a different approach. Under Article 24 of Law No. 403, a naturalisation could not be cancelled once five years had passed from the date of naturalisation. Law No. 5901, which replaced Law No. 403 in 2009, removed that five-year bar. Under the old law, a file older than five years was closed; under the current law, a file of any age remains open to review.

Cancellation of Turkish citizenship is not retroactive. Article 32 of Law No. 5901 provides that a cancellation decision takes effect from the date of the decision. If a 2026 cancellation decision is issued on a citizenship granted in 2019, the person is treated as having lost Turkish citizenship in 2026, not as never having held it. Reports describing these cancellations as retroactive misread the statute.

The effective date matters for practical reasons. Acts carried out as a Turkish citizen between the grant and the cancellation decision, such as property transactions, company registrations or contracts, are not undone by Article 32 itself. Each of those acts may still face its own review under the rules that govern it, but the loss of citizenship does not reach back to erase the period in which citizenship existed.

The effective date of a withdrawal under Article 40 of Law No. 5901 is not stated in the text. Article 20 provides that decisions granting citizenship take effect from their date, and Article 40 allows those decisions to be withdrawn, but Article 40 does not say from when the withdrawal operates. In a withdrawal file, the effective date is a contestable point and should be examined, not assumed.

A criminal investigation into forged or inflated valuation reports runs on a separate track from the administrative cancellation of citizenship. An investor can face a cancellation decision without being a suspect in the criminal case, and a criminal case against an agent or valuer does not by itself decide whether the investor’s own citizenship file stands or falls.

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⚖️ What Happens to My Property in Turkey After Citizenship Is Cancelled?

A person whose Turkish citizenship is cancelled must liquidate property in Turkey within one year only if the cancellation decision orders liquidation. Article 33 of Law No. 5901 provides that where liquidation is considered necessary, the cancellation decision states it, and the person must then dispose of the property within one year at the latest.

If the property is not sold within the one-year period, the Treasury (Hazine) sells it. Under Article 33 of Law No. 5901, the proceeds are deposited in the person’s name and account at a public bank included in the public treasury system. The sale does not confiscate the value; it converts the property into money held for the owner.

Filing a lawsuit against the cancellation decision stops the liquidation clock. Article 33(2) of Law No. 5901 provides that when the person applies to the courts against the cancellation decision, the liquidation of property is deferred until the end of the case. An owner who litigates within the deadline keeps the property until the court has ruled.

If the cancellation decision does not order liquidation, the one-year duty in Article 33 is not triggered by the cancellation itself. The former citizen then holds the property as a foreign national, and ownership continues to be governed by the general rules on property acquisition by foreigners in Turkey, which should be checked against the person’s nationality and the property’s location.

Precautionary measures ordered in a criminal investigation are a separate matter from Article 33. When a prosecutor or criminal court places a measure on a title record, the property can be frozen regardless of the citizenship decision, and releasing a criminal measure requires action in the criminal proceedings, not in the administrative case against the cancellation.

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⚖️ How to Challenge a Citizenship Cancellation in Turkey

A citizenship cancellation decision is challenged by filing an administrative lawsuit within 60 days of notification. Article 7 of the Administrative Procedure Law (İdari Yargılama Usulü Kanunu, Law No. 2577) sets the general time limit for actions before the Council of State (Danıştay) and the administrative courts at 60 days. A lawsuit filed on day 61 is out of time, whatever the merits of the file.

The lawsuit against a citizenship by investment cancellation is filed with the Council of State acting as a court of first instance, not with a local administrative court (idare mahkemesi). Exceptional citizenship under Article 12 of Law No. 5901 is granted by Presidential decision, and Article 31 requires cancellation by the same authority, so the cancellation is itself a Presidential decision. Article 24 of the Law on the Council of State No. 2575 (Danıştay Kanunu) assigns actions against Presidential decisions to the Council of State at first instance, and published decisions in investment citizenship cases have come from its 10th Chamber acting in that capacity.

Notification starts the 60-day period. Article 41 of Law No. 5901 requires decisions on the acquisition and loss of Turkish citizenship to be notified to the person concerned and to the application authorities. An investor who has changed address since the application should make sure the authorities hold a current address, because a notification sent to an outdated address can start the time limit without the investor knowing.

An application to the administration under Article 11 of Administrative Procedure Law No. 2577, made before the 60-day period expires, suspends the filing period. The route is useful to obtain the reasoning and inspection documents behind a cancellation, which many families do not receive with the notification. It must be used with care, because the remaining period resumes once the administration answers or is deemed to have refused.

A citizenship by investment file can involve two separate administrative decisions. The first is the cancellation of the certificate of conformity that confirmed the investment; the second is the cancellation of the citizenship decision built on that certificate. The 2026 files followed that order. Each decision is an administrative act, and the lawsuit strategy should identify which decision is challenged, which authority issued it, and when each was notified.

The wording of Article 31 of Law No. 5901 is itself a line of defence. Article 31 refers to the false statement or concealment of the person concerned (ilgilinin). Where an investor paid the declared price in full and did not know that a valuation report prepared by others was inflated, whether Article 31 applies at all is a genuine legal question, and the administration may be pushed to rely on the conditions test in Article 40 instead, with different consequences.

A court may also be asked for a stay of execution (yürütmenin durdurulması) of the cancellation decision while the case continues. A stay is not automatic: under Article 27 of Administrative Procedure Law No. 2577, it depends on whether the decision appears clearly unlawful and whether its implementation would cause damage that is difficult or impossible to remedy. The property liquidation deferral in Article 33(2) of Law No. 5901, by contrast, applies by statute once the case is filed.

A first-instance judgment of the Council of State can be appealed within the Council of State itself, to the Plenary of Administrative Law Chambers (İdari Dava Daireleri Kurulu). Once ordinary remedies are exhausted, an individual application to the Constitutional Court (Anayasa Mahkemesi) is available where the cancellation is argued to violate a fundamental right, such as the right to respect for private and family life.

The evidence file for a challenge to a citizenship cancellation is built from documents that already exist, most of them created at the time of purchase. A file that assembles them before the 60-day period starts running leaves time for legal argument instead of document hunting. The core set is:

1. The official deed of sale (resmi senet) and title record for the qualifying property.
2. Bank transfer records showing the full purchase price moving from the investor to the seller.
3. The Foreign Exchange Purchase Certificate (Döviz Alım Belgesi) issued for the transaction.
4. The valuation report used in the application, with the identity of the valuer that issued it.
5. The certificate of conformity and any notice of its cancellation.
6. Correspondence with the agent, developer or seller, especially on price and payment.
7. Every notification received, with the date of receipt recorded.

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⚖️ Which Citizenship Files Face Cancellation Risk?

A citizenship by investment file faces cancellation risk when the documented value of the investment does not match what was actually paid. The real estate route requires a property worth at least USD 400,000 under Article 20(2)(b) of the Regulation on the Implementation of the Turkish Citizenship Law (Türk Vatandaşlığı Kanununun Uygulanmasına İlişkin Yönetmelik). A valuation report stating USD 400,000 over a real price of USD 300,000 does not meet the threshold; the file then rests on a number that was never paid.

An investor who paid the full declared price through the banking system holds the strongest position in a cancellation review. When the deed, the bank transfers and the Foreign Exchange Purchase Certificate all show the same amount, a later finding that the valuation was irregular does not change what the investor actually paid, and the payment trail becomes the centre of the defence.

An investor whose seller returned part of the price in cash or through a side agreement holds the weakest position. A returned payment means the declared price was not the real price, and the investor necessarily knew it. Cancellation under Article 31 of Law No. 5901 then follows the classic pattern of a false statement, and the effect extends to the spouse and children under Article 32.

The identity of the valuer matters in older files. Many of the 2026 cancellations concerned valuation reports issued before Turkey tightened its valuation controls for citizenship transactions. An investor whose report came from a valuer later named in an investigation should treat the file as one that may be reviewed, and assemble the payment evidence before any notice arrives.

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⚖️ Does Selling the Property After Three Years Put Citizenship at Risk?

No. Selling the qualifying property after the three-year holding period has ended is not a ground for cancelling Turkish citizenship. The grounds in Article 31 of Law No. 5901 concern how citizenship was obtained (a false statement or concealed facts), not what the investor does with the property once the holding obligation has been completed.

The three-year undertaking and the cancellation rules meet at the land registry. The undertaking signed in the official deed for a citizenship purchase refers to Article 31 of Law No. 5901 for cases where the information and documents submitted are found to be incomplete, incorrect or misleading. An investor therefore acknowledged the cancellation route at the moment of purchase, in the same document that recorded the three-year commitment.

Loss of Turkish citizenship by an authority decision after approval is the subject of the present guide; it does not cover the three-year title deed annotation, its removal, or the rules for selling the qualifying property, which are explained in our guide to Turkish citizenship by real estate investment. Refusals and errors that arise before approval are a separate matter, covered in what happens after a legal mistake in a Turkish citizenship application. Voluntary renunciation of Turkish citizenship under Article 25 of Law No. 5901 is also outside the scope of this page.

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⚖️ What to Do Now If You Hold a Citizenship by Investment File

An investor who holds Turkish citizenship through investment and has received no notice should use the time to verify the file, not to wait. A file review takes days; the 60-day litigation period under Article 7 of Law No. 2577 begins only after notification, but assembling a complete evidence set from abroad can take longer than 60 days if it starts late.

