Buying property in Turkey for citizenship is a process in which four separate recorded values must each reach 400,000 US dollars before the file qualifies.
Most investors arrive at this subject having already read the headline figure. The threshold is public, the holding period is public, and the processing time is quoted freely by agents and portals. What is far less visible is the machinery that sits underneath the figure: which document establishes the value, which channel the money has to travel through, which properties are excluded by classification rather than by price, and which sellers cannot lawfully sell to you at all for this purpose.
That machinery is where applications actually succeed or stall. The legal framework is set out in Article 20, paragraph 2, subparagraph (b) of the Regulation on the Implementation of the Turkish Citizenship Law (Türk Vatandaşlığı Kanununun Uygulanmasına İlişkin Yönetmelik), issued under Turkish Citizenship Law No. 5901 (Türk Vatandaşlığı Kanunu). The operational detail sits in the guideline annexed to the circulars of the Land Registry and Cadastre General Directorate (Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü), and it has been revised repeatedly since 2022.
What is actually being measured when a property is checked against the 400,000 dollar threshold? Four figures, each independently. The amount shown on the foreign currency purchase document, the sale price declared in the official deed, the value established in the Value Determination Document, and the total of the payments transferred between the parties all have to reach the threshold on their own. The lowest of the four is the one that governs the outcome, which means a transaction can clear the price test and fail the document test at the same counter on the same morning.
Which properties are excluded even when the price is right? More than most buyers expect, and this is where the qualifying property that does not qualify keeps appearing. Since the amendment published in the Official Gazette on 12 December 2023, the property must either be registered as an independent unit under Condominium Law No. 634 (Kat Mülkiyeti Kanunu), through either full condominium ownership or construction servitude, or, if it is registered with land classification, carry a permanent lawful structure holding an occupancy permit (yapı kullanma izin belgesi). Bare land no longer opens the route, regardless of what it cost.
How should the purchase money reach the seller? Through a bank, in a specific sequence. Since 24 January 2022, a foreign buyer converts the purchase currency by selling it to the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (Türkiye Cumhuriyet Merkez Bankası) through a commercial bank, and the bank issues a foreign currency purchase document that is sent to the relevant Land Registry Directorate. For citizenship files specifically, the bank receipt evidencing the transfer from buyer to seller has to be produced alongside it.
When is the point after which a mistake can no longer be corrected? Earlier than the application, which is the part investors find hardest to accept: the decisions that determine the outcome are all made before anyone applies. Classification of the property, identity of the seller, wording of the power of attorney and routing of the funds are all fixed by the time the deed is registered. The citizenship application does not create those facts. It only reveals them.
This page covers the real estate route: what qualifies, what disqualifies, and how the money and the documents have to line up. The deposit, investment fund, government bond, fixed capital and private pension routes are outside its scope and are set out separately on our overview of Turkish citizenship by investment paths. The broader question of how to select and instruct counsel is covered by our Turkish citizenship law firm page rather than here.
⚖️ What Does the 400,000 Dollar Threshold Actually Measure?
It measures four things at once, and it measures them separately.
The instinctive reading of the threshold is commercial. A buyer agrees a price, the price is above 400,000 dollars, and the condition appears satisfied. The administrative reading is different in kind. It does not ask what the property cost. It asks whether every value recorded about the transaction independently supports the claim being made, because each of those values was produced by a different institution for a different purpose.
The foreign currency purchase document records what was converted at a bank. The official deed records what the parties declared at the Land Registry Directorate. The Value Determination Document records what a licensed valuation firm established through a defined methodology. The transfer receipts record what actually moved between two accounts. Four institutions, four numbers, and no obligation on any of them to agree with the others.
The guideline annexed to Circular 2024/4 of the Land Registry and Cadastre General Directorate states the requirement plainly: the value in the foreign currency purchase document, the sale price declared in the official deed or the value set in the sales promise contract, the value in the valuation report, and the total of the transfers and payments, meaning every value type used in the determination, must each satisfy the required amount.
