Turkish citizenship by investment 2026: requirements

6,134 people have lost Turkish citizenship or the right to it over inflated property valuations. From 28 September 2026 Turkey has rewritten its valuation rules, and from 1 December escrow-style payment becomes mandatory. Here is what it means if you are buying now.

With a single statement Turkey made clear that a passport bought with an apartment can also be lost. On 21 September 2026 the Turkish Interior Ministry announced that 6,134 people, family members included, had lost their citizenship or the right to it. The main reason: apartments worth 400,000 dollars on paper and noticeably less in reality. A week later, on 28 September, Turkey's land registry rewrote the property valuation rules for citizenship. Here is what happened, what changed, and how to buy so the passport stays yours.

What happened to Turkish investor passports

On 4 August 2026 police raided addresses in Istanbul and 16 other provinces, detaining 72 of the 90 people named in warrants. The scheme was almost embarrassingly simple: cheap property was passed off as worth 400,000 dollars or more using fake valuation reports, and the buyer received a Turkish passport. Investigators say around 2.5 billion Turkish lira, roughly 52.6 million dollars, that should have entered the country as investment never arrived. The first wave identified 687 people who obtained citizenship through such deals.

On 21 September 2026 the Interior Ministry gave an interim tally:

• 1,150 investors had their investment conformity certificates cancelled - the document on which citizenship is granted. With family members, that is 5,391 people.
• 263 investors lost citizenship on national security and public order grounds. With families, 743 people.
• In the second wave, authorities seized 2,011 properties, a hotel, 86 vehicles, 2 yachts and 42 bank accounts, and placed 30 companies under trustee management.

Note the families. Spouses and children get their passports alongside the investor and lose them alongside the investor. Turkish Citizenship Law No. 5901 allows citizenship obtained on false information to be cancelled, and that reaches everyone on the same application.

What changed in property valuation from 28 September 2026

Valuation was the weak link. From 4 March 2024 citizenship reports were accepted from one company only: GEDAŞ, the valuation subsidiary of the state housing agency TOKİ. The monopoly was meant to stop inflated prices; a single provider and a long queue did not.

On 28 September 2026 the General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre (Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü, TKGM) updated its Circular No. 2024/2. The new rules:

• The buyer chooses the valuer. Any firm licensed by the SPK (Sermaye Piyasası Kurulu, Turkey's Capital Markets Board) can issue the report, provided it is a member of the Turkish Valuation Experts Association (TDUB) and connected to the state valuation register TADEBİS. The choice is made in the registry's online portal, Web Tapu.
• Stricter reports. At least three signatures - responsible valuer, reviewer and valuer - at least three photos of the property, one of them inside, and a check of the approved building plans against what was actually built.
• Report validity is 12 months in practice. The registry is still preparing a detailed implementation guide (Uygulama Kılavuzu).
• Purchases from listed property funds (GYO, Turkey's equivalent of REITs) now also need a separate valuation.

The threshold is unchanged at 400,000 dollars. But the contract price, the valuation and the bank-verified payments must each clear it independently. If the valuer writes 380,000 and you paid 420,000, there is no passport. Here the bureaucracy is more honest than the developer's brochure.

The official circular is published on the TKGM website.

Secure payment for property deals from 1 December 2026

The second change is about money. Turkey's Ministry of Trade planned to make the Secure Payment System (Güvenli Ödeme Sistemi) mandatory from 1 October 2026. The buyer's funds are held in a dedicated account and released to the seller only at the moment ownership is transferred at the registry. It protects against a seller who vanishes with the deposit and a buyer who never pays.

Banks and the registry did not finish connecting their systems, so amendments to the Real Estate Trade Regulation published in the official gazette Resmî Gazete on 1 October 2026 moved the start to 1 December 2026. The rule will cover any sale where the price is paid wholly or partly in cash, by bank transfer or electronic payment. For a foreign buyer this is mostly good news: less chance of paying and not getting the keys.

What it means if you are buying for citizenship

• You are still looking. Check the price against the market, not the developer's list. A unit priced at exactly 400,000 next to neighbours at 250,000 is no longer a bargain but a risk.
• Contract signed, no valuation yet. The new rules apply by the date the conformity certificate is issued, not the contract date. Order a valuation from a licensed firm and compare it with the price before paying the balance.
• Application already filed. It does not disappear, but expect closer scrutiny of the valuation, bank transfers and source of funds. We cover the latter in our article on source of funds checks.
• Passport already issued. If the deal was clean and the price was at market, there is no reason to panic. If an intermediary offered a kickback or an inflated price, show the file to a lawyer now, not after a letter from the ministry.

How much Turkish citizenship costs and which routes exist

Property is the most popular route, not the only one. All options are set out in the Regulation on the Implementation of the Turkish Citizenship Law:

The upsides are well known: a spouse and children under 18 are included, Turkey allows dual citizenship, and a Turkish passport opens the US E-2 visa (an investor visa for nationals of countries with a US trade treaty). The downsides too: Turkish citizens need a Schengen visa, and the lira has taught everyone to think in dollars. More on the programme on our Turkish citizenship by investment page, and on buying in our guide to buying an apartment in Turkey.

How to buy property in Turkey and keep the passport

The revoked passports have one thing in common: the buyer trusted an intermediary who offered to structure the deal around the threshold. A checklist that still works under the new rules:

• Independent valuation before payment, not after.
• All payments through a bank, with currency conversion and a foreign exchange purchase certificate.
• Registry checks on the developer and the unit: encumbrances, occupancy permit (iskan), match with approved plans.
• The contract price equals the price actually paid. No double contracts.
• Source of funds documented in advance: tax returns, statements, sale agreements for assets.

If what you need is life by the sea rather than a passport, a Turkish residence permit may be enough - see our article on Turkish residence in 2026. Tax on rentals and resale is a separate calculation; the basics are on our Turkey taxes page.

If Turkey feels risky: alternatives

The revocations are not a reason to cross Turkey off, but they are a good reason to compare. What people look at in parallel:

• Caribbean passports - Grenada, Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis: visa-free Schengen access, a donation route and strict due diligence of their own. We covered EU pressure on these programmes in our piece on Caribbean passports and Schengen.
• Argentina - a new programme from 350,000 dollars announced on 2 October 2026, explained in our review of Argentine citizenship by investment.
• Paraguay - residence followed by naturalisation, without a large investment.
• Greek residence by investment - if living in the EU matters more than a passport right now.

A full comparison of countries and amounts is in our overview of where to buy citizenship and on the all passports page.

Our Turkish citizenship services

We run the deal and the application together with partners who are licensed lawyers in Turkey. Your job is to choose the apartment; ours is to make sure a passport comes with it and stays.

Around the deal we also handle the formalities: tax number, bank account, transfers with documented source of funds, insurance and residence while you wait. If you are choosing a city, start with our guides to Istanbul, Antalya and Alanya, or the Turkey overview.

FAQ