Turkish tenancy law was written to protect the tenant, and it does that job well enough that a foreign landlord who signs the agent's standard lease without reading it has usually agreed to something the law will not enforce, and failed to agree something the law would have allowed. The rent cannot be raised beyond a statutory index, the deposit is capped and must sit in a bank, penalty clauses are void, the contract renews itself for a decade whether you like it or not, and the grounds on which a landlord may end a tenancy are a closed list with one-month litigation windows attached. Since 2023 every one of those disputes goes to a mediator before it goes to a judge. I write this page for the owner abroad who lets a Turkish flat on a long lease, from the Code of Obligations and the tax law as they stand in September 2026; short lets of up to a hundred days are a different regime, described on the short-term rental page.
Sources, checked 9 September 2026. Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098, Articles 339, 342 to 356 and Provisional Articles 1 and 2; Law No. 6325 on Mediation in Civil Disputes, Article 18/B as added by Law 7445 of 2023; Income Tax Law No. 193, Articles 21, 74, 86 and 94, with the 2026 figures set by General Communiqué No. 332 (Official Gazette 33124, fifth repeated issue, 31 December 2025).
Which leases the protective rules cover
The rules below are the special provisions on "residential and roofed workplace leases" in Articles 339 to 356 of the Code of Obligations. They apply to any lease of a home or an enclosed business premises, whoever the parties are and whatever the contract calls itself. Article 339 carves out one category: premises that are by their nature intended for temporary use and are let for six months or less. A holiday let, or a furnished flat let to a visiting academic for a term, is outside the protective rules and inside the tourism letting law if it is for a hundred days or less. Everything from a one-year lease upwards is inside them.
Two words in the statute decide most disputes. "Residential" leases carry every protection; "roofed workplace" leases carry them too, but for tenants who are merchants or legal persons several of the rules, including the rent cap, were suspended for eight years from 2012 and have applied since July 2020. A foreign owner who lets a shop to a company is in the same regime as one who lets a flat to a family, with the tax difference described at the end.
The rent, the cap and the five-year reset
Article 344 governs the rent on renewal. Any agreement on the rent for a renewed lease year is valid only up to the twelve-month average change in the consumer price index for the previous lease year; if the parties agreed nothing, the judge sets the increase within the same ceiling, having regard to the condition of the premises. The reference has been the twelve-month average of consumer prices since 2019, when it replaced the producer price index. A clause providing for a higher increase is not void as a whole; it is cut back to the index.
The cap has a release valve. In a lease that has run for more than five years, or is renewed after five years, and at the end of every five years thereafter, either party may ask the court to set the rent afresh by reference to the index, the condition of the premises and comparable rents, regardless of what the contract says. Article 345 governs the timing: the action may be brought at any time, but the new rent binds the tenant from the start of the new lease year only if the action was filed at least thirty days before that year began, or the landlord gave written notice of an increase within that period. A foreign landlord whose flat has been let since 2020 at a rent that the index has left far behind the market has, in the sixth year, a statutory route back to market, and it starts with a letter sent thirty days before the anniversary.
Two temporary caps confused foreign owners between 2022 and 2024. Provisional Article 1, added in June 2022, and Provisional Article 2, added in July 2023, limited increases on residential leases renewed up to 1 July 2024 to twenty-five per cent, or to the index if lower. Both have expired. A renewal after 1 July 2024 is governed by the index alone, and any page that still quotes a twenty-five per cent cap describes a rule that no longer exists.
Article 346 closes the other door. The tenant may not be made to pay anything beyond the rent and the ancillary charges, and clauses providing for a penalty on late payment or for the acceleration of future rent are void. The standard forms sold in stationery shops contain both; neither is worth the paper.
The deposit: three months, in a bank, not in your account
Article 342 permits a deposit only if the contract provides for one, caps it at three months' rent, and prescribes where it goes. Money is paid into a term savings account in the tenant's name that cannot be drawn without the landlord's consent; securities are deposited with a bank. The bank releases the deposit only with both parties' consent, on a final enforcement or a final judgment, or, if the landlord has not notified the bank within three months after the lease ends that they have sued or begun enforcement, on the tenant's demand alone.
