If you search the internet for property agents and lawyers offering assistance with the Turkish CBI, you will find that most of them are pushing off-plan or recently constructed luxury developments.

The agents will pick you up from the airport in a Mercedes and drive you to a sparkling tower in a fringe neighborhood of Istanbul that they pitch as the next big thing. You’ll tour a nicely furnished mockup of an apartment conveniently priced at $400,000, meaning just enough to satisfy the investment threshold for CBI in Turkey. In the end, you will get your comfy Istanbul pad, and also Turkish passports for you and your family.

So what’s the catch? More often than not, that luxury apartment you buy in a far-flung district of Istanbul, an hour away from the bustling central areas on the Bosporus, will end up earning you very mediocre rental yields, and be challenging to liquidate. When it comes time to sell, you’ll find that the new up and coming neighborhood the agent pitched is in fact a run-of-the-mill Istanbul suburb and that there are three new luxury condo towers next door with a glut of units to sell.

You will realize you bought an overpriced, fast-depreciating and totally commoditized piece of real estate. Such buyers may take a five or even six-digit haircut on the purchase price at the end of their holding period.

The truth is that there is a better way to go about things. At The Wandering Investor we know that our audience consists of sophisticated and experienced investors who care about eking out that extra 1% of yield and want to do everything to protect and grow their capital.

Our partners on the ground offer a simple and investment-focused alternative to the usual suspects operating in the market which we will detail below.

How do you qualify for the Citizenship by Investment program in Turkey?

There are two investment options:

1. You can deposit the equivalent of $500,000 in a Turkish bank for three years. Your deposit will be converted to Turkish liras and earn handsome interest rates of 30% or more, but with 100% exposure to a highly volatile emerging market currency in a country undergoing chronic and extreme inflation.
2. You invest $400,000 in Turkish real estate and must keep it for at least three years. It can be new apartments, secondhand apartments, and can be a combination of a few small apartments (there is no requirement to buy a single property worth $400k or more).

The secondary market real estate pathway is in our view the safest way to go about things. More than 90% of our clients who pursue this CBI choose the real estate option, as it is much easier to manage currency risk this way.

What is the process to obtain Citizenship by Investment in Turkey?

Step 1 – Power of Attorney and Local Bank Account

The first thing you want to do is retain a local lawyer, and it is important to not just select any Turkish lawyer. Your legal counsel will need experience in both real estate transaction oversight and immigration matters. You’ll want an attorney that knows how to properly inspect the title deed of a secondhand property, and someone specialized in CBI. CBI is a subspecialty of immigration law here and you’ll want someone who has gone through the motions many times before. We can recommend experienced and trustworthy lawyers who can handle the process from start to finish.

Our clients generally will visit their lawyer on the first day of their visit to grant them power of attorney at a local notary. The lawyer also will accompany the client to open a local bank account, as all transactions for CBI must pass through the Turkish banking system and be appropriately documented.

Step 2: Make your deposit, or purchase real estate

If you choose the bank deposit option, your lawyer will help you document the transfer and establish the blocked deposit account with your local bank. Read the current deposit-option status here — YUVAM / Central Bank FX cover is gone for new applicants, and we do not recommend this route versus $400k real estate.

If you choose the real estate option, we strongly advocate looking to the secondary market as opposed to new real estate. Personally, I believe there are pockets of good value to be found in secondary market real estate in central Istanbul. Real estate a few streets down from prime areas can be had for about $2000 per m2, which is very interesting. If you buy such units and pursue light renovations, you can get gross yields of 5%-7%.

On the other hand, the new apartments being sold by citizenship agents will rarely get you yields above 2.5%, even if they promise you more.

If you go the secondhand route, there is a decent amount of involvement required when it comes to shopping for the real estate. Many clients will visit Istanbul for a week or two and spend time with our partner real estate agents exploring different neighborhoods and properties. For clients that prefer to be more hands on, they make multiple visits over a few months until they identify and close on their investment properties.

Many clients with busier schedules tend to take a hands-off approach and entrust their lawyer and buyer’s agent to carry out the transactions on their behalf. Speaking from personal experience, the apartment I bought remotely, sight unseen on the advice of my agent ended up being the best of my investments.

Both approaches work; it’s simply a matter of how involved you want to be. You can factor between 2–3 months to complete your property purchases in most cases, or around 4–6 months if you are more selective.

For a much more realistic view of what you should expect when investing in Istanbul real estate for the Turkish citizenship, watch this video below.

https://youtu.be/vlKa0aAynzM

Step 3: Obtain Certificate of Conformity

You’ll get a certified transfer confirmation from the bank bearing the exact title deed information on it, as well as precise legal lingo that ensures that the purchases qualify for the program.

