A foreign owner who dies holding a flat in Istanbul or a villa in Kalkan leaves two problems behind, and the second is the one nobody planned for. The first is the estate at home, handled by the family's own lawyers under the family's own law. The second is the Turkish property, which the home-country probate does not reach: Turkish private international law applies Turkish law to immovable property in Turkey whatever the deceased's nationality, Turkish law gives the spouse and children shares that no will can remove, the land registry will not move without a Turkish certificate of heirship, and the Turkish tax office expects a return within months of a death that happened on another continent. In my practice the second problem arrives about a year after the first, usually as a foreign grant of probate that the Turkish registry cannot read. This page sets out the Turkish half from the statutes as they stand in September 2026: the conflict rule, the order of heirs, the reserved shares, the certificate, the tax and the clocks.
Sources, checked 9 September 2026. Private International and Procedural Law No. 5718, Articles 7, 20, 43, 50, 51, 53, 54 and 58; Turkish Civil Code No. 4721, Articles 495 to 499, 505, 506, 510, 531, 532, 538, 598, 599, 605, 606, 640 and 652; Land Registry Law No. 2644, Article 35; Inheritance and Gift Tax Law No. 7338, Articles 1, 4, 9, 10, 12, 16, 17 and 19, with the 2026 figures set by General Communiqué No. 57 (Official Gazette 33124, fifth repeated issue, 31 December 2025) and the 1% rate added by Law 7582 of 21 May 2026; Notaries Law No. 1512, Article 71/B; Law No. 7464, Article 3(6); Property Tax Law No. 1319, Article 3.
Which law applies: the split that surprises EU and common-law families
Article 20 of Law 5718 states the Turkish conflict rule in two sentences. Succession is governed by the national law of the deceased; but immovable property in Turkey is governed by Turkish law. The second sentence overrides the first for every flat, house and plot on the Turkish register. A German owner's estate is, from Ankara's point of view, German for the bank accounts in Frankfurt and Turkish for the flat in Alanya; a British owner's will made in London under English law governs the London house and does not govern the villa in Bodrum. Article 20(2) adds that the opening of the succession, its acquisition and its partition follow the law of the place where the estate is, and Article 20(3) that an heirless estate in Turkey passes to the Turkish state.
Families from EU countries should note what this does to the European Succession Regulation. That regulation binds the courts of the member states and lets a testator choose the law of their nationality for the whole estate, but Turkey is not bound by it and does not apply it. The result is a split estate: the home court applies one law to the worldwide estate, the Turkish registry applies Turkish law to the Turkish land, and the heirs need paperwork that satisfies both. The mechanics of the same split for owners in Montenegro, which are close to Turkey's, are described on the Montenegro succession page, and a family that owns on both coasts has a further layer set out on the two-codes page.
The form of a will is treated more generously than its content. Under Article 20(4) and Article 7, a will is formally valid if it complies with the law of the place where it was made, with the law governing its substance, or with the national law of the deceased. A properly executed English or German will is therefore formally valid in Turkey. What it cannot do is override the Turkish rules on who must receive what from Turkish land.
Who inherits under Turkish law when there is no will
The Civil Code organises legal heirs in three classes, and a nearer class excludes the farther ones. Under Article 495 the first class is the descendants, children taking equally and the issue of a deceased child taking that child's place. Under Article 496, if there are no descendants, the parents inherit equally, with their descendants taking the place of a deceased parent, which brings in the deceased's siblings and their children. Under Article 497, failing descendants and parents, the grandparents and their descendants inherit. Beyond the grandparents' class there are no legal heirs other than the spouse, and beyond the spouse the estate passes to the state.
The surviving spouse takes a share that depends on which class they inherit alongside, under Article 499: one quarter with the descendants, one half with the parents' class, three quarters with the grandparents' class, and the whole estate if none of those exist. There is no separate régime for the family home in the succession rules themselves, but Article 652 gives the surviving spouse the right to ask that the home the couple lived in, and its furniture, be allocated to them in ownership against their share, or in usufruct or a right of residence where there are proper grounds; for a foreign couple whose only Turkish asset is the home they retired to, that article is the practical answer to the question of whether the children can force a sale.
What a will cannot change: the reserved shares
Turkey has forced heirship. Under Article 505 of the Civil Code, a person who leaves descendants, parents or a spouse may dispose by will only of the part of the estate that remains after the reserved shares; without any of those relatives, the whole estate is free. Article 506 fixes the reserved shares: one half of the legal share for each descendant, one quarter of the legal share for each parent, and for the spouse the whole of the legal share when inheriting with descendants or parents and three quarters of it otherwise. Since a 2007 amendment, siblings have no reserved share.
The arithmetic for a common case is worth doing once. A foreign owner leaves a spouse and two children and a Turkish flat. The legal shares are one quarter to the spouse and three eighths to each child. The reserved shares are the whole quarter for the spouse and three sixteenths for each child, which together are five eighths of the flat. The owner may dispose freely of the remaining three eighths, by will, to anyone. A will that leaves the entire flat to the spouse, which is what most English and American wills do, is not void; it is reducible, and each child may bring an action to have their three sixteenths restored. A will that leaves the flat to a charity or a second family is reducible down to the three eighths that were free.
Disinheritance is possible only on the grounds in Article 510: a serious crime against the deceased or their close relatives, or a grave failure of family-law duties toward the deceased or the family. Estrangement is not a ground. Lifetime transfers made to defeat the reserved shares are reachable as well, which is why "I will just give the flat to my daughter now" needs advice before it is done.
The certificate of heirship, and why a foreigner's heirs go to court
Nothing happens at the land registry, at a Turkish bank or at a company registry without a certificate of heirship, the mirasçılık belgesi, sometimes still called by its older name veraset ilamı. Article 598 of the Civil Code provides for it to be issued by the civil peace court or by a notary on the application of the legal heirs; the certificate is proof of who the heirs are and in what shares, and its invalidity can be raised at any time, so it is a strong presumption rather than a final judgment.
The notary route, which makes a Turkish family's certificate a matter of an afternoon, is closed to most foreign families. Article 71/B of the Notaries Law bars notaries from issuing the certificate where issuing it would require adjudication, where the civil registry records are insufficient, or where the certificate is requested by foreigners. A foreign owner's heirs therefore apply to the civil peace court under Article 43 of Law 5718, which gives jurisdiction to the court of the deceased's last Turkish domicile or, where there was none, to the court of the place where the estate assets lie. The court needs the death certificate and the documents establishing the family relationships, apostilled and translated, and it applies Turkish law to the Turkish property and the deceased's national law to the rest. Where a foreign court has already determined the heirs, that decision can be recognised in Turkey under Article 58 of Law 5718, which treats uncontested foreign decisions in the same way as judgments and does not require reciprocity for recognition; the Turkish court still applies Turkish law to the distribution of the Turkish land.
A power of attorney given during the owner's lifetime ends with the death and does not help the heirs; what helps is a Turkish lawyer instructed by the heirs, a set of apostilled civil status documents prepared in advance, and, where the family is large or scattered, a will that names an executor.
What the heirs own, and the debts they inherit
Under Article 599 the heirs acquire the estate as a whole at the moment of death, by operation of law, without any act of acceptance: the property, the claims, the possession and, personally, the debts. Under Article 640, where there are several heirs they hold the estate in undivided ownership until partition and dispose of it only jointly; any heir may ask the civil peace court to appoint a representative of the estate. Undivided ownership is also why, under Article 3 of the Property Tax Law, the heirs are jointly and severally liable for the annual property tax on the inherited home until it is partitioned, a point set out on the property tax page.
An heir who does not want the estate, typically because of debts, may renounce it. Article 605 allows legal and appointed heirs to renounce, and deems the estate renounced where the deceased's insolvency was evident or officially established at death. Article 606 gives three months, running for legal heirs from the day they learned of the death unless they prove they learned of their status later, and for heirs appointed by will from the official notification of the will. Three months is short for a family abroad that learns of a Turkish mortgage after the funeral; the date the clock started is a question of fact on which the heir bears the burden.
Two property-specific rules apply to foreign heirs. Under Article 35 of the Land Registry Law, property inherited by a foreign national beyond the limits that apply to acquisition by that nationality, which are described on the nationality and zones page, must be disposed of within a period of up to one year set by the Ministry, failing which it is liquidated and the proceeds paid to the heir; the heir receives value, not the land. And under Article 3(6) of the tourism letting law, a permit held by the deceased lapses unless the heirs apply within three months of the death, a rule explained on the short-term rental page.
The inheritance tax: who, on what value, at what rate
Article 1 of Law 7338 taxes two things: property belonging to Turkish citizens wherever it is, and property located in Turkey whoever owns it. A foreign owner's Turkish flat is taxed on death; the same owner's foreign assets are not, and a foreign heir who is not resident in Turkey is not taxed on a Turkish citizen's foreign assets either. The taxpayer is the heir, each on their own share.
The base is what makes Turkish inheritance tax modest on real estate. Under Article 10(b), immovable property is valued at its property tax value, the statutory figure the municipality uses for the annual tax, not at market value and not at the price paid. Article 12 allows the deduction of the deceased's documented debts and tax debts and of funeral costs. Article 4(b) then exempts, for 2026, 2,907,136 lira of the share of each descendant and of the spouse, and 5,817,845 lira of the spouse's share where there are no descendants; the figures are reset each January by communiqué.
Article 16 applies a progressive scale to what remains. For 2026 the bands are one per cent on the first 3,000,000 lira, three per cent on the next 7,000,000, five per cent on the next 15,000,000, seven per cent on the next 30,000,000 and ten per cent above 55,000,000 lira. Gifts are taxed on a separate scale from ten to thirty per cent, halved for gifts between parents, children and spouses. And since Law 7582 of May 2026, a person who holds the twenty-year foreign-income exemption described on the Law 7582 page passes property by inheritance at a flat one per cent for as long as the exemption runs, a provision written with exactly this readership in mind.
Turkey is not party to inheritance tax treaties with the countries most of my clients come from. Whether the Turkish tax is credited against an estate tax at home is a question of the home country's law; the Turkish law, for its part, credits foreign inheritance taxes only on the foreign assets of Turkish citizens.
The deadlines: months, not years
Article 9 fixes the filing deadlines by where the death occurred and where the heirs are. If the death occurred in Turkey, the return is due within four months if the heirs are in Turkey and six months if they are abroad. If the death occurred abroad, the return is due within six months if the heirs are in Turkey, four months if they are in the country where the death occurred, and eight months if they are in a third country. The return is filed with the tax office of the deceased's last Turkish residence or, for a non-resident, the office competent for the place where the property lies.
Payment is gentle. Under Article 19 the tax is paid over three years, in two instalments each May and November. The same article contains the rule that governs the family's timetable: the land registry registers the inherited property in the heirs' names without waiting for the tax to be assessed, but the heirs cannot sell, transfer or mortgage it until the tax attributable to it has been paid in full and the tax office has issued a clearance. An heir who wants to sell quickly pays the whole tax early. Article 17 adds that banks, insurers and other institutions holding money for the estate may release it only against the same clearance, and otherwise withhold five per cent on account.
| Step | Rule | Clock | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Renunciation of the estate | Application to the civil peace court | 3 months from learning of the death | Civil Code Art. 606 |
| Tourism letting permit | Heirs apply to keep it | 3 months from death | Law 7464 Art. 3(6) |
| Inheritance tax return | Filed with the competent tax office | 4, 6 or 8 months by place of death and of heirs | Law 7338 Art. 9 |
| Certificate of heirship | Civil peace court for foreign heirs | No statutory deadline; nothing moves without it | Civil Code Art. 598; Notaries Law Art. 71/B |
| Payment of the tax | Two instalments a year | 3 years from assessment, May and November | Law 7338 Art. 19 |
| Sale or mortgage of the inherited property | Clearance from the tax office | After the tax on that property is paid in full | Law 7338 Art. 19 |
| Property beyond the foreign-acquisition limits | Disposal by the heir, else liquidation | Up to 1 year set by the Ministry | Land Registry Law Art. 35 |
Planning that actually works from abroad
The instruments that work are modest and Turkish. A will covering the Turkish property, made either in official form before a Turkish notary with two witnesses under Article 532, or in the owner's own handwriting, dated and signed throughout under Article 538, and deposited with a notary, avoids the argument about whether a foreign will reaches the Turkish land and can dispose of the free portion clearly. A statement of the family tree, with apostilled civil status documents kept current, shortens the court's work by months. A named executor, or at least a named Turkish lawyer, gives the heirs someone to instruct on day one. Where the owner holds the twenty-year exemption, a note in the file that the estate qualifies for the one per cent rate saves an argument with the tax office. And where the owner's home country will also tax the estate, the two returns should be prepared by people who talk to each other, because the Turkish property tax value that the Turkish return uses and the market value that the home return uses are different numbers for the same flat.
What does not work is the lifetime gift made to skip all of this. A gift of Turkish real estate is itself taxed under Law 7338 at the gift scale, halved for close family, is made at the land registry in official form, and remains reachable by the reserved-share heirs if it was made to defeat them.
Whose side we are on, and how we are paid
Nobody in the purchase chain is paid to think about the owner's death. The agent's commission was settled at the deed, the developer has moved on to the next block, and the family's lawyer at home may never have read Article 20 of Law 5718. That is not a criticism. It is the reason the heirs of foreign owners so often arrive in my office with a foreign grant of probate that the Turkish registry cannot use and a tax deadline that passed while they waited for it.
We take no commission from anyone in your matter and we do not sell estate products. The fee you pay us is our only income from your file, and it does not depend on whether you make a will, transfer the property or leave things as they are. Because our position does not move with any transaction, telling you that your English will does not do what you think it does for the Bodrum villa, or that the gift you are considering will be reduced by your children, costs us nothing to say.
One boundary, stated plainly. We are lawyers, not licensed investment advisers and not tax return preparers in your home country. We do not tell you how to hold wealth, and we do not file your estate tax return abroad. What we protect is the Turkish legal position: which law applies, who inherits, what the will can do, and what the heirs must file and by when.
Before it is needed
Send us the title record, a description of your family and a copy of any will you have made. We will tell you what Turkish law will do with the property as things stand, what a Turkish will could change, what the heirs would need to produce and by when, and what the tax would be on the current property tax value. If you are already an heir, send the death certificate and whatever the family has; the three-month and four-month clocks may already be running. Our inheritance work is described on the inheritance and estate law page.
What this page does not settle
Company shares, bank accounts and other movable assets in Turkey follow the deceased's national law under Article 20 and are not covered here beyond the tax rules. The recognition of a foreign will's substantive dispositions, matrimonial property regimes and the estates of Turkish citizens living abroad are separate subjects. The home-country side of the estate is for the home-country lawyer.