What this produces in practice is a category of failure that has nothing to do with affordability. A buyer transfers 430,000 dollars, converts it correctly, and buys a property valued at 415,000 dollars, but the parties declare 390,000 dollars in the official deed to reduce the transfer tax. Three of the four values clear the threshold. The fourth does not, and the fourth is the one recorded on the deed.
The reverse case appears just as often. Everything is declared correctly at the counter, but the payment arrived in several instalments from an account belonging to a family member rather than the buyer, and the receipts cannot be aggregated into a chain that reaches the threshold in the buyer’s own name. The property is fine. The property was never the problem.
This is the single most useful reframing available before a purchase. The question to ask is not whether the budget is sufficient. It is whether every institution that will record a number about this transaction will record one that stands on its own.
⚖️ Which Properties Qualify and Which Ones Quietly Do Not?
Classification decides eligibility before value is ever considered.
The most consequential change to this route in recent years was not a change to the figure. It was the amendment published in the Official Gazette on 12 December 2023, which narrowed the definition of a qualifying property. The wording in Article 20, paragraph 2, subparagraph (b) moved from a general reference to real estate to a specific one: property with condominium ownership or construction servitude established, or property registered with land classification that carries a building on it.
The practical effect is that from 12 December 2023, a property acquired for citizenship purposes must either be registered as an independent unit in the land register under Condominium Law No. 634, or, where the registration is land classification, carry a permanent structure built in compliance with legislation and holding an occupancy permit. An empty plot, however valuable and however well located, no longer supports an application. A number of international guides still describe land as an eligible asset class for this route. It has not been one for over two years.
Three further exclusions operate independently of value. A property acquired in fractional shares cannot form the basis of an application, so where several foreign buyers acquire a single property into co-ownership, that property is closed to the route for all of them. Rights registered as timeshare in the land register are excluded. And a property can be used for citizenship acquisition only once in its lifetime: once it has served one application, it cannot serve another, even after the owner changes and even after the commitment period on the earlier file has expired.
That last rule is the one that most often surprises buyers in the resale market, because nothing about the property announces it. Two adjacent units in the same building, identical in size, finish and price, can sit on opposite sides of the eligibility line purely because one of them was used for someone else’s application four years ago. The distinction lives in the register, not in the apartment.
Where the buyer acquires the entire property rather than a share, the position reverses. A property registered in the names of several owners can be acquired in full by one foreign buyer and used for the route without difficulty. The prohibition attaches to co-ownership created on the buyer’s side, not to the seller’s ownership structure.
⚖️ The Seller Decides Eligibility as Much as the Property Does
A qualifying property becomes non-qualifying depending on who is selling it.
This is the layer least visible from a listing, a brochure or a site visit, and it accounts for a meaningful share of preventable refusals. The guideline sets out a series of conditions relating to the parties, and each of them can disqualify an otherwise perfect asset. The chain has to be checked in the land register before any commitment is signed, because it cannot be repaired afterwards.
The property must not be one that the buyer, the buyer’s spouse or the buyer’s children transferred to a Turkish citizen or a Turkish company after 12 January 2017. The same restriction applies where the earlier transfer was made by a foreign individual holding the same nationality as the buyer. The rule closes a circular route in which an asset is moved out and bought back for the purpose of the application.
The property must not be registered in the name of a company in which the buyer, the buyer’s spouse or the buyer’s children are shareholders or directors. It must also not be registered in the name of a company subject to Article 36 of Land Registry Law No. 2644 (Tapu Kanunu), meaning a company with foreign or international capital. Where shareholders of such a company acquired Turkish citizenship under Article 12(b) of Law No. 5901, their previous nationality is taken into account in that assessment.
The property must not be registered in the name of a person who themselves acquired Turkish citizenship under Article 12(b), and it must not be registered in the name of the foreign buyer’s first-degree Turkish relatives, whether by blood or by marriage. For second-hand properties, the guideline additionally requires that the property has not been transferred by any foreign individual to a Turkish citizen or Turkish company within the preceding three years, with acquisitions arising from construction contracts falling outside that restriction.
