Any experiences regarding citizenship by investment in Turkey. Would be grateful to get any input in this regard.
Hi Santosh, yes i have plenty. Feel free to PM me.
Whatâs the advantage of Turkey CIP? No Schengen access. And the country is slowly going down in terms of civil freedoms along side high inflation.
Here are the countries you can visit with a Turkish passport:
Whatâs the advantage of any CBI program? If your world is centered in the west, itâs probably not for you, though it provides visa-free access to a lot of interesting countries that are hard for some westerners to visit. If you have a weak passport from Nepal, or Bangladesh, and you want to visit more than five countries in your life, suddenly it looks like a big step up in the world.
Advantages of Turkey:
- requires only a modest, market-rate investment in residential real estate
- no donation, low feesâeasily the lowest non-recoverable costs for any CBI program in existence
- earns a decent tier B passport in a few months, vs. years for many other programs
- a beautiful place to live with great food and weather, in contrast to some tiny, economically undeveloped island
Disadvantages of Turkey:
