Turkey Investment Incentives Under Decision 9903: The Programmes, the Six Regions, the Minimum Amounts, the Certificate and What Each Support Is Actually Worth to a Foreign-Owned Company

Turkey rebuilt its investment incentive system on 30 May 2025. Presidential Decision 9903 replaced the 2012 decision that had governed incentive certificates for thirteen years, and a foreign-owned company deciding in 2026 whether to manufacture in Turkey is deciding under the new text, not the summaries written for the old one. The architecture is different: three national programmes, two sectoral systems and a regional layer of social security support on top of both, with Istanbul excluded from parts of it. The instruments are familiar, but the rates, thresholds and durations are new, and the first thing I check for any client is whether the project clears the minimum fixed investment for its region at all. This page sets out the decision as it stands in September 2026: who may apply, the programmes, the regions, each support with its article, the certificate procedure, the completion visa and the sanctions, and the interactions with the free zone and company rules elsewhere on this site.

Sources, checked 9 September 2026. Presidential Decision No. 9903 on State Aids in Investments, Official Gazette 32915 of 30 May 2025, Articles 2, 4, 5, 6 to 10, 13 to 16, 18 to 23, 25, 29, 32, 33 and 35 and Provisional Article 2; Corporate Tax Law No. 5520, Articles 32 and 32/A as amended by Law 7555 of 20 July 2025; Foreign Direct Investment Law No. 4875, Article 3; Annex 1 of the decision as reproduced in PwC Türkiye's bulletin of June 2025, the Official Gazette PDF being unreachable on the date checked.

Who may apply

Article 2 of the decision defines the investor as the natural or legal person who will carry out the investment covered by the certificate. Nothing in the decision distinguishes a foreign-owned Turkish company from any other, and Article 3 of the Foreign Direct Investment Law gives foreign investors the same treatment as domestic ones. What the decision does require is a Turkish taxpayer to hold the certificate, in practice the Turkish company formed under the rules on the company formation page, because every support is delivered through that taxpayer's tax, customs and social security filings; a foreign parent cannot hold the certificate in its own name.

Article 5 sets the threshold conditions. The investment must be in a subject listed in Annex 3 and meet the conditions stated for it, unless it falls within the national programmes, the digital or green transformation programmes or a listed priority category. The minimum fixed investment, where the decision does not state one for the subject, is twelve million lira in Regions 1 and 2 and six million lira in the other regions, with a minimum of three million lira per lessor for machinery acquired by financial leasing. Expenditure made before the application date is not covered. Intangible assets such as brands, licences and know-how may not exceed twenty-five per cent of the fixed investment, except under the digital transformation programme. An investor that is not a small or medium enterprise, or that is supported under the local development programme, must carry out an ecosystem development plan approved by the Ministry. Applications under the decision are assessed until 31 December 2030.

The three layers

Article 4 draws the map. The first layer is the Türkiye Century Development Initiative, three programmes assessed project by project by their own committees: the Technology Initiative under Article 6, for products on the priority product list the Ministry may update each January; the Local Development Initiative under Article 7, for investments chosen province by province against socio-economic development, idle resources, local needs and clustering, on a list set by communiqué; and the Strategic Initiative under Article 8, for high value-added manufacturing that reduces import dependence, with a minimum fixed investment of one hundred million lira for high-technology products and two hundred million lira for others, and a pre-assessment against five criteria of which three must be met: a place on the strategic list, an export-to-import coverage ratio for the product of at most seventy per cent, value added of at least thirty per cent, equity of at least twenty per cent of the investment, and imports of the product of at least fifty million US dollars in the last year.

The second layer is the Sectoral Incentive System: the Priority Investments system under Article 9, whose list includes investments under the digital and green programmes, high-technology products on the priority list or of at least five hundred million lira, medium-high-technology products on the list or of at least one billion lira except in Istanbul, investments in Region 6, defence projects approved by the Defence Industry Agency, solar and wind plants for a manufacturer's own consumption, nuclear plants, LNG and gas storage of at least five hundred million lira, and the other items the article lists; and the Target Investments system under Article 10, for the subjects and conditions in Annex 3, under which investments in Istanbul receive no tax reduction and interest support is confined to Regions 4, 5 and 6.

The third layer is regional, and it is not a separate route. Under Article 4(4), an investment supported under either of the first two layers receives, according to its region, employer social security premium support and, in Region 6, employee premium support as well.