All the information concerning the real estate transaction(s) or bank deposit are then sent to a government appointed evaluator who will appraise the value of the investment. For real estate, typically you might want to invest a little more than the $400,000 in case the appraiser were to have a slightly lower estimate, or in case the Turkish lira were to depreciate in the meantime. You don’t want to be in a situation where your purchases total $398,000, for example, so you’ll want a bit of buffer leaving you comfortably above the threshold.

The Certificate of Conformity takes about one month to process.

Step 4 – Obtaining Residency

You will be asked for Apostilles, or Turkish consulate certified copies of:

• The passports of you and your family
• The birth certificates of all included on the application
• A marriage certificate with family registry or non-marriage certificate for non-married applicants
• Criminal background check from country of current citizenship, and possibly also from your country of residence.

Your attorney will be able to advise specifically which documents are needed for your family and how you can go about obtaining the necessary certifications. It is advisable to consult with the attorney early on in case any document is difficult or time-consuming to obtain.

Your documents, application form and the Certificates of Conformity, are sent to the immigration office to obtain a special residency visa. This is the only part of the process that requires you to be physically present in Turkey for a few days. A few weeks later, you and your family will receive residence permits that allow you to remain in Turkey while your applications are in process.

Step 5 – The Citizenship Application

At this point your lawyer will prepare and formally submit your application for citizenship. Your application will spend time being kicked around government ministries and agencies and a rigorous due diligence will be conducted on you and your family. In the end, the President himself signs your application.

Yes, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan personally signs all Turkish citizenship by investment applications. I double checked with my lawyers, and they confirmed it. I thought it’s a pretty cool fact 🙂

As of August 2026, the timeline from application submission to naturalization certificate and passport issuance is around 8 months. We have heard of recent cases where applicants were approved and naturalized in as little as 6 months, but realistically it will take around 8 months. Beware of agents advertising 90-day timelines – it’s a serious exaggeration.

Please note that all family members on your application will need to visit Turkey to submit biometrics at the conclusion of the process.

The entire process of making the investments, laying the groundwork for your CBI application along with the processing phase should take roughly 12 months or slightly less.

What qualifies secondhand real estate for the Turkish CBI?

Generally speaking, a secondhand property is eligible for Citizenship by Investment if the following criteria apply:

1. The seller of the property must be a Turkish citizen. You cannot purchase from a foreigner, or from an individual who became Turkish through investment. The property should not have been used in a prior CBI transaction.
2. The seller must be willing to declare the full value of the property on the title deed. Properties held for over five years do not incur local capital gains tax upon sale, so any seller who has held for less time will be incentivized to under-declare. This is not in your interest as you need to be able to count the purchase towards your investment threshold.
3. There cannot be any illegal constructions associated with the property. Homeowners in Turkey may have renovated and expanded their terraces, balconies, roofs etc. without going through the hassle of obtaining the necessary permits. Such modifications will be immediately apparent to the property evaluator and will disqualify the property for purposes of citizenship. Your lawyer should be able to identify any such issues in advance of the evaluation so that you can rule out such properties.

While the above factors do limit the inventory of eligible secondhand real estate, there are nevertheless many properties that qualify on the market at any given time.

How do I manage Turkish lira exposure risk when owning property in Turkey?

Turkey has been in a sustained period of double-digit inflation for over six years. As such, the market has established ways to mitigate risk associated with a rapidly depreciating currency. Here are a few points to reassure you:

1. Real estate, along with gold, is the main local inflation hedge.
2. Real estate is already notionally priced in USD or EUR. While property listings must legally be lira-denominated, and your transactions will be executed in Turkish lira, people tend to dollarize property prices in their head. If the lira were to fall 10% overnight, sellers would simply revise the lira price of their listing by a corresponding amount the same morning.
3. Rental contracts are also lira-denominated, and your tenant is more than likely a Turkish local earning in liras. In the event the lira declines more than expected over the term of your lease, you may well lose out on a bit of yield. But as a landlord, you are permitted to raise the rent once per annum. This increase may not exceed the annualized consumer price index reading (TÜFE) for the month that the lease is renewed. For July 2026 this maximum number was 31.75%. Our buyer’s agents reported that these caps are so generous that they often result in the rent going above market rate in USD terms.

Long story short, our clients in recent years have been enjoying yields net of management, property taxes and lira depreciation of around 5-7% when fully adjusted to USD. And while the local real estate market is a bit depressed from its peak in 2022, the decline is demand related and not currency related.