1. Obtain complete copies of the citizenship file: deed, valuation report, certificate of conformity, and the Presidential decision details.
2. Compare three numbers: the valuation figure, the declared price in the deed, and the total of the bank transfers.
3. Trace the money: confirm that the purchase funds left an account held by the investor abroad, were converted in the investor’s name, and that nothing flowed back from the seller or an intermediary.
4. Identify the valuer that issued the report and check whether that valuer has been named in any investigation.
5. Check the current title record of the qualifying property for any annotation or precautionary measure.
6. Confirm that the authorities hold a current notification address for the investor and each adult family member.
7. Record the family structure: which members were included in the application and which were born after approval.

An investor who has already received a notice should record the date of receipt at once. The 60-day period in Article 7 of Law No. 2577 runs from notification, and the deferral of property liquidation under Article 33(2) of Law No. 5901 depends on the lawsuit being filed. Both protections are lost if the deadline passes.

A Turkish citizen by investment who lives outside Turkey can manage the review and the lawsuit without travelling. A power of attorney issued before a notary abroad and legalised by apostille or consular certification allows a Turkish lawyer to obtain records, file the case and represent the investor throughout. Our team handles these files for clients across several jurisdictions; the wider practice is described on our Turkish citizenship law firm page.

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➡️ Questions and answers on Turkish citizenship revoked after approval
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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

✅ Can Turkish citizenship be revoked for living outside Turkey?

No. Turkish citizenship acquired through investment carries no residence requirement after approval, and living abroad is not among the grounds for cancellation, withdrawal or deprivation in Law No. 5901. A citizen by investment who never lives in Turkey keeps citizenship on the same terms as one who does.

✅ How long do I have to sell my property in Turkey after my citizenship is cancelled?

One year, if the cancellation decision orders liquidation. Under Article 33 of Law No. 5901, property not sold within one year is sold by the Treasury and the proceeds are deposited in the owner’s name at a public bank. If a lawsuit is filed against the cancellation, liquidation is deferred until the end of the case.

✅ How long do I have to challenge a citizenship cancellation in court?

Sixty days from notification. Article 7 of the Administrative Procedure Law No. 2577 sets 60 days as the general time limit for actions before the Council of State and the administrative courts. The period starts when the decision is notified, so the date of receipt should be recorded immediately.

✅ Which court hears a case against a citizenship by investment cancellation?

The Council of State (Danıştay), acting as a court of first instance. Citizenship by investment is granted and cancelled by Presidential decision, and Article 24 of the Law on the Council of State No. 2575 assigns actions against Presidential decisions to the Council of State at first instance. A case filed before a local administrative court loses time the family may not have.

✅ Can a court suspend a citizenship cancellation while the case continues?

Yes, the claimant can request a stay of execution (yürütmenin durdurulması), but the court decides whether to grant it. Separately, Article 33(2) of Law No. 5901 defers the liquidation of property by statute once a lawsuit is filed, without any need for a stay.

✅ How do I find out why my citizenship was cancelled?

The notification of a cancellation often does not include the full reasoning or the inspection documents. An application to the administration under Article 11 of Administrative Procedure Law No. 2577, made within the 60-day filing period, can be used to request them, and it suspends the filing period while the administration responds.

✅ Is a person whose Turkish citizenship is cancelled treated as a foreigner?

Yes. Article 33 of Law No. 5901 subjects persons whose citizenship is cancelled to the legislation on foreigners. A former citizen who wishes to remain in Turkey needs a lawful basis to stay, such as a residence permit, and holds any remaining property as a foreign national.

✅ Can I apply for Turkish citizenship again after a cancellation?

Law No. 5901 contains no specific reacquisition route for cancellation. Article 14 allows persons deprived of citizenship under Article 29 to reacquire it by Presidential decision after three years of residence in Turkey, but no equivalent provision exists for a cancellation under Article 31. A new application would have to meet the general conditions afresh.

✅ Does a cancellation affect a child born after I became a Turkish citizen?

Not in the same way as a child included in the application. A child born to a Turkish citizen parent acquires citizenship by descent at birth under Article 7 of Law No. 5901. Article 32 reaches family members who acquired citizenship through the person concerned, and a cancellation operates from the decision date, so the child’s position must be assessed separately.

✅ Has Turkey ended citizenship by investment after the 2026 cancellations?

No. As of September 2026, the investment routes in Article 20 of the Regulation on the Implementation of the Turkish Citizenship Law remain in force, including the USD 400,000 real estate route. The Ministry of Interior’s statements describe action against files built on fake or irregular documents, not the closure of the programme.

A Turkish passport obtained through investment is exactly as durable as the file beneath it. Most files will never be opened again. The ones that are opened are read line by line, and they hold when every line says the same thing.