Law No. 7582 of 4 June 2026 created two regimes that are now advertised side by side: the twenty-year exemption on foreign income for people who settle in Turkey, and an asset peace, known in Turkish as varlık barışı, that lets people declare money and securities held abroad or off the books. Clients moving to Turkey ask me which of the two they should use to bring their savings. For most of them the honest answer is neither. The two regimes solve different problems, they look at different periods of time, and money that was earned and taxed properly does not need either of them to cross a border.
I set the two side by side on this page from the texts. The exemption itself is explained on Turkey's 20-year exemption on foreign income, and both regimes are placed in their law on Law 7582, article by article. Here the question is practical: you have money abroad and you are coming to Turkey; what, if anything, do you have to do about it?
Sources, checked 16 September 2026. Law No. 7582, Articles 4 and 10, Official Gazette No. 33270 of 4 June 2026; Corporate Tax Law No. 5520, temporary Article 19, and Income Tax Law No. 193, Articles 3, 4, 6 and repeated Article 20/D, consolidated texts on mevzuat.gov.tr; General Communiqué on Bringing Certain Assets into the Economy, Series No. 1, and Income Tax General Communiqué Series No. 333, both Official Gazette No. 33300 of 4 July 2026.
Two regimes, two different questions
| Twenty-year exemption | Asset peace | |
|---|---|---|
| Legal basis | Income Tax Law repeated Art. 20/D (Law 7582 Art. 4) | Corporate Tax Law temporary Art. 19 (Law 7582 Art. 10) |
| Implementing text | Communiqué No. 333 | Asset Peace Communiqué Series No. 1 |
| Who | Individuals settled in Turkey from 1 January 2026 with a clean three-year record | Individuals and companies with assets abroad; taxpayers with off-book assets in Turkey |
| Looks at | Future income obtained abroad, for twenty years | Existing assets: money, gold, foreign currency, securities and other capital market instruments |
| Where you go | Tax office of your domicile, by petition | A Turkish bank, or an intermediary for securities |
| Deadline | End of the year of settlement (end of February for November and December settlers) | Declarations until 31 July 2027 |
| Cost | None | 5% of declared value, 0% to 4% with a holding commitment; half a point more on the reduced rates from 2027 |
| What you get | Foreign income not taxed and not declared | No tax inspection or assessment on the declared amounts, if all conditions are kept |
The first regime is about income you will earn. The second is about assets you already hold and that, in the eyes of Turkish tax law, may carry an old problem. Mixing them up leads people to pay 5% on money that owed nothing.
Moving money is not income
Start with the rule that makes most of this simple. A transfer of your own money is not income under the Income Tax Law. What Turkey taxes depends on residence. Under Article 3 a person settled in Turkey is taxed on worldwide income; under Article 6 a person not settled in Turkey is taxed only on income obtained in Turkey.
Communiqué No. 333 says the same thing in its Example 13. A resident of the United Arab Emirates who is not settled in Turkey sends 100,000 US dollars from abroad to a Turkish bank account and also sends into that account 50,000 euros of rent from a flat in France. Neither the transfer nor the French rent is taxable in Turkey, because the person is not settled here.
So savings you built while you lived and paid tax elsewhere, before you ever became a Turkish resident, were never within Turkish income tax. Bringing them to Turkey after you settle does not change that. They are capital, not income, and asset peace has nothing to forgive.
Who needs which regime
| Your situation | Twenty-year exemption | Asset peace |
|---|---|---|
| Foreigner, never resident in Turkey, savings earned and taxed abroad, moving in 2026 | Apply, for future foreign income | Not needed for the savings |
| Turkish citizen returning after years abroad, savings earned while living abroad | Apply if the three-year record is clean | Not needed for savings earned while non-resident |
| Person who settles in Turkey, holds a certificate, and keeps earning dividends abroad | Covers that income | Not needed for it |
| Turkish resident for many years with foreign accounts whose income was never declared in Turkey | Not available: no clean look-back | The regime written for this case |
| Turkish company holding cash or securities that are not in its books | Not available to companies | Available; assets go into a special reserve |
| Newly settled person who fails the look-back and earns foreign income from the year of settlement | Not available | Past untaxed assets could be declared; future foreign income is taxable in the ordinary way |
The last row is where confusion costs most. Someone who moved in 2026 but had a Turkish salary in 2024 has no certificate, so their foreign dividends from 2026 are taxable in Turkey like any resident's. Asset peace does not change that future liability; it only deals with what was already there.
How asset peace works
The asset peace communiqué sets out a procedure that runs entirely through banks and intermediaries, not tax offices.
Declaration. Money, gold, foreign currency, securities and other capital market instruments held abroad may be declared to a Turkish bank, or for securities to an intermediary, from 4 June 2026 to 31 July 2027, on the form in Annex 1 of the communiqué, prepared in two copies. Declarations may be made through an authorised representative. The bank does not ask for documents about the declared assets.
Transfer. Foreign assets must be transferred to an account in a Turkish bank or intermediary within two months of the declaration. Assets brought physically must clear customs within the same two months and be deposited by the end of the first working day after clearance; customs asks for proof that the assets were declared to a bank. Real estate abroad is outside the regime, but it may be converted into covered assets by 31 July 2027 and brought in that way.
Tax and rates. The bank collects the tax up front and pays it to the tax office by the evening of the fifteenth day of the following month.
| Commitment given with the declaration (Annex 2) | Rate for declarations until 31 December 2026 | Rate from 1 January to 31 July 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| None | 5% | 5%; the text does not say clearly whether the half point applies |
| At least 1 year in time deposits, government debt securities, lease certificates or venture capital funds | 4% | 4.5% |
| At least 2 years | 3% | 3.5% |
| At least 3 years | 2% | 2.5% |
| At least 4 years | 1% | 1.5% |
| At least 5 years | 0% | 0.5% |
The half-point increase for 2027 is written in the law and in the communiqué directly after the list of reduced rates, and the communiqué's 2027 example uses a reduced rate; whether it also lifts the 5% rate is not stated in terms, so I would not plan on the lower reading. The communiqué's own example for 2026: 10,000,000 TL of foreign currency declared on 15 September 2026 with a two-year time-deposit commitment pays 3%, which is 300,000 TL. Committed assets must be converted into the committed instruments within ten days of the transfer. The commitment period starts on the day the assets are placed in those instruments.
Valuation. Foreign currency is valued at the Central Bank's buying rate on the declaration date, gold at market value, listed securities at stock exchange value and fund units at their closing price.
What asset peace protects, and what it does not
The protection is written in Article 12 of the communiqué. No tax inspection and no tax assessment may be made on the amounts corresponding to the declared assets, provided that the assets reach Turkey within two months, the tax is paid on time, commitments are kept, and taxpayers who keep books record the assets and hold them in a special fund account for two years.
Three limits sit around that protection. A declaration made after a tax inspection has started, or after referral to an assessment commission, does not stop assessment from that inspection. If an inspection started for other reasons finds a difference caused by the declared assets, only the part above the declared amount is assessed. And the law itself, in temporary Article 19(8), says that measures required under other legislation are not affected. Asset peace is a tax regime. It does not replace the source-of-funds questions a Turkish bank asks under anti-money-laundering rules, and I would not describe it to anyone as a way around them.
If a commitment is broken, the bank computes the tax that should have been paid at the proper rate and collects it with late-payment interest, without a loss-of-tax penalty, but the inspection protection is lost. Losses on later disposals of declared assets are not deductible, and the tax paid under the regime cannot be expensed or credited.
Using both regimes at once
Nothing in either communiqué refers to the other. A person who holds a twenty-year certificate may in principle also use asset peace, and a person who uses asset peace may also apply for the certificate if their record allows it. In practice the overlap is small. A person with a clean three-year look-back had no Turkish tax liability in those years and usually has no Turkish tax problem in their foreign assets; a person with a Turkish tax problem in their foreign assets usually had a Turkish tax liability that closes the look-back.
Where both could matter, the order is important. The certificate is tested on the facts you state in your petition, and Annex 1 of Communiqué No. 333 makes you personally liable if contrary facts emerge. A declaration under asset peace is a written statement to a bank that is reported to the tax office. The two files have to tell the same story about where you lived and what you earned, and I would prepare them together.
Keep the paper trail from the first transfer
Whichever regime applies, the file that protects you is built at the time the money moves, not years later. A certificate holder's foreign income is exempt only if it really is foreign, and Communiqué No. 333, Article 5, allows the tax office to reopen the question and cancel the certificate back to the settlement date. The burden of showing where a receipt came from will in practice sit with you.
For every significant transfer into Turkey I ask clients to keep four things together: the foreign bank statement showing the outgoing payment, the document that shows what the money is (a sale contract, a dividend voucher, a loan agreement, a pension statement), evidence of the tax treatment where it was earned, and the Turkish bank's incoming transfer record. Money that arrives from your own foreign account is easy to explain; money that arrives from a company you control, or from a third party, needs its own explanation, and the asset peace communiqué itself warns that where assets are held through a foreign company in an individual's name, ownership has to be proven if an inspection is opened for other reasons.
None of this is a formal requirement of either communiqué. It is the file I would want to have if a tax inspector, or a bank's compliance team, asks the question in five years' time.
Whose side we are on, and how we are paid
Banks earn on the deposits that asset peace commitments lock in for up to five years, and relocation and investment sellers earn on the money once it arrives. We take no commission from banks, intermediaries, developers or relocation firms, in any form, on any file. Our only income from your matter is the fee you pay, and it does not rise if you declare, commit or transfer anything. That is why we can tell you that your savings need no declaration at all.
We are lawyers, not licensed investment advisers. We do not advise which instrument or holding period to choose for a commitment; that is an investment decision. We advise on the legal and tax position: whether a declaration is needed, whether the certificate is available, and whether the two files are consistent.
Before you move money
Send us a short history: where you lived and paid tax in each year the savings were built, whether any of that period was Turkish residence, and whether any of the money is held through a company. We will tell you in writing whether your case needs the certificate, asset peace, both or neither, and by which date. Our Turkish tax work is on the international tax page. Readers with a Turkish past should also read returning to Turkey and the 20-year exemption, and the certificate procedure is on the exemption certificate page.
What this page does not settle
It does not settle how the tax office will treat a person who uses both regimes at once, because neither communiqué addresses the combination. It does not settle any question of anti-money-laundering compliance at a particular bank. It does not advise which commitment period or instrument suits you, which is an investment question.