We do not view currency depreciation as a major risk when it comes to the real estate option for the Turkish CBI.

What about earthquake risk in Istanbul?

Even before the 2023 earthquake in Eastern Turkey which devastated multiple cities and killed tens of thousands of people, earthquake risk was a top concern among property investors in Turkey.

Here are some other ways you can mitigate your risk of earthquake damage:

• Avoid the peripheries of Istanbul. Seismic risk is lowest near the Bosporus, which is where you ideally want to buy anyway.
• Top up your earthquake insurance. Legally, you must buy a rudimentary government earthquake insurance policy called DASK, which costs a couple hundred bucks a year. This likely would not be very comprehensive, so a private policy is recommended in the event you want more coverage.
• While we do not advise purchasing brand new real estate due to the high premium it commands, we also don’t recommend buying into buildings older than 20 years or so because they would have been built prior to the most recent major update to seismic construction standards in Turkey.
• If you absolutely want to buy into a historical property, ensure that it has been reinforced over the years by competent engineers.

How does property management work in Turkey?

The buyer’s agents we recommend to our clients are more than happy to offer A to Z renovation and property management services for Turkey CBI investors. The cost is generally around one-month of rent per year (~8% of gross annual rent). This includes finding a tenant.

Bear in mind that tenancy laws in Turkey tend to put the landlord at a disadvantage. You do not want to be in a situation where you cannot evict a delinquent tenant, so it’s helpful to vet tenants carefully. Our agents have strategies to protect you against such outcomes.

Why should you get Turkish Citizenship?

The Citizenship by Investment program in Turkey is a best-in-class option.

An additional citizenship offers you more freedom, more investment opportunities, and a great plan B. Moreover, it is passed down the generations. We think the Turkish program is the best one currently on the market.

Turkey is a formidable nation of 85 million people, at the crossroads of Asia and Europe, and has always been at the center of it all. The passport may not be top-tier but it is the next best thing. It offers visa free travel to most of Latin America, much of Africa, the Middle East, Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia and most non-EU European countries.

This program possesses many unique characteristics:

• Compared to Caribbean programs, the paperwork is much less intense. There are no onerous proof of funds or net worth declarations required.
• There is the potential to earn a profit on your real estate investments and also earn compelling yields during the holding period. Some investors end up “getting paid to become Turkish” when they calculate the net cost of their investment.
• The passport is highly recognizable. Turkey is a major projector of hard and soft power and an ascendant middle power.
• Turkey boasts the 3rd highest total number of diplomatic missions in the world, behind only China and the United States. You will receive effective consular support in almost any corner of the globe.
• Turkey is a true geopolitical diversification. It opens up travel freedom to countries such as Iran and Russia which are difficult to visit on a Western passport.

There is the possibility that a CBI program this good may never exist again. It is hard to imagine another country of this stature offering such an affordable and unrestrictive citizenship program.

What are the traps to watch out for when pursuing Turkey Citizenship by Investment?

1. Many agents selling new-build property will lie through their teeth to convince you that secondhand real estate doesn’t qualify for CBI. We can tell you firsthand that most of our clients have obtained Turkish citizenship this way.
2. DO NOT buy in a new building advertised to foreigners, or where local Turkish people are not investing. Such buildings are largely overpriced. Almost everyone will try to orient you towards them, with nonsense rental return claims, capital gains projections and rental guarantees. Such agents make commissions of 6%-10% when they sell you such units. In such cases, the product is not the apartment itself, but you.
3. Beware of lawyers and real estate agents working in cahoots. Many lawyers in Turkey will do whatever is in their power to make you use their team of property agents, even going as far as sabotaging deals organized by other agents. There is an entrenched culture and industry based on ripping off foreigners in exchange for kickbacks.
4. There is always a temptation to choose coastal real estate in Bodrum, Antalya and elsewhere. While such real estate absolutely fits the bill for lifestyle investors, it is often quite marked up. The markets are not as resilient as the big cities, and the rental potential is limited by seasonality. If you are prioritizing investment performance and passport, look no further than Istanbul and Izmir.

The deposit option is no longer a viable option in our view

The $500,000 bank deposit option was very popular as investors, through a number of mechanisms and guarantees by the central bank, were in large part protected against currency devaluation. Clients who participated in this scheme in prior years made a killing through the high interest rates, as the Central Bank was more effective at managing the decline of the currency than most expected. The lira declined only around 15-20% a year versus the USD while investors enjoyed 30% APY on their deposits.

The depreciation insurance mechanisms have since been removed. From now on, all new citizenship by investment applicants using the deposit option will be fully exposed to the lira.