The six regions

Annex 1 assigns every province to one of six regions, and Article 22 lets an investment count as one region lower, or two, if it is in an organised industrial zone or industrial zone and, or, in one of the districts listed in Annex 5. Region 1, where a Western investor's plant most often lands, comprises Ankara, Antalya, Bursa, Eskişehir, Istanbul, İzmir, Kocaeli and Muğla. Region 2 includes Aydın, Balıkesir, Bolu, Çanakkale, Denizli, Edirne, Kayseri, Konya, Manisa, Mersin, Sakarya and Tekirdağ. Region 3 includes Adana, Gaziantep, Karabük, Kırklareli and Kütahya among others; Region 4 includes Amasya, Çorum, Elazığ, Erzincan, Malatya and Sivas; Region 5 includes Erzurum, Giresun, Hatay, Kahramanmaraş, Ordu and Osmaniye; Region 6 comprises the eastern and south-eastern provinces from Adıyaman and Ağrı to Diyarbakır, Mardin and Kars. The region matters twice: it sets the minimum investment under Article 5(2), and it sets the duration of the social security support under Article 18.

The supports, article by article

Customs duty exemption, Article 13. Imported machinery and equipment covered by the certificate enter at a zero customs rate; the items in Annex 4 may be imported without the exemption and still counted in the fixed investment.

VAT exemption, Article 14. Imports and domestic deliveries of machinery and equipment to a certificate holder, and the sale or lease of software and intangible rights under the certificate, may be exempted from VAT, the exemption extending to partial deliveries of sets and units and to the transfer of a certified investment.

Tax reduction, Article 20 and Corporate Tax Law Article 32/A. This is the largest support for a profitable plant. The corporate tax rate, twenty-five per cent under Article 32 of the Corporate Tax Law, is applied at a sixty per cent reduction, that is at ten per cent, to the income from the certified investment, from the accounting period in which the investment starts operating, until the tax forgone reaches the investment contribution amount. That amount is the contribution rate multiplied by the fixed investment: fifty per cent under the Technology and Local Development programmes, forty per cent under the Strategic programme, thirty per cent for priority investments and twenty per cent for target investments. Up to half of the contribution amount may be used against the company's other income under Article 20(2). Land, royalties, spare parts and non-depreciable expenditure are excluded, as are finance and insurance businesses, joint ventures and build-operate projects. Law 7555 of July 2025 rewrote Article 32/A: the reduced rate may be used for at most ten accounting periods from the first in which it could be used, and a contribution amount left unused in a period in which the company had income is lost, no longer carried forward. A contribution amount unused because there was no income is indexed by the revaluation rate after the investment is completed.

Interest or profit share support, Article 15. For lira loans of at least one year's term covering up to seventy per cent of the certified fixed investment, the Ministry may pay from the budget, for at most five years from first drawdown, a share of the interest expressed in points of the Central Bank's one-week repo rate at drawdown: forty per cent of the rate capped at twenty points under the Technology and Local Development programmes, thirty per cent capped at fifteen points under the Strategic programme, and twenty-five per cent capped at twelve and a half points for priority investments and for target investments in Regions 4 to 6. If the repo rate falls below its drawdown level, the lower rate is used.

Machinery support, Article 16. Under the national programmes only, twenty-five per cent of the price of each machine or item of equipment with a unit price of at least two million lira, acquired within the investment period, is paid to the investor, capped at fifteen per cent of the fixed investment and at two hundred and forty million lira under the Technology and Local Development programmes and one hundred and eighty million lira under the Strategic programme. An investment that takes machinery support receives no interest support.

Employer premium support, Article 18. For the additional employment the certified investment creates, up to the number recorded at completion, the employer's share of social security premiums on the minimum wage is met from the Ministry's budget, in full in Region 6 and at half elsewhere, for the durations in Article 18(2): none in Region 1, one year in Region 2, two in Region 3, four in Region 4, eight in Region 5 and twelve in Region 6. Under the national programmes the support runs eight years in every region and twelve in Region 6. Under Article 22 an investment in an organised industrial zone or an Annex 5 district takes the duration of the next region down, or of two regions down if both apply, with two extra years in Region 6. Employee premium support, Article 19, adds the employee share on the minimum wage for ten years in Region 6.

Land allocation, Article 21. Treasury land may be allocated under Article 3 of Law 4706 for certified investments, but not for investments without tax reduction or for electricity generation.

