Turkey Golden Visa in 2026: The Four Legal Instruments Behind the Phrase, Their Thresholds, the Holding Periods, and What Each One Does and Does Not Give You

No Turkish statute contains a golden visa. The phrase is a sales label that agencies attach to four separate legal instruments with different thresholds, different authorities and different consequences: a short-term residence permit for the owner of a home worth at least 200,000 US dollars under the Foreigners Law; citizenship by Presidential decision for an investor who buys property of at least 400,000 US dollars or places 500,000 US dollars in capital, deposits, bonds, funds or pensions under the Citizenship Law and its regulation; the Turquoise Card for qualified investors and professionals under the International Labour Force Law; and, for people who do not want to invest at all, the digital nomad route the Ministry of Tourism runs for citizens of thirty-four countries. In my files the person who asked for "the golden visa" wanted one of these and was sold another, most often a 200,000-dollar residence permit described as if it led to a passport, or a 400,000-dollar flat described as if the permit came with it automatically. This page sets out each instrument from its own text as it stands in September 2026, what it costs in legal terms, how long it lasts, what it leads to, and the rules that agencies leave out.

Sources, checked 9 September 2026. Law No. 6458 on Foreigners and International Protection, Articles 31, 32, 42 and 43; Turkish Citizenship Law No. 5901, Article 12; Regulation on the Implementation of the Turkish Citizenship Law, Article 20 as amended by Presidential Decisions 5072 (6 January 2022), 5554 (13 May 2022) and 7938 (12 December 2023); International Labour Force Law No. 6735, Articles 11 and 16; Presidency of Migration Management pages on residence permit types and neighbourhood closures; Ministry of Culture and Tourism, digital nomad application requirements.

Instrument one: residence through a home

Article 31(1)(b) of Law 6458 lists, among the grounds for a short-term residence permit, foreigners who own immovable property in Turkey, and Article 31(2) sets the term at no more than two years per issuance. The Presidency of Migration Management states that the property must be a residence and used as one, and Article 31(6), added by Law 7533 in November 2024, gives the Ministry the power to determine the type and value of property that qualifies. The value the Presidency applies since 16 October 2023 is 200,000 US dollars, replacing the 75,000 and 50,000 dollar tiers that applied to earlier purchases, and it is read from the sale price recorded in the land registry converted at the Central Bank rate on the day; properties acquired before that date are assessed under the earlier tiers on renewal. Article 32 adds the conditions for every short-term permit: a documented ground, absence of the entry bans in Article 7, housing meeting health and safety standards, a criminal record certificate if requested, and a registered address.

What the permit gives is the right to live in Turkey for its term, renewable while the property is held and the conditions met, with family permits derived from it. What it does not give is work, which needs the permit described on the founder work permit page, or citizenship, which is a separate instrument with a separate threshold. It counts toward the eight years of uninterrupted residence that Articles 42 and 43 require for a long-term permit, and toward the residence periods that ordinary naturalisation requires, but a 200,000-dollar purchase buys a permit, not a passport. The practical rules of this route, the residential requirement, the shared-ownership problem and the valuation, are on the property residence page, and the neighbourhood closures the Presidency operated from 2022 in areas of high foreign population, which barred new registrations in more than a thousand neighbourhoods and ten Istanbul districts, were lifted for the whole of Istanbul with effect from 10 June 2026 by the Presidency's announcement; because the closures were administrative and were changed by announcement, a buyer checks the current list for the specific address before signing, not after.

Instrument two: citizenship by investment

Article 12(1)(b) of the Citizenship Law, added in 2016, allows the President to grant Turkish citizenship, absent any national security or public order obstacle, to foreigners who hold a residence permit under Article 31(1)(j) of Law 6458 or a Turquoise Card, together with their foreign spouse and minor or dependent children. Article 20(2) of the implementing regulation lists the investments that qualify, each certified by the named ministry or authority, in the amounts set by Presidential Decision 5072 of January 2022:

• a fixed capital investment of at least 500,000 US dollars or equivalent, certified by the Ministry of Industry and Technology;
• the purchase of immovable property of at least 400,000 US dollars or equivalent, which since Presidential Decision 7938 of December 2023 must be property with established condominium ownership or condominium easement, or land with a building on it, with an annotation in the land registry that it will not be sold for three years, or a notarised preliminary sale contract for such property with at least 400,000 dollars paid in advance and an annotation that the contract will not be transferred or cancelled for three years, certified by the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change;
• the creation of at least fifty jobs, certified by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security;
• a deposit of at least 500,000 US dollars or equivalent in banks operating in Turkey, held for three years, certified by the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency;
• the purchase of at least 500,000 US dollars of government debt instruments, held for three years, certified by the Ministry of Treasury and Finance;
• the purchase of at least 500,000 US dollars of real estate investment fund or venture capital fund units, held for three years, certified by the Capital Markets Board;
• since Presidential Decision 5554 of May 2022, a contribution of at least 500,000 US dollars to the private pension system in funds designated by the insurance and pensions regulator, held in the system for three years.

Two rules in the same article change the arithmetic. Under Article 20(6) the dollar amounts are converted at the Central Bank's effective selling or cross rate on the date of determination, so a lira purchase price is measured on the day. Under the paragraph added in 2022, the foreign currency for the property, deposit, bond, fund and pension routes must be sold, before the transaction, to a bank operating in Turkey and by that bank to the Central Bank, and the lira proceeds of the deposit, bond and pension routes are then held in lira instruments for the three years; the investor's dollars become lira at the Central Bank's rate on the way in, and the three-year holding is a lira holding. The regulation's Article 20(7) establishes an inter-ministerial commission under the Ministry of Interior to follow these applications.

