Almost everything written about foreigners and Turkish property is written for the day you buy. The day you sell has its own law, and it is less forgiving, because by then the mistakes made at purchase have become facts: the price declared at the deed is now your cost, the VAT exemption you took has a clock on it, the permit you obtained has a transfer deadline, and the tax office, which never heard from you while you owned the flat, expects a return within fifteen days of the sale if you live abroad. This page is the seller's side, from the statutes as they stand in September 2026: when a gain is taxed and how it is computed, what the land registry charges and checks, what a foreign buyer's rules do to your timetable, and how the money leaves Turkey.
Sources, checked 9 September 2026. Income Tax Law No. 193, repeated Article 80, repeated Article 81, Articles 101 and 103, with the 2026 figures set by General Communiqué No. 332 (Official Gazette 33124, fifth repeated issue, 31 December 2025); Fees Law No. 492, Article 63 and Tariff (4), item I-20(a); Land Registry Law No. 2644, Article 35; Value Added Tax Law No. 3065, Article 13(i); Property Tax Law No. 1319, Article 30; Inheritance and Gift Tax Law No. 7338, Article 19; Law No. 7464, Articles 4(2)(b) and 5(1)(c); Foreign Direct Investment Law No. 4875, Article 3(c); Regulation on the Turkish Citizenship Law, Article 20(2)(b).
The five-year rule: when a sale is taxed at all
Turkey does not have a separate capital gains tax. Gains on the sale of real estate by an individual are a category of income under repeated Article 80 of the Income Tax Law, and item 6 of that article draws the line that matters: a gain from the disposal of immovable property within five years of its acquisition is taxable income; a gain from a disposal after five years is not income at all and is not declared. The five years run from the acquisition date on the register to the disposal date. The same item excludes property acquired without consideration, so a flat you inherited or were given is outside the rule whenever you sell it, a point that matters for heirs who read the inheritance page and wonder what a quick sale will cost.
The article defines disposal widely: sale, transfer for consideration, exchange, expropriation, nationalisation and contribution of the property to a company as capital. A foreign owner who moves the flat into a Turkish company they have formed has disposed of it for this purpose, at the value attributed to the contribution.
How the gain is computed, and why indexing changes everything
Repeated Article 81 defines the taxable gain as the price received, less the cost of acquisition, less the expenses of the sale that remain with the seller, less the taxes and fees the seller paid. The seller's share of the title deed fee, the agent's commission borne by the seller and the valuation report if the seller paid it all come off the top.
The provision that decides most files is the indexing rule in the same article. The acquisition cost is increased by the rise in the producer price index between the month of acquisition and the month before the sale, provided the rise is ten per cent or more. In the Turkish inflation of the last several years, a flat bought three years ago has an indexed cost that approaches, and sometimes exceeds, its nominal sale price in lira, and the taxable gain shrinks or disappears. A seller who computes the gain on the unindexed cost declares a profit they do not owe tax on. The index is applied to the lira cost recorded at purchase, which is why the price declared at the deed on the day you bought, described on the property tax page and below, matters years later.
What remains after indexing and expenses is reduced by the annual exemption for gains of this kind, set for 2026 at 150,000 lira, and the excess is taxed at the ordinary progressive rates in Article 103, which for 2026 run from fifteen per cent on the first 190,000 lira to forty per cent above 5,300,000 lira. Foreign-currency movements are not part of the computation: the gain is a lira figure, and a seller who bought with euros and sells for more euros may have a lira gain that indexing wipes out, or a lira gain with no euro gain behind it. Both happen.
The fifteen-day return, if you live abroad
Where and when the gain is declared depends on residence. A seller who is tax-resident in Turkey includes the gain in the annual return filed the following March. A seller who is not resident, which describes most foreign owners, files under Article 101 a separate return, the münferit beyanname, with the tax office of the place where the property lies, within fifteen days of the sale. The tax is paid on that return. Fifteen days is the shortest clock on this page, and it starts on the day of the deed, not on the day the money arrives; a non-resident seller who flies home after the appointment has usually missed it before the celebration is over, and the penalty and interest arrive at the Turkish address on the file.
