Every English-language guide to Turkish property opens with the sentence "foreigners can buy property in Turkey", and the sentence is true. It is also the least useful sentence in the subject, because the transactions that fail do not fail on the general rule. They fail on the exceptions: a passport that is not on the list, a second passport that is, a parcel inside a zone the registry has flagged, a plot bought without a building on it and forgotten for two years, an inheritance that arrives in the hands of someone who may not keep it.
This page is about the exceptions, read from Article 35 of the Land Registry Law and the Military Forbidden Zones and Security Zones Law, and from the Land Registry's own published answers on how it applies them. It is the check I run before a foreign buyer's deposit moves, in the order I run it.
Sources, checked 9 September 2026. Land Registry Law No. 2644, Articles 35 and 36 (as amended by Law 6302 of 3 May 2012); Military Forbidden Zones and Security Zones Law No. 2565, Articles 7, 8, 9, 19, 20, 21, 28 and 29; Turkish Citizenship Law No. 5901, Article 28; Turkish Civil Code No. 4721, Article 705; the Land Registry and Cadastre General Directorate's published questions and answers for foreign buyers on the Investment Office's official portal, which cite Council of Ministers Decision 2012/3504 of 25 June 2012, Circular 2012/12 (1734) of 6 August 2012, Circular 2017/4 and the instruction of 25 July 2024 on liquidation.
Gate one: is your nationality on the list?
Until 2012 Turkey applied reciprocity: a foreigner could buy only if Turks could buy in the foreigner's country. Law 6302 removed that test and replaced it with a list. Article 35(1) now provides that foreign natural persons who are citizens of countries determined by the President, "where international bilateral relations and the interests of the country so require", may acquire immovable property and limited real rights in Turkey, subject to the statutory limits.
The list was adopted by Council of Ministers Decision 2012/3504 of 25 June 2012 as an annex titled "Countries whose citizens may acquire immovable property in our country". The Land Registry's published answer states that the annex contains 185 countries. You will read "183" on most websites, including some of our own older pages, and the figure repeated in the press when the law changed; the Directorate's current published figure is 185, and I use the Directorate's figure. What neither figure gives you is the list itself. The decision's annex has not been published in the Official Gazette, and the Directorate's answer to "which countries" is that the information can be obtained from Turkish embassies and consulates, from its Foreign Affairs Department or from any land registry office. Lawyers who deal with the registry daily know which handful of nationalities are refused, and the names that circulate are consistent, but I do not put an unpublished list in writing; I put the question to the registry for the specific applicant before anything is signed.
Three refinements matter more than the rumoured names. First, dual nationals: the Directorate's rule is that where a person holds more than one nationality, the nationality with the fewer rights governs, and if one of them is Turkish, Turkish nationality governs. An applicant with an eligible passport and a restricted one is treated as restricted, and the registry will read it off the documents, the identity declaration form or the foreigner identity number query. Second, stateless persons: only a stateless identity document issued by Turkey's own authorities, following a determination by the Presidency of Migration Management, opens the door; stateless documents issued by other states do not. Third, and most usefully, former Turkish citizens: Article 28 of the Citizenship Law gives people who were Turkish by birth and renounced with permission, and their descendants to the third degree, the rights of Turkish citizens save for a short list, and Article 36 of the Land Registry Law expressly carves them out of the foreigner rules. A Blue Card holder is not a foreign buyer for this purpose.
Gate two: the two ceilings
Article 35(1) sets two arithmetical limits on foreign natural persons taken together and individually. The total area of immovable property and independent, continuous limited real rights held by foreigners in a district may not exceed ten per cent of the district's area that is in private ownership. And a single foreign person may not hold more than thirty hectares nationwide; the President may raise the personal ceiling to double.
The district ceiling is not something a buyer can measure; the registry applies it, and in a few coastal districts with heavy foreign ownership it is a live constraint rather than a theoretical one. The personal ceiling is measured across the whole country, so a farm in one province and a villa plot in another are added. Article 35(2) removes both limits for mortgages: a foreigner may take security over Turkish land without regard to them, which is why lenders are not caught by the arithmetic that catches owners.
Article 35(3) is the paragraph to remember when someone tells you the rules are settled. It authorises the President, where the country's interests require, to determine, restrict, partly or wholly suspend or prohibit acquisitions by foreign natural persons and foreign companies "by country, person, geographical region, duration, number, ratio, type, quality, area and amount". Every one of the gates on this page can be tightened by decision, without a new law.