Three years of Turkish lira exposure is objectively risky. It is not impossible that one day you wake up and the lira is worth 25% or 50% less than the day before, erasing much of your investment gains and/or principal. That said, if the lira remains in managed decline as it has in prior years, your investment may perform well.

More conservative investors should look no further than the real estate option. Full current status, including what changed in 2025, is on the Turkish citizenship bank deposit page.

Contact immigration lawyer Yüksel in Turkey

What are the fees associated with the Turkish Citizenship by Investment program?

You, your spouse, and children under the age of 18 qualify.

Lawyer

For both the real estate and bank deposit option, you will need a lawyer to oversee your transactions and prepare and submit your application.

A competent attorney will charge around $8,000 to $10,000 with some variance according to the number of properties purchased and family members.

Buyer’s Agent

A buyer’s agent in Istanbul is highly advisable versus a traditional realtor. They will show you a broader range of properties, as opposed to a selection of properties that they are representing which they have an interest in unloading onto you.

A dedicated and involved buyer’s agent will charge around 3% of the purchase price for their services.

Government Stamp Duty

While secondhand property purchases in Turkey are exempted from VAT, there is a 4% stamp duty on the title deed transfer. This is theoretically supposed to be split by the buyer and seller, but in practice the buyer always pays the entire 4% of the purchase price. However, when you liquidate, the future buyer will be responsible for the entire amount as well.

Taking all of the above fees into account, most buyers who pursue the real estate option for CBI in Turkey will make a total investment of around $435,000 to $445,000.

Can I use crypto to obtain Turkish citizenship by investment?

Yes, we have helped people with this process. It is possible to exchange crypto stablecoins into USD or liras at an exchange office in Istanbul. You will receive physical cash which can then be deposited at a local bank with the supervision of your lawyer to ensure that you get the requisite certificates.

Fees for exchanging crypto to fiat in Istanbul are around 1.5%.

Conclusion

The Turkey Citizenship by Investment program is advantageous in the sense that it does not ask for a donation of any kind, and it does not force you to make bad investments in designated real estate or funds. It’s entirely your decision to make.

If you are savvy and numbers focused, you can find good investments with proper help on the ground. Here is how to contact our buyer’s agents:

Contact Keith to invest in Istanbul or Izmir

I met Keith in Istanbul. He is from Nova Scotia and has been involved in Istanbul real estate for many years now. His specialty is the secondary market in downtown Istanbul, as well as renovating old apartments. You can find out more about him and his Istanbul realtor services.

Keith and I immediately got along. He is from Nova Scotia, in Canada, where I spent my first years of primary school. He has been active in the Istanbul real estate market for over a decade, is fluent in Turkish, and knows the market in and out. He is also an avid squash player, having won the Turkish squash championships. Keith was ranked number one in Turkey throughout 2005-2010, was the South Korean champion in 1996, and was Eastern Canada champion 3 times (!). Needless to say, his high levels of energy come in handy when dealing with all his on-going renovation projects 🙂

For over a decade he has been an independent real estate buyer’s agent in Istanbul for locals, and renovation manager. As the market for international investors is growing, he has increasingly been helping foreigners invest in secondhand apartments. This market is where money is to be made for investors, but also where there is the most complexity.

Contact Keith to invest in Istanbul or Izmir

More information on Istanbul and Izmir realtor Keith if you are interested in the real estate option.

Contact Angelina to invest in Istanbul

Angelina specializes in finding properties that can be turned into Airbnbs. She has helped me renovate a few of my Istanbul properties. Angelina can help you find property, do the renovations and manage the property, either on the long-term or the short-term market. You can also contact her on her Istanbul landing page.

Services in Turkey:

• My Real Estate Buyer’s Agent and Renovation Team in Istanbul
• My Real Estate Lawyer in Istanbul

Articles on Turkey:

• Making a real estate investment in Izmir? A value play within Turkey
• My Apartment Renovation in Istanbul – Case Study with numbers
• Why is the Turkish Citizenship by Investment Program misunderstood?
• Istanbul Real Estate Market: 2026 Investor Guide
• I bought an apartment in Istanbul
• Buying Izmir real estate for the Turkish citizenship by investment
• Net real estate rental yields and cap rates in Istanbul, a case study
• Turkey Citizenship by Investment – Timelines, Fees, and Traps to Avoid
• 8 pitfalls to avoid when buying real estate for Turkish Citizenship by Investment
• New, affordable, earthquake-resistant luxury near Istanbul for Turkish Citizenship by Investment
• We toured 4 apartments in central Istanbul for Turkish citizenship by investment
• Forget Dubai – Turkey Is Becoming a Tax Haven

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