Where the seller's home country also taxes the gain, the tax treaties Turkey has signed follow the standard pattern of leaving gains on immovable property to the country where the property is; relief at home is by credit under the home country's own rules, and the Turkish return is the document that proves the Turkish tax was paid.
The title deed fee, and the price declared
Under Tariff (4), item I-20(a) of the Fees Law, the transfer of immovable property for consideration attracts a fee of twenty per thousand of the declared price, charged separately on the transferor and on the transferee. The law makes both parties liable for their own two per cent. Market practice in most of Turkey has the buyer pay both halves, and the practice is lawful if it is agreed; a seller who has not agreed it in writing remains liable for the transferor's half, and the registry will collect it before the deed is signed.
Article 63 sets the base: the declared price, which may not be less than the property tax value of the property. If the registry or the tax office later finds that the declared price was below the property tax value or did not reflect the real price, the fee on the difference is assessed against both buyer and seller with a twenty-five per cent tax loss penalty. The temptation to declare a lower price to save fee is an old one and it is a bad bargain for the seller twice over: the penalty, and the fact that the declared price becomes the buyer's cost, so the under-declaration reappears as a larger taxable gain when the buyer sells, and as evidence against you if your own purchase was declared low.
The land registry also runs two checks at the deed that reach into the seller's past. Under Article 30 of the Property Tax Law it queries the municipality's system for the property tax value and for any unpaid property tax, and arrears are settled before registration. And under Article 19 of the Inheritance and Gift Tax Law, a property that came to the seller by inheritance cannot be transferred until the inheritance tax on it has been paid and the tax office has issued a clearance.
The strings from the purchase: VAT, citizenship, the permit
Three obligations taken on at purchase come due at sale.
If you bought new from a developer under the VAT exemption for non-resident buyers, Article 13(i) of the VAT Law requires that a disposal within three years of acquisition be preceded by payment of the VAT that was not collected, with deferral interest, before the registry transaction; the period was one year until April 2022 and is three years now. The mechanics are on the off-plan page. A sale in year two is not prohibited; it is a sale that costs the VAT back.
If the property carried your citizenship application, the register bears a three-year annotation against sale under the citizenship regulation, and the registry will not transfer the property during it; the route is described on the citizenship by real estate page.
If the property holds a tourism letting permit, the buyer and you have thirty days from registration to notify the change and thirty days thereafter to apply for the permit's transfer, failing which it is cancelled, as set out on the short-term rental page. A buyer who is paying for a working holiday let will want the permit file at exchange, not after.
Selling to a foreign buyer: the rules that become your timetable
Many foreign sellers sell to foreign buyers, and the buyer's rules then set the seller's calendar. Article 35 of the Land Registry Law decides whether the buyer's nationality may hold property at all, whether the property lies in a zone closed to foreign acquisition, and whether the buyer is within the area caps; the checks are described on the nationality and zones page. They are made by the registry at the transfer, so a promise of sale signed with a buyer who fails them is a contract for a transfer that cannot happen, and the seller learns of it after taking the property off the market.
Two further requirements apply to sales to foreign buyers. The registry requires a valuation report from a licensed appraiser, which means access to the property for the appraiser and a report that may come in below the agreed price; the report is the subject of the valuation report page. And since January 2022 the price paid by a foreign buyer must pass through a Turkish bank, which converts the foreign currency and issues the foreign exchange purchase document the registry asks for; a seller who agreed to be paid abroad, or in cash, has agreed to a closing that cannot take place. Whether the price is fixed in lira or in foreign currency, and who bears the exchange movement between contract and deed, belongs in the contract, because the registry will record a lira figure on the day.