The certificate: application to completion visa

Article 5(12) provides that the certificate is issued as an electronic document through E-TUYS, the Ministry of Industry and Technology's incentive and foreign capital system, and that all transactions under it are electronic; the implementing communiqué sets the documents and the user authorisation an investor registers before filing. Under Article 29 the investment's start date is the application date. The investor proposes the completion period; the Ministry may set it at up to three years, and may extend it by half the original period where the investment is not completed in time, with further extensions for force majeure and for permits withheld by public bodies. Article 25 makes the transfer of an uncompleted certificate to another investor, and a partial split, subject to the General Directorate's permission; a completed certificate cannot be transferred whole; and under the national programmes a share transfer before completion, other than a listing on Borsa Istanbul, needs the programme committee's decision and the Directorate's permission.

Completion is certified by a completion visa after an on-site expertise by the Directorate's staff or the bodies it delegates. Article 29 requires the investor to apply for the visa within the period the decision states after the investment period ends; if it does not, the Ministry gives notice, and failure to apply within two months of the notice cancels the certificate under Article 32. The visa fixes the employment figure that caps the premium support and the fixed investment behind the contribution amount, so the expertise file decides the value of the next ten years.

Sanctions and the no-cumulation rule

Article 32 lists the grounds for cancellation: breach of the decision or the certificate's conditions, forged or misleading documents, sale of certified machinery before the permitted time, including sale through enforcement or bankruptcy, failure to complete the investment or the ecosystem plan in time, and failure to meet the minimum investment. Where the breach is partial, the corresponding part of the support is recovered; on cancellation the whole is recovered under the Public Receivables Law with its late payment surcharge, and part of the sanction may fall on the leasing company for leased equipment. Article 33 forbids cumulation: an investment that uses the decision's supports may not use the supports of other public bodies, and an investment that has used them may not apply, with a narrow exception for subsidised loans, which merely lose the interest support on that loan. Provisional Article 2 keeps certificates issued under earlier decisions on their own terms; machinery under an old certificate cannot be moved to a new one.

The interactions a foreign investor should check

The free zone. A company whose income is exempt in a free zone under Law 3218 receives the non-tax incentives the President determines, and one whose income is not exempt may use incentives under the general legislation, as described on the free zone page; Article 23(2) of the decision separately refuses the import of used complete plants from free zones under a certificate.

The founder's own permit. A qualified investor may receive a work permit of up to five years under the regulation to Law 6735, the level of investment, exports and employment being among the marks the law names, as set out on the founder work permit page.

Istanbul. A plant in Istanbul is in Region 1, receives no employer premium support under Article 18(2), no tax reduction as a target investment under Article 10(2), and no priority status for medium-high-technology products under Article 9(1)(c); the same plant in Kocaeli or Tekirdağ, an hour away, does not carry those exclusions, which is why site selection precedes the application in our files.

The exemption for new residents. The founder who moves to Turkey with the plant should read Law 7582's twenty-year foreign-income exemption on its own page before drawing a Turkish salary, for the reason given there. The general framework for foreign capital, including the free transfer of profits, is on the foreign investment guide.

The supports at a glance

Whose side we are on, and how we are paid

The incentive consultant is usually paid a percentage of the support obtained, which rewards the largest certificate that can be written rather than the one the plant will complete; an over-stated investment or employment figure is a sanction under Article 32 three years later, when the fee has long been paid. Neither the consultant nor the site's developer is paid to tell you that the project does not clear the minimum, that Istanbul carries exclusions, or that machinery and interest support cannot both be taken.

We take no commission or referral fee from incentive consultants, developers, banks or leasing companies, in any form, on any file, and we are not paid by the size of the certificate. The fee you pay us is our only income from your matter. Because our position does not move with the support figure, telling you to apply for less, or to place the plant across the provincial line, costs us nothing to say.

One boundary, stated plainly. We are lawyers, not licensed investment advisers and not financial modellers. We do not forecast the plant's return or tell you whether to build it. What we protect is the legal position: the entity that will hold the certificate, the region and its consequences, the programme the project fits, the conditions the certificate will bind you to, the completion visa file, and the transfer and sanction rules that follow the investment for a decade.

Before you apply

Send us the project outline, the fixed investment by category, the candidate provinces, the product's technology class if you know it, and whether the Turkish company exists yet. We will tell you whether the project clears the threshold for its region, which layer it belongs to, what each support is worth against the conditions attached, and how the certificate interacts with the company, the site and your own permit. Our company work is described on the company formation page.

What this page does not settle

The implementing communiqué's document lists and procedures, the digital and green transformation programmes in detail, the R&D and technopark regimes under Laws 4691 and 5746, the earthquake-region provisions in Provisional Articles 3 and 4, and the specialised supports for defence, energy and mining are separate subjects. The decision's lists and figures are amended by later decisions; the figures above are those of the text as consolidated on the date checked.