None of this is discoverable by asking the seller. It is discoverable by reading the register, tracing the transfer history and checking the corporate position of the selling entity, which is ordinary pre-contract work for a property lawyer in Turkey and is not work an agent is licensed or equipped to perform. The eligibility filters that apply to foreign ownership generally, before any citizenship analysis begins, are covered separately in our note on foreign property eligibility in Turkey.
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⚖️ How the Purchase Money Must Move: The Foreign Currency Purchase Document
Foreign buyers must sell the purchase currency to the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye through a commercial bank, and submit the resulting foreign currency purchase document (Döviz Alım Belgesi) to the Land Registry Directorate. The obligation took effect on 24 January 2022 and applies to acquisitions by foreign individuals.
The foreign currency purchase document performs two functions at once. It evidences that the funds entered Turkey through a traceable channel, and the converted amount shown on it is reflected in the official deed as the value on which transfer tax is assessed. A transaction structured to reduce the declared value therefore reduces the value recorded for citizenship purposes at the same time.
For citizenship files, one further document is required beyond the ordinary purchase. The bank receipt evidencing the remittance from the buyer to the seller must also be produced. Conversion alone does not establish that the purchase price reached the seller; the receipt does.
Payment in instalments is permitted and does not require a single document. A separate foreign currency purchase document may be issued for each payment, and the documents are read together against the threshold. What matters is that the aggregate satisfies the required amount and that each document identifies the person who converted the currency, by name together with passport number or foreign identity number.
The currency of the receipts changes at a specific point. Receipts for transfers made before the foreign currency purchase document is issued should be denominated in foreign currency; receipts for transfers made after it should be denominated in Turkish lira. Where the amount on a receipt does not match the amount on the foreign currency purchase document, it is sufficient that the receipt amount satisfies the minimum required under the Regulation when converted at the rate shown on that document.
Payments made before the foreign currency purchase document regime began are treated differently. For transfers predating 24 January 2022, the receipt is accepted and converted into US dollars at the effective selling rate or cross rate of the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye on the business day preceding the payment date. The mechanics of registration and transfer at the counter are set out further in our guide to title deed transactions and property transfer processes.
⚖️ The Valuation Report and the Value Determination Document (TTB)
Since 9 December 2024, the valuation report is no longer the document that establishes the qualifying amount for a citizenship acquisition. That function belongs to the Value Determination Document (Taşınmaz Edinim Sureti İle Vatandaşlık Kazanımına Esas Tutar Tespit Belgesi), abbreviated TTB, introduced by Circular 2024/4 of the Land Registry and Cadastre General Directorate.
The Value Determination Document is produced as an annex to a valuation report and prepared through the TADEBİS application, then transmitted to the TAKBİS and WebTapu systems. Transmission through the system is mandatory. A Value Determination Document presented physically at the counter is not processed, which is a common source of wasted appointments for buyers working from a paper file prepared abroad.
The request for the underlying valuation report is made through the WebTapu system, using the menu for valuation report requests made for citizenship purposes rather than the general valuation menu. The route through which the report is ordered determines whether a Value Determination Document can be produced from it at all, so a report obtained for a general transaction cannot be converted into one later.
The Value Determination Document is valid for six months from the date of issue. The gap between the Value Determination Document and the application date for the transaction involving citizenship acquisition must not exceed six months; where it does, the valuation report underlying the document is renewed. Once an application has been made, the document remains valid until that transaction is completed.
Reports issued before 9 December 2024 follow the earlier rule and are valid for three months from the date of issue. Where a commitment is requested more than six months after the sale, the Value Determination Document obtained at the time of sale does not need to be renewed on the ground that its period has expired.
Since the introduction of the Value Determination Document, valuation reports are no longer required in transactions involving foreign parties that do not involve citizenship acquisition. The report requirement and the citizenship requirement, which previously moved together, now separate at the point the buyer states the purpose of the acquisition.
⚖️ Buying Through a Power of Attorney: The Wording That Stops the Transaction
A power of attorney authorising purchase does not authorise the undertaking that the citizenship route requires, and a transaction can fail at the counter for that reason alone. Most people buying property in Turkey for citizenship do so remotely, through an instrument executed before a notary in their own country, and the instrument that works for an ordinary acquisition is not the instrument this route needs.
The acquisition under this route is registered together with a commitment recorded against the title: an undertaking that the property will not be sold for three years. Giving that undertaking is a separate legal act from buying the property. Where the buyer is represented, the instrument must confer authority for both.
The guideline requires that this be expressly stated in the power of attorney. Alongside the authority to purchase, the instrument needs an expression covering the authority to give an undertaking that the property will not be sold for three years, or authority to apply for citizenship under the Turkish Citizenship Law and related legislation, or authority to carry out the transaction for the purpose of benefiting from the Turkish Citizenship Law.
A general formulation is also accepted. A power of attorney containing wording authorising the representative to give every kind of undertaking and consent before land registry directorates is sufficient for the purpose of establishing that authority. What is not sufficient is an instrument drafted only around purchase and registration, which is the standard form most notaries abroad will produce if they are not told what the transaction is for.
The consequence of getting this wrong is procedural rather than substantive, and that makes it more frustrating rather than less. The buyer is qualified, the funds are correct, the property is eligible, and the appointment cannot proceed because a sentence is missing from a document executed in another country, notarised there, apostilled there and translated in Türkiye. Replacing it means repeating that entire sequence.
Most stages of the acquisition can be completed without the buyer travelling. Property review, register searches, valuation coordination, banking arrangements, contract execution and registration all proceed under a properly drafted instrument. Interim status while the file progresses is a separate question and is dealt with in our note on the residence permit for investors in Turkey.
⚖️ The Sales Promise Contract Route and Its Separate Conditions
The Regulation provides a second route alongside outright purchase: a notarised sales promise contract annotated on the land register, used where condominium ownership or construction servitude has been established but title has not yet transferred. The route exists mainly for acquisitions in developments still under construction, and it carries conditions that do not apply to a completed sale.
The conditions differ from those applying to a completed sale. At least 400,000 US dollars, or the equivalent in foreign currency, must be paid in advance, and the annotation records an undertaking that the contract will not be transferred or cancelled for three years. Payments made after the contract signature date are not treated as advance payment for this purpose.
The threshold cannot be assembled from several contracts on this route. Where the application rests on a sales promise contract, the required amount must be satisfied by a single contract, which is a narrower rule than the one applying to outright purchases and is frequently missed by buyers assembling a position across several units in the same development.
The timing of the foreign currency purchase document is also fixed on this route. The document must be issued for at least the portion paid in advance, and no later than the contract date. A document obtained after signature does not cure the position retrospectively.
Where the property is later registered in the name of the promise creditor after the annotation, a further valuation report is not required for that registration. Once the three year undertaking period has expired and the property is sold to the promise creditor, no undertaking is taken at that transfer.
⚖️ Loans, Existing Charges and How the Qualifying Amount Is Calculated
Where a property is acquired using a foreign currency loan, the loan amount is deducted from the sale price and only the remaining portion is counted toward the threshold. The undertaking is accepted where that remainder satisfies the amount required under the Regulation.
A property that already carries a charge or an attachment can be made the subject of a sale or a sales promise contract, but the amounts attributable to those items are not taken into account in the calculation underlying the Value Determination Document. A buyer working to a tight margin above the threshold should treat those amounts as excluded from the outset rather than assume they contribute.
Where an existing charge is discharged and removed, the position is assessed on the documentation rather than on the sale price. The undertaking is accepted provided that the amount shown in the foreign currency purchase document or documents satisfies the amount required under the Regulation.
Bare ownership acquisitions carry an additional documentary requirement. Where a usufruct right was established over the property in favour of another person after 24 January 2022, a foreign currency purchase document is required for the value of that usufruct as well. For usufruct rights established before that date but after 12 January 2017, a certified bank receipt is required instead, and the minimum amount is calculated on the total of the bare ownership and usufruct values.
Foreign individuals cannot acquire property carrying a statutory charge for this purpose. Where such a property is under consideration, the position has to be resolved before the transaction rather than treated as an item to be corrected later. A pre-contract register review of this kind is set out in our note on property legal review.
⚖️ Using More Than One Property to Reach the Threshold
Several properties can be combined to reach 400,000 US dollars on the outright purchase route, provided they are assessed together and the undertaking is taken across them as a single operation. Combination is permitted, but it is permitted as a structure rather than as an arithmetic result, and the difference between those two things is where files fail.
The guideline requires that where the required value is satisfied by more than one property, all properties assessed together are subject to a commitment taken through a single registration request under one journal entry, using out of jurisdiction land registry procedures where the properties sit in different districts. An undertaking is not taken before the required value is reached across the combination.
The sequencing matters more than the arithmetic. Properties bought in unrelated transactions, on separate dates, through separate appointments, are not automatically aggregated simply because their combined value exceeds the threshold. The combination has to be structured as a combination from the beginning.
Each property in a combination must independently satisfy the classification conditions. A combination consisting of one qualifying apartment and one plot of bare land does not work, because the plot does not qualify on its own terms regardless of what the total comes to.
Buyers comparing this route against the alternatives on threshold and liquidity grounds will find the deposit route set out separately in our note on Turkish citizenship by bank deposit, and the wider structural comparison of the real estate route on our page covering Turkish citizenship through real estate investment.
⚖️ From Certificate of Conformity to Citizenship Application
The acquisition and the citizenship application are two separate procedures before two different authorities, and the acquisition has to be completed and certified before the application can begin. Buying property in Turkey for citizenship does not itself produce a citizenship file; it produces the certified investment on which a separate file is later built.
Once the transaction is registered and the undertaking recorded, the determination that the investment satisfies the conditions is made by the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change (Çevre, Şehircilik ve İklim Değişikliği Bakanlığı), which issues the Certificate of Conformity (Uygunluk Belgesi). The certificate is the document on which the citizenship file is built.
The application then proceeds through the Presidency of Migration Management (Göç İdaresi Başkanlığı) and the General Directorate of Population and Citizenship Affairs (Nüfus ve Vatandaşlık İşleri Genel Müdürlüğü), with citizenship granted by presidential decision under Article 12 of Law No. 5901. Where the file is later affected by an event that changes ownership without the owner’s request, such as expropriation or transfer by inheritance, the outcome is reported to the General Directorate.
One stage requires physical attendance. The principal applicant and the spouse attend once for biometric registration, either at a provincial directorate of the Presidency of Migration Management or at a Turkish consulate abroad. Children do not attend. Every other stage of the acquisition and the application can be completed under a power of attorney granted to counsel in Türkiye.
The Land Registry and Cadastre General Directorate publishes the current guideline, circulars and answers to frequently raised questions through its foreign transactions section at tkgm.gov.tr, and specialist offices in Ankara and İstanbul handle enquiries relating to citizenship acquisition files. The processing stage that follows certification is covered in our note on Turkey citizenship processing time, and the overall route from investment to decision in our guide on how to obtain Turkish citizenship.
⚖️ What the File Records Is What the Authority Reads
The threshold is the part of this route that gets published. The machinery underneath it is the part that decides outcomes, and almost none of it is visible from a listing or a sales conversation. Buying property in Turkey for citizenship is treated by most buyers as a purchasing decision with a legal step attached, when the sequence in fact runs the other way.
A buyer sees a price, a location and a completion date. The register sees a classification, a transfer history and a corporate seller. The bank sees a conversion and a chain of receipts. The valuation firm sees a methodology and a document transmitted through a system. Each of these institutions records something, and the application succeeds only if what they all recorded points the same way.
Which is why the useful moment for legal review is before the property is chosen, not after the contract is signed. Every fact that will be examined later is created in the weeks before registration, and by the time a file reaches the desk where it is assessed, those facts have hardened into a record that no amount of subsequent explanation adjusts.
Schedule a Legal Consultation
Whether you are shortlisting properties, reviewing a contract before signature, or holding a file that has already stalled at the Land Registry Directorate, our Real Estate and Citizenship Lawyers in İstanbul are available for an initial consultation.