Getting the money out
There is no exit tax and no approval to obtain. Article 3(c) of the Foreign Direct Investment Law states the principle that sale and liquidation proceeds of foreign investors are freely transferable abroad through banks, and the exchange regime applies the same freedom to a non-resident individual's funds. What stands between the seller and the transfer is the bank's own compliance: the bank that receives the price will ask for the deed, the contract and the source of the buyer's funds before it converts and wires, and it will apply its own limits and reporting to the transfer. A seller who still holds the foreign-currency account into which the purchase price was originally brought has the easiest route; a seller whose Turkish account was closed years ago should open one before the sale, not after.
Two practical points recur. The lira price received at the deed is converted at the rate of the day you convert, not the day you sell, and in a volatile week the difference is real; a seller who wants euros should convert on the day. And a seller who is abroad on the day of the deed sells through a power of attorney, which must be specific to the sale and, if signed abroad, drawn up at a Turkish consulate or before a foreign notary with an apostille; the fraud patterns around powers of attorney are the subject of a separate page.
The seller's calendar
| Step | Rule | Clock | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Is the gain taxable at all | Taxable only if sold within five years of acquisition; inherited and gifted property excluded | Five years from the acquisition date | Income Tax Law rep. Art. 80(6) |
| Computing the gain | Price less indexed cost, seller's expenses, fees and taxes; index applies if the producer price rise is 10% or more | Month of acquisition to month before sale | Rep. Art. 81 |
| Exemption and rate | 150,000 lira exempt in 2026; excess at 15% to 40% | Calendar year of the sale | Rep. Art. 80; Art. 103 |
| Non-resident return | Separate return to the tax office of the property's district | 15 days from the sale | Art. 101 |
| Resident return | Annual return | March of the following year | Art. 92 |
| Title deed fee | 2% on the seller and 2% on the buyer on the declared price, not below the property tax value | At the deed | Fees Law Tariff (4) I-20(a), Art. 63 |
| VAT exemption clawback | Uncollected VAT plus interest payable before transfer if sold within three years | Three years from acquisition | VAT Law Art. 13(i) |
| Citizenship annotation | No transfer during the annotation | Three years | Citizenship Regulation Art. 20(2)(b) |
| Tourism letting permit | Notify the change, then apply for transfer | 30 days, then 30 days | Law 7464 Art. 4(2)(b), 5(1)(c) |
| Property tax arrears | Settled through the registry's query | At the deed | Property Tax Law Art. 30 |
| Inherited property | Inheritance tax clearance before transfer | Before the deed | Law 7338 Art. 19 |
Whose side we are on, and how we are paid
The agent who sells your flat is paid when it sells, and is paid the same whether you declare the real price or a lower one, whether you file the fifteen-day return or not, and whether the buyer can complete or not. None of that is improper. It simply means the agent has no reason to raise Article 63, Article 101 or Article 35 with you, and every reason to close.
We take no commission from buyers, agents or banks, in any form, on any file. The fee you pay us is our only income from your matter, and it does not rise with the price or depend on the sale completing. Because our position does not move with the closing, telling you that the buyer's nationality will fail at the registry, that the indexed cost leaves no gain to declare, or that the price you are asked to declare is below the property tax value, 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 whether to sell or what to ask, and we do not file your home-country return. What we protect is the Turkish legal position: the computation, the fifteen days, the fee, the checks at the registry and the contract that gets the money to your bank.
Before you accept an offer
Send us the title record, the deed from your purchase and the buyer's nationality. We will tell you whether the gain is taxable and roughly what it is after indexing, what the registry will charge and check, whether the buyer can complete, what the contract must say about currency and payment, and what has to be filed within fifteen days of the appointment. If you have already sold and are abroad, send the deed date today. Our Turkish property work is described on the Turkey real estate page.
What this page does not settle
Sales by a Turkish company holding the property are taxed under the Corporate Tax Law and are not covered. The valuation report procedure, the power of attorney rules and the bank account and transfer mechanics each have their own page. Home-country taxation of the gain and treaty credit are for the home-country adviser.
