A foreign buyer entering Turkey's citizenship-by-investment process usually meets the legal profession through an introduction — a developer's recommendation, an agency's shortlist, a friend's contact, an online search. This page is not about which route is better, and it takes no view on how anyone found their counsel. It is about something more useful and entirely neutral: whoever your lawyer is and however you found them, the Attorneys Act (Avukatlık Kanunu, Law No. 1136) gives every client the same statutory floor. Every duty described below binds every Turkish avukat equally, and every question below is one any client may put to any counsel, in any transaction. Nothing here alleges that anyone breaches these duties; the point is that you are entitled to know what they are.
The structural economics of the CBI property market are covered in our citizenship premium analysis, the seller-side eligibility rules in our seller eligibility guide, and the investment routes themselves in our real estate versus bank deposit comparison. This page is about the professional relationship that carries the file.
The statutory floor
The Attorneys Act opens by defining what the profession is for: Article 2 states that the purpose of advocacy is the resolution of legal relations and disputes in accordance with justice and equity, and that the avukat dedicates their legal knowledge and experience to the service of justice and the benefit of persons. From that purpose, the Act builds a set of duties a client can hold in one hand.
Care, honesty, honour — and the professional rules. Article 34 obliges avukats to perform their engagements with care, honesty and honour befitting the office, and to comply with the professional rules issued by the Union of Turkish Bar Associations. This is the master duty: everything a client experiences as diligence — files read, deadlines met, risks explained — is this article at work.
Confidentiality. Article 36 prohibits the avukat from disclosing matters learned through the engagement. The prohibition is strict enough that testifying about such matters requires the client's consent — and even with consent, the avukat may still decline to testify, without civil or criminal consequence. Your file's contents are yours.
The conflict rules. Article 37 lets an avukat decline any brief without giving reasons. Article 38 goes further and makes refusal mandatory in defined situations — among them, where the avukat has already acted or given an opinion for a party with an opposing interest in the same matter, and where the avukat would have to argue the invalidity of a deed or contract they themselves drew up. The obligation extends expressly to the avukat's partners and employed lawyers. These grounds exist for the client's protection, and any client may ask any counsel, neutrally and without offence, how the engagement sits with them.
Your documents. Article 39 obliges the avukat to preserve the documents entrusted to them for three years after the mandate ends. The same article gives the avukat a retention right over the file while fees and expenses remain unpaid — a two-way provision worth knowing in both directions.
Seeing the matter through. Article 171 obliges the avukat to pursue an accepted matter to its conclusion, written contract or not. Its second and third paragraphs matter especially in cross-border files: where the power of attorney authorises substitution (tevkil), the avukat may bring in or hand the matter to another lawyer — but remains liable to the client, personally and jointly with the substitute, for the substitute's faults. Delegation is lawful; it is never an exit from responsibility.
And a clock. Article 40 gives contractual damages claims against an avukat a limitation period of one year from when the claim's existence is learned, and five years in any event. Client rights are real rights, and real rights have calendars.
| The right | Where it comes from | What it looks like in practice |
|---|---|---|
| Diligent, honest handling under professional rules | Article 34 | Deadlines met; risks explained; the file readable |
| Confidentiality, even against testimony | Article 36 | Your transaction's details stay in the file |
| Mandatory refusal on conflict grounds | Article 38 | Opposing-interest representation in the same matter is a statutory bar, extending to the firm |
| Your documents, kept and returnable | Article 39 | Three-year preservation after the mandate; retention right until fees are paid |
| Responsibility survives delegation | Article 171 | Substitution under a tevkil clause leaves your lawyer jointly liable |
| Accountability with a deadline | Article 40 | One year from knowledge, five years absolute |
The power of attorney, read the way a lawyer reads it
Most CBI purchases run on a power of attorney signed at a consulate or notary, and the instrument deserves the same attention as the property. Three factual points about how these documents work.
Scope is the client's decision. A PoA in this market typically authorises some combination of: purchasing a specified or unspecified property, executing land-registry acts, giving the statutory three-year no-sale undertaking, applying for the residence permit and citizenship, and receiving documents. Each of those is a choice, not a default. A client may name the property, cap the price, exclude the receipt of money, or grant powers in stages — and a client who prefers a narrow instrument is exercising a right, not signalling distrust.
Some acts need express authority. The land registry's own guidance on citizenship acquisitions states that where the transaction is done by proxy, the power of attorney must contain express authority for the entry of the undertaking annotation. A general "authorised to buy" formula is not automatically authority for everything the file requires — which is a reason to have the instrument drafted against the checklist of acts it must carry, before the appointment at which it is needed.
A tevkil clause has defined consequences. Where the instrument authorises substitution, Article 171 governs: the work may lawfully be shared or passed on, and your original counsel's responsibility to you continues, jointly and severally. Knowing this, a client can ask two entirely neutral questions: who will actually perform each stage of my file, and does my instrument authorise substitution at all.
One more structural fact completes the picture: the relationship is endable from both sides. A client may revoke the power of attorney and end the mandate; an avukat who withdraws from a matter does so under statutory conditions that protect the client's position in the transition. Neither possibility is a threat anyone needs to voice — but knowing the relationship is voluntary on both ends is part of understanding it as the statute designed it, and the document-preservation and return duties above are what make any handover orderly.
What a complete file contains — and the chain it should document
The CBI process has a defined official sequence, and a client is entitled to know which stage their file is at and to hold the paper for each. The chain runs: the qualifying investment; the conformity determination — for real estate, the value and eligibility examination now runs through the land registry's own system, producing the real-estate investment determination certificate on the basis the registry's guidance defines; the short-term residence permit issued for investors under Article 31/1(j) of the Foreigners and International Protection Law (No. 6458); and the citizenship application, examined through the population and citizenship authorities with the decision taken by Presidential decision, extending to the applicant's spouse and minor children.
A complete purchase-and-application file, held by the client and not only about the client, therefore contains at minimum: the sale contract; the payment documentation on the statutory bank route; the valuation basis and the determination certificate the registry issued on it; the undertaking as recorded in the official deed; the conformity certificate; the permit; and the application receipts with their dates. Article 39 makes the documents in the lawyer's hands preservable and, at the mandate's end, yours to collect. Asking for copies as the file progresses — rather than at the end — is ordinary file hygiene, and no professional reads it otherwise.
Questions any client may put to any counsel
Assembled from the statute, then, a short list — usable verbatim, with any lawyer, in any transaction, carrying no accusation because it is addressed to the framework rather than to a person:
- Which acts does my power of attorney authorise, and which require my express further authority?
- Does the instrument permit substitution — and if it is used, who performs each stage?
- How does the engagement sit with the mandatory-refusal grounds of Article 38, for you and for the firm?
- May I have copies of each document as the file advances, and the full file at the end?
- What is the fee arrangement, in writing, and what does it cover stage by stage?
- At which point of the official chain — determination, permit, application — is my file today, and what evidences that?
A lawyer hears these questions daily; they are the ordinary grammar of a professional engagement. A client who asks them is not auditing anyone — they are participating in their own file, which is what the statute's design assumes.
Where a purchase has already gone wrong — a property that was not what the papers said, money that moved against documents that did not hold — the remedies landscape is a different subject, covered in our note on property fraud and legal recourse in Turkey.
These are every client's rights, with any counsel. If you would like your CBI purchase and application file reviewed against them — the instrument's scope, the file's completeness, the stage of the official chain — that review is part of the work our Turkish citizenship practice does.
