How much do you actually need to invest?
The headline number is $400,000, raised from $250,000 in June 2022. But the figure that matters is not your sale price — it is the MK (Market Value) set by an appraiser licensed by Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü (the Turkish land registry). The threshold is checked against the MK valuation, not the price on your contract.
This is the single most common way applications fail. A property sold for $420,000 that an appraiser values at $360,000 does not qualify. Always commission the SPK-licensed appraisal before you sign, not after. The valuation is denominated in USD using the Central Bank rate on the appraisal date.
The 3-year hold — the rule everyone underestimates
When you buy for citizenship, a restriction is annotated directly onto the tapu (title deed): you commit not to sell the property for three years. Sell it earlier — especially to another foreign buyer trying to use the same property for their own citizenship — and your citizenship can be revoked.
- Rental during the hold is permitted. The restriction is on sale, not on use, so you can let the property and offset your holding cost.
- After three years, the annotation is lifted at the tapu office and the property becomes freely sellable. You keep citizenship permanently — there is no requirement to keep owning anything.
- The same property cannot be recycled: once used for one citizenship file, it is flagged so a future buyer cannot reuse it within the restricted window.
Who is included — and who is not
A single application covers you, your spouse, and your dependent children under 18. That is the whole family unit for CBI purposes.
- Included: legal spouse, biological and legally adopted children under 18.
- Not included: adult children (18+), parents, siblings. They would each need their own qualifying route.
The timeline, step by step
From a complete, clean file the decision typically lands in 3–6 months. The process:
- Get your Turkish tax number and open a Turkish bank account.
- Commission the SPK-licensed appraisal (MK valuation report).
- Transfer funds through the Turkish banking system — the payment trail must be documented (this is the anti-money-laundering check).
- Complete at the tapu office; the 3-year hold is annotated.
- Apply for the Certificate of Conformity, then residence permit, then citizenship via Göç Idaresi Başkanlığı.
Some nationalities (Iran, Yemen, Syria among them) face longer security clearance. Plan for the longer end if that applies to you.
What the Turkish passport actually gets you
A Turkish passport gives visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 110+ countries — including Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong. It does not include the EU Schengen Area, which is the most common misconception sold by aggressive marketers.
For many buyers the real draw is different: a route to long-term residency, business access to a large domestic market, and (for some) the eligibility pathway toward the US E-2 investor visa that the Türkiye–US treaty enables. Be clear about your reason before committing $400k.
How this compares to buying purely as an investment
If citizenship is not your goal, the maths is completely different — and often better at a lower entry point. See our guide to buying property in Türkiye for the non-CBI path, and weigh Türkiye against the European markets in our country comparisons.
Before you commit to any specific property — CBI or not — run the address through Outpost. The dossier checks comparable sales so you can sanity-check whether the MK valuation is realistic, plus the all-in acquisition cost (tapu harcı, döner sermaye, agent fees) on top of the headline price. Want to see what that looks like first? Try the sample dossier.