Turkish citizenship by investment, as the instruments actually set it out
Most of what is published about this programme is written to sell a service, and it shows: thresholds without the decision that set them, processing times presented as commitments, a VAT condition that changed in 2022 and is still quoted at its old length, and a deposit route still described as a way to hold foreign currency four years after that stopped being true.
This is a reference work instead. Every figure names the instrument behind it and the date. Where the sources disagree, it says so. Where no authority publishes a number, it says that too, rather than supplying one. There is nothing here to buy and no firm can pay to appear.
Current as of 11 November 2026 · text and data under CC BY 4.0
The programme in one table
Thresholds under art. 20(2) of the implementing Regulation. The sub-paragraph letter is the instrument's own, and it is what a certificate of conformity cites.
| Route | Minimum | Holding | Condition | Effective |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Real estate | USD 400,000 | 3 years | Official SPK-licensed appraisal value, not the contract price | 13 June 2022 |
| Bank deposit | USD 500,000 | 3 years | Turkish lira deposit in a bank operating in Turkiye, after the foreign currency is sold to the bank and by the bank to the Central Bank (Regulation Art. 20(10), since 6 January 2022) | 19 September 2018 |
| Government bonds | USD 500,000 | 3 years | Certified by the Ministry of Treasury and Finance | 19 September 2018 |
| Investment fund shares | USD 500,000 | 3 years | Real-estate or venture capital fund shares (GYF/GSYF) | 19 September 2018 |
| Fixed capital investment | USD 500,000 | none stated | Certified by the Ministry of Industry and Technology | 19 September 2018 |
| Job creation | 50 employees | none stated | Certified by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security | 19 September 2018 |
Four things commonly got wrong
The deposit is held in lira, not dollars
Since 6 January 2022, art. 20(10) requires the foreign currency to be sold to the bank and by the bank to the Central Bank. The investor carries lira exposure for three years. Sources calling it an FX deposit describe the pre-2022 position.
The VAT condition is three years, not one
Law No. 7394 replaced "one year" with "three years" in VAT Law art. 13(1)(i), in force 1 May 2022. Much of the market still publishes one year. A buyer who sells in year two on that advice repays the exempted VAT with interest.
No authority publishes a processing time
Neither the Law nor the Regulation sets a deadline, and no ministry publishes an end-to-end figure. Every duration in circulation, including the 4 to 10 months recorded here, is an observation and is marked as one in the data.
The threshold is the appraisal, not the price
Four figures must each independently reach USD 400,000: the appraised value, the declared deed value, the currency-purchase certificate and the sum transferred to the seller. Fees and VAT count toward none of them.
Sections
The law
The instruments, annotated. Law No. 5901 art. 12(1)(b) creates the power; art. 20 of the implementing Regulation carries every figure. Each page states the condition, names the certifying authority and separates the text from the gloss.
Procedure
The chain from investment to decision: appraisal, certificate of conformity, residence permit under Law No. 6458 art. 31(1)(j), the citizenship file, the decision. What each stage produces and what it is tested against.
Data
Machine-readable, CC BY 4.0: thresholds and their statutory basis, government costs, document requirements, the Hague Apostille status table, observed processing times, dollar-return series, and a register of 28 primary sources.
Tools
Calculators that compute from the dataset rather than from assertions: what a purchase costs beyond the investment, which documents an issuing country needs, where a pending file sits against observed durations.
Practitioners
A register of firms doing this work, with how each was verified and what each discloses. Nothing in it can be bought.
Method
How a figure gets onto this site, how a firm gets into the register, what we do when sources disagree, and what we refuse to publish.
What we do not know
8 questions are open in the source register, published as questions. A reference work that resolves everything is either lucky or lying, and the gaps are the part practitioners quote back to us most often.
- Decision numbers (esas and karar) for the Danistay rulings in the litigation series are not yet recorded.
- The Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Mudurlugu circulars are not published in the Official Gazette, so 2019/1, 2021/6 and 2024/4 and its 2026-09-28 amendment rest on secondary reporting and need confirmation against the circular texts.
- The legal instrument behind the USD 200,000 property threshold for residence permits announced on 2023-10-16 has not been identified.
- The Official Gazette issue number for the VAT General Application Communique amendment of 2017-05-05 is not yet recorded.
All of them · the Hague Apostille table covers 130 Contracting Parties, and says plainly that absence from it is not an answer