The provision is widely ignored in practice, and a landlord who simply holds the deposit in their own account is not committing an offence. But the landlord who does so has given up the bank's role as stakeholder and will find, when the tenant leaves the flat damaged and disputes the deduction, that the deposit is a sum they must prove they are entitled to keep, not a sum they may keep until the tenant proves otherwise.
The lease renews itself, for ten years
Article 347 is the provision that surprises foreign landlords most. A fixed-term residential lease is deemed extended for one year on the same terms unless the tenant gives notice at least fifteen days before it ends; the landlord may not end the lease by relying on the expiry of the term at all. Only after ten extension years may the landlord terminate without giving a reason, by notice at least three months before the end of any subsequent extension year. A one-year lease signed in 2026 therefore gives the tenant, if they wish, the flat until 2037 at index-linked rent, and the landlord's only way out before then is one of the grounds below.
Notice must be in writing under Article 348, and where the flat is the tenant's family home Article 349 adds that the tenant cannot terminate without the spouse's express consent, and a spouse who has joined the lease must receive the landlord's notices separately. Under Article 356 the death of the tenant does not end the lease: the persons who lived with the tenant in the home may continue it, which is why the flat you let to a widow may pass to her son.
The closed list of eviction grounds, and their one-month windows
The landlord may end a residential lease before the ten years only by an action on one of the grounds in Articles 350 to 352, and each ground carries a limitation period measured in a month. Article 354 provides that these rules cannot be varied against the tenant.
Need. Under Article 350 the landlord may sue to end the lease if they, their spouse, their descendants or ascendants or a dependant genuinely need the premises as a home or workplace, or if the building must be rebuilt or substantially altered and cannot be used during the works. The action is brought within one month of the end of the term. Under Article 355, a landlord who evicts for need and then, without good reason, lets the premises to anyone other than the former tenant within three years owes the former tenant compensation of not less than one year's rent at the last rate. Need is proved, not asserted; a landlord abroad who wishes to "move in" will be asked why.
The new owner. Under Article 351, a person who acquires a let property and needs it for themselves or the listed relatives may give the tenant written notice within one month of acquisition and sue six months later, or may instead sue within one month of the end of the current term. This is the provision a foreign buyer of a tenanted flat must read before signing, and the seller's side of it is on the selling page: the one-month notice period starts on the day of the deed.
The tenant's own written undertaking. Under Article 352(1), a tenant who has undertaken in writing, after delivery of the premises, to vacate on a given date and has not done so may be evicted by enforcement proceedings or an action begun within one month of that date. The undertaking must post-date the delivery; one signed together with the lease is worthless, and the courts know the difference.
Two justified warnings. Under Article 352(2), a tenant who has caused the landlord to send two justified written warnings for non-payment within one lease year, in leases of a year or more, may be evicted by an action brought within one month of the end of that lease year. The warnings must be for rent actually due and must be documented; a notary's letter is the usual form.
The tenant who owns a home nearby. Under Article 352(3), if the tenant or the tenant's spouse owns a habitable home within the same district and the landlord did not know it when the lease was made, the landlord may sue within one month of the end of the term.
Article 353 gives a single extension: a landlord who has notified the tenant in writing, within the litigation period, that they will sue, gains one more lease year in which to file. Non-payment itself is pursued through the enforcement office, which serves a payment order and, if the rent is not paid within the statutory period, permits eviction without a prior judgment; that route is the one exception to the mediation requirement described next. The practical steps, and what a landlord abroad can and cannot do from a distance, are on the eviction page.
Mediation first, since September 2023
Law 7445 added Article 18/B to the Mediation Law, and since 1 September 2023 an action arising from a lease relationship cannot be filed until mediation has been attempted; the same applies to disputes about partition, condominium law and neighbour rights. The one carve-out is eviction through the enforcement office without judgment for non-payment. A landlord's need-based action, a rent-determination action and a claim over the deposit all start with a mediation application, and the one-month litigation windows above are counted with that step inside them. A foreign landlord who plans to sue at the end of the term should have the mediation application ready before the term ends, not after.