Gate three: the map
Some land is closed to every foreign buyer regardless of passport, and the closure is decided by the Military Forbidden Zones and Security Zones Law rather than the Land Registry Law.
| Zone under Law 2565 | What it is | Foreign acquisition |
|---|---|---|
| First-degree land military forbidden zone (Art. 7) | The area around the installation itself; property inside is expropriated; entry limited to personnel | Nobody owns it; foreigners may enter only with General Staff permission |
| Second-degree land military forbidden zone (Arts. 8, 9) | A belt of up to five kilometres, exceptionally ten, around a first-degree zone, or other areas the President designates for defence; boundaries published in the Official Gazette | Foreign natural and legal persons "may not acquire immovable property" (Art. 9(b)); may not enter, reside, work or rent without permission (Art. 9(c)) |
| Military and special security zones (Arts. 19–21) | Up to 400 metres around barracks, depots and similar installations; around strategic public or private facilities | Property may be expropriated; entry controlled; for foreign-capital companies, acquisition needs General Staff or governorship permission under Land Registry Law Art. 36 |
| Strategic zones determined under Art. 28 | Areas designated by the President for proximity to forbidden zones or other strategic reasons | The President may decide that foreigners may not acquire, and may not rent without permission; Art. 29 allows liquidation of what they hold |
Until a few years ago the practical consequence was a delay: every foreign purchase triggered a letter to the regional command asking whether the parcel fell inside a zone. Article 35(5) of the Land Registry Law required the Ministry of National Defence and the Ministry of the Interior to deliver the maps and coordinates of all these zones to the registry, and the Directorate's Circular 2017/4 closed the loop. Its published position is that the zone data have been entered in the land register in all 81 provinces, so a foreigner's application is decided directly on the registry's own records without correspondence with the commands. For a buyer this means two things. The check is fast, and the check is final: if the folio carries the zone annotation, no argument at the counter changes it, and the time to discover it is before the deposit, from the registry extract, not at completion.
One further map layer is cultural rather than military. Where the property lies in a protected site, the Directorate's Circular 2012/12 requires the registry to consult the provincial unit of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism or of the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change, depending on the site's classification, before a foreigner's acquisition proceeds. That consultation is confined to acquisitions of ownership and limited real rights; it does not apply to other registry requests.
Gate four: unbuilt land and the two-year clock
Foreigners may buy land without a building on it; the Directorate's answer is an unqualified yes, for land as for houses. What follows is the condition most buyers of a "plot with sea view" never hear about. Article 35(4) obliges foreign natural persons and foreign companies who buy unbuilt immovable property to submit a project appropriate to the property's nature to the competent ministry for approval within two years. The ministry fixes start and completion dates, the approved project is recorded in the declarations column of the land register, and the ministry monitors whether it is carried out in time.
The Directorate fills in the edges. The two years run from the date of acquisition. "Unbuilt" means land without a permanent structure, and a permanent structure is one built to remain on or under the land and joined to it by technical means. The obligation travels with the land: a sale to another foreigner does not restart it, and inheritance passes it to the heirs together with the land. It ends only when the project is carried out or when the owner acquires Turkish citizenship within the two years. And where it is not met, the instruction of 25 July 2024 sets the route: for agricultural land the registry first asks the provincial agriculture directorate whether liquidation should proceed, and in all other cases notifies the National Property Directorate, which arranges the sale to a person entitled to own the property; an annotation recording the notification is entered in the folio.
For a buyer this converts a passive purchase into a commitment. A foreigner who buys a bare plot in Bodrum to hold for a decade has bought a two-year deadline. The plot that is worth buying is the one for which a project is realistic in that time, and the file for it starts on the day of the purchase, not when the buyer feels ready.
Gate five: companies
Two different sets of rules are hidden behind the phrase "buying through a company", and the difference decides whether the company route is open at all.
A company incorporated abroad is dealt with by Article 35(2): foreign commercial companies may acquire immovable property and limited real rights only where a special statute allows it, and legal persons other than commercial companies, such as foreign associations and foundations, may not acquire at all. Outside those sector statutes, a Dutch BV or a Delaware LLC cannot hold a Turkish flat, and the registry will refuse the transfer. The exemption for mortgages applies here too.
A company incorporated in Turkey with foreign capital is a Turkish company, and the Directorate's answer on "nationality of companies" says so: companies have no nationality, and a Turkish-registered company with foreign shareholders is a Turkish company assessed, where relevant, by the nationality of the majority shareholder. Article 36 then imposes its own regime on the subset that matters: Turkish companies in which foreign natural persons, foreign legal persons or international organisations hold fifty per cent or more of the shares, or have the power to appoint or remove a majority of the managers, may acquire and use immovable property "to carry out the activities stated in their articles of association". Acquisitions by such companies inside military forbidden zones, military security zones and Article 28 zones need the permission of the General Staff or a command it authorises; inside special security zones, the permission of the governorship; and in both, the test is whether the acquisition is compatible with national security. Governorships monitor the use of the property against the registry, and property acquired or used contrary to the article is liquidated if the owner does not dispose of it within the time the Ministry sets. The article does not apply to mortgages, to acquisitions in enforcement of a mortgage, to transfers arising from mergers and divisions, or to property in organised industrial zones, industrial zones, technology development zones and free zones. The full company route, including the VAT consequence, is the subject of a separate page; for present purposes the point is that a foreign-controlled Turkish company is inside Article 36, not outside the foreigner rules.
Gate six: heirs
Inheritance is where the gates operate on people who never chose to buy. Under Article 705 of the Civil Code, ownership passes to heirs by operation of law without registration, and the Directorate's position is that inheritance therefore passes to all foreigners. Whether the heir may keep the property is a separate question, answered by the same list. If the heir's nationality is on the list, the heir keeps it, subject to the ceilings; if it is not, Article 35's last paragraph applies: the property is liquidated if the heir does not dispose of it within a period, not exceeding one year, set by the Ministry of Finance, and the proceeds are paid to the heir. The two-year project obligation on unbuilt land passes to heirs with the land. A foreign owner with children of a restricted nationality, or with a spouse who holds one, should know this before they die rather than leave the heirs to learn it from a registry letter. The mechanics of the Turkish estate for foreign owners are on our inheritance page.
What liquidation actually means
The word runs through every gate, so it is worth stating what Article 35's last paragraph does and does not do. It applies to property acquired contrary to the article, property found by the competent ministry to be used contrary to the purpose of acquisition, unbuilt land for which no project was submitted or carried out in time, and property acquired by inheritance outside the first-paragraph limits. The Ministry of Finance gives the owner a period of up to one year to dispose of it. If the owner does not, the property is liquidated by sale and the proceeds are paid to the owner. It is a forced sale, not a confiscation, and the owner receives the price; what the owner loses is the choice of timing, buyer and price.
The eight questions, in the order we ask them
| Question | Where the answer lives |
|---|---|
| Is every nationality the buyer holds on the 2012/3504 list, applying the least-favoured one? | Registry query for the specific applicant; Art. 35(1) |
| Is the buyer a former Turkish citizen or a descendant under Art. 28 of Law 5901? | Blue Card status; if so, the foreigner rules do not apply |
| Does the folio carry a military or security zone annotation? | Registry extract; Law 2565; Circular 2017/4 |
| Is the property in a protected site requiring ministry consultation? | Registry extract and the site classification; Circular 2012/12 |
| Will the district's ten per cent ceiling or the buyer's thirty hectares be exceeded? | Registry; Art. 35(1) |
| Is the property unbuilt, and is a project within two years realistic? | Physical state of the parcel; Art. 35(4) |
| If a company is the buyer, is it foreign-incorporated (Art. 35(2)) or Turkish with foreign control (Art. 36)? | Trade registry and articles of association |
| Who are the likely heirs, and are their nationalities on the list? | The buyer's family; Art. 35 last paragraph |
None of these takes long. All of them are cheaper before the deposit than after it. The general purchase process, the deed price and the foreign-exchange certificate are covered in buying property in Turkey as a foreigner, and the wider search of the folio in property due diligence in Turkey. Buyers comparing the two coasts will find the Montenegrin nationality rules, which turn on a different mechanism, in buying property in Montenegro by nationality.
Whose side we are on, and how we are paid
Everyone else around a Turkish sale is paid when it completes. The agent's commission depends on the transfer going through, the developer's sales team belongs to the developer, and the registry itself is not your adviser. None of that is improper, but it decides who has an interest in raising the zone annotation or the heir's passport before the deposit is paid.
We take no commission from sellers, developers, agents or brokers, in any form, on any file. The fee you pay us is our only income from your matter, and it does not rise if you buy. Because our position does not move with the sale, telling you that your second passport closes the door, or that the plot carries a two-year clock you did not want, costs us nothing to say.
In the file, that means we obtain the registry extract ourselves rather than accept the copy handed over by the agent, we put the nationality question to the registry for the specific applicant before the contract is drafted, and we tell you in writing when the answer is that the purchase should not proceed.
One boundary, stated plainly. We are lawyers, not licensed investment advisers. We do not tell you whether the property will rise in value, and we do not tell you whether it is a good investment. What we protect is the legal position: the title, the eligibility to hold it, the conditions that attach to it and the deadlines that decide all three.
Before the deposit
Send us the parcel details and a copy of every passport you hold. We will tell you whether the property can be registered in your name, whether it carries a zone or site annotation, whether the two-year project rule applies and what your heirs will face. Our Turkish property work is described on the Turkey real estate page, and disputes over registrations that should never have been made on the title cancellation page.
What this page does not settle
It does not publish the country list, because the state has not. It does not settle how the district ceiling stands in a particular district on a particular day; the registry applies it. It does not settle whether a given plot's project will be approved, which depends on the planning rules for the parcel. And it does not settle whether the property is worth buying, which is not a legal question.