The property route dominates in practice and carries the conditions buyers most often miss. The property must meet the condominium or built-land test, which excludes bare land and unfinished projects without a condominium easement, a distinction explained on the title deed types page. The 400,000 dollars is measured by the registered price and the licensed valuation together, both at the day's rate, and the three-year annotation bars a sale during that period; a sale after it is subject to the capital gains rules on the selling page. The foreign currency must come in through a Turkish bank and be sold to the Central Bank under the account rules on the bank account page, and the purchase itself follows every rule that applies to any foreign buyer, including the nationality restrictions and the military zone check. A power of attorney executed abroad for the purchase must meet the form rules on the power of attorney page. The citizenship application is filed after the investment is certified and the Article 31(1)(j) residence permit issued, and the decision is the President's; there is no entitlement, and the national security and public order screen in Article 12(2) is real.

Instrument three: the Turquoise Card

Article 11 of Law 6735 creates the Turquoise Card for foreigners whose education, professional experience, contribution to science and technology, or whose investment's effect on the economy and employment, meets the Ministry of Labour's criteria under the international labour force policy. The card is issued with a three-year transition period, during which the Ministry may request information on the activity; if not cancelled, the transition record is removed on application made in the last one hundred and eighty days of the period, and the card becomes indefinite. The holder's spouse and dependent children receive a document that stands in place of a residence permit, and the holder enjoys the rights of an indefinite work permit. Article 16 of the same law lists qualified investors among the categories for which the Ministry may apply exceptional procedures, and Article 12(1)(b) of the Citizenship Law makes Turquoise Card holders eligible for citizenship by Presidential decision. For an investor who intends to run a business in Turkey rather than hold a passive asset, the card is the instrument that combines work, residence and a route to citizenship, and it is assessed on the substance of the investment rather than on a dollar threshold; the criteria and the timeline are on the founder work permit page.

Instrument four: the digital nomad route

Since 2024 the Ministry of Culture and Tourism has run a digital nomad programme that is neither an investment nor a golden visa, but which answers the question many "golden visa" enquiries actually ask. Citizens of thirty-four listed countries, the European Union and European Economic Area states, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the United States, Canada, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, aged twenty-one to fifty-five, with a university degree, an employment or service contract with a company outside Turkey and income of at least 3,000 US dollars a month or 36,000 a year, obtain a Digital Nomad Identification Certificate online and then apply for a visa at a Turkish consulate or visa centre, after which a short-term residence permit is sought from the Presidency of Migration Management. The route requires no purchase, gives no work right for Turkish employers and no citizenship path of its own, and leaves the tax questions of a remote worker who becomes Turkish tax resident to be answered under the rules on the residence permit page and the twenty-year exemption on the Law 7582 page.

The four instruments side by side

What the label leaves out

Three points recur in every file. First, the two property thresholds are not one ladder: 200,000 dollars is a permit and 400,000 dollars is citizenship, and a 300,000-dollar flat is a permit with 100,000 dollars of ambition attached. Second, the citizenship route is a Presidential decision on a certified investment, not a purchase of a document; the certification is granted by a ministry against the regulation's conditions and the decision is discretionary, so the timetable an agency promises is the agency's, not the state's. Third, the tax consequences run in the opposite direction from the marketing: a residence permit does not by itself make a person Turkish tax resident, but the days spent using it do, and a new resident's foreign income is sheltered for twenty years only if the conditions of the Law 7582 page are met and no Turkish salary is drawn. Americans and Britons should read the US treaty page and the UK treaty page before choosing an instrument. For the comparison many readers are actually making, Montenegro has no golden visa either, as explained on the Montenegro golden visa page.

Whose side we are on, and how we are paid

The developer selling a 400,000-dollar flat is paid on the flat, and its "citizenship included" is a description of the regulation, not an undertaking. The agency selling "golden visa packages" is paid a percentage of the investment and is paid whether the decision is favourable or not. The bank that converts your dollars is paid on the spread. None of them is paid to tell you that a 200,000-dollar home is not a passport, that the valuation and the deed must both clear the threshold on the day, or that the decision is the President's to make.

We take no commission or referral fee from developers, agencies, banks or valuers, in any form, on any file. The fee you pay us is our only income from your matter, and it does not depend on which instrument you choose or on the decision you receive. Because our position does not move with the investment, telling you that you do not need citizenship, or that the property you have chosen will not qualify, costs us nothing to say.

One boundary, stated plainly. We are lawyers, not licensed investment advisers and not immigration agents. We do not tell you whether the property or the fund is a good investment, and we do not file through intermediaries. What we protect is the legal position: the instrument that matches your aim, the property or investment that meets the regulation's conditions, the currency and annotation rules applied correctly, the residence permit that precedes the application, and a file that survives the certifying ministry's review.

Before you invest

Send us your nationality, what you want the status for, whether you will live and work in Turkey, the amount you are prepared to commit and in what form, and any property you are already considering with its deed status. We will tell you which of the four instruments fits, what it requires and what it excludes, how the thresholds and the currency rules apply to your case, and what the realistic sequence and risks are. Our residence and citizenship work is described on the company formation and services pages.

What this page does not settle

Ordinary naturalisation under Article 11 of the Citizenship Law, the nationality-based restrictions on buying property, the detailed valuation and bank procedures for the citizenship file, the position of applicants from countries whose citizens face additional screening, and the tax residence consequences of each instrument in detail are separate subjects. The Presidency's property value, the neighbourhood closures and the regulation's thresholds are changed by decision and announcement; the figures above are those in force on the date checked.