The two tax rules that decide how you are paid
Rent from a Turkish property is Turkish-source income whatever the owner's residence, and it is taxed under two different mechanisms depending on the tenant.
Where the tenant is a private individual, the landlord declares the rent. For 2026, under Article 21 of the Income Tax Law, the first 58,000 lira of a year's residential rent is exempt; the exemption is lost entirely if the rent is not declared or is under-declared. Under Article 74 the landlord deducts either actual expenses or, at their election, a lump sum of fifteen per cent of the gross rent, and a landlord who chooses the lump sum is bound to it for two years. The return is filed the following March, and a landlord abroad files through a proxy.
Where the tenant is a company or another person obliged to withhold, Article 94(5)(a) requires the tenant to withhold tax from the rent, currently at twenty per cent under the Presidential decision setting the rate, and to pay it to the tax office. For a non-resident landlord Article 86(2) then removes the filing obligation: income from immovable property that has been taxed entirely by withholding in Turkey is not declared, and the withheld tax is final. The rest of the income tax position, including treaty credit at home, is on the rental income taxation page. Neither mechanism changes the annual property tax on the flat, which remains the landlord's and is set out on the property tax page.
Whatever the tenant, the rent must move through a bank or the postal service; the Revenue Administration's documentation rule covers residential rent above a monthly threshold and all workplace rent, and cash rent is a documentation failure before the tax office asks anything else.
The landlord's clauses that actually work
| What you want | What the law allows | Source |
|---|---|---|
| An annual increase | Up to the twelve-month average CPI change; higher clauses are cut back | Art. 344 |
| A return to market rent | An action after five years, filed or notified 30 days before the anniversary | Art. 344, 345 |
| A deposit | Up to three months' rent, in a bank account or deposit in the tenant's name | Art. 342 |
| A penalty for late payment | Void | Art. 346 |
| An end date | Renews yearly; landlord may end without cause only after ten extension years, on three months' notice | Art. 347 |
| Recovery for your own use | Action within one month of the end of the term; three-year re-letting ban with compensation | Art. 350, 355 |
| Recovery after buying a tenanted flat | Notice within one month of acquisition, action after six months | Art. 351 |
| A written undertaking to vacate | Valid only if signed after delivery; enforce within one month of the date | Art. 352(1) |
| Eviction for repeated late payment | Two justified written warnings in a lease year, action within one month of that year's end | Art. 352(2) |
| Going to court | Mediation first, except enforcement-office eviction for non-payment | Law 6325 Art. 18/B |
Whose side we are on, and how we are paid
The agent who finds your tenant is paid when the lease is signed, usually by both sides, and has no stake in what happens in year six. The standard lease in the agent's drawer was drafted to be signed quickly, not to survive Article 346. That is not an accusation; it is a description of why the clause you most wanted is the one the court will strike.
We take no commission from tenants, agents or management companies, in any form, on any file. The fee you pay us is our only income from your matter, and it does not depend on the lease being signed or the tenant leaving. Because our position does not move with the letting, telling you that the increase clause is unenforceable, that the undertaking to vacate was signed on the wrong day, or that the one-month window closed while the letter was in the post, costs us nothing to say.
One boundary, stated plainly. We are lawyers, not licensed investment advisers and not letting agents. We do not find tenants and we do not tell you what rent the market will bear. What we protect is the legal position: a lease that says what the law allows, a deposit that is actually security, and the dates on which your rights can be exercised.
Before you sign the lease
Send us the draft lease, the tenant's details and your plans for the property over the next five years. We will tell you which clauses will hold, how the deposit should be structured, when the first rent action can be brought, and what has to happen, and by when, if you ever need the flat back. If a tenant is already in and a term is ending, send the date; the windows are a month long. Our Turkish property work is described on the Turkey real estate page.
What this page does not settle
Commercial leases to merchants and companies have differences of detail beyond the tax point made above. Enforcement procedure for non-payment, the position of a lease against a purchaser at a forced sale, and stamp duty on lease contracts are not covered. The short-term regime and the tourism letting permit have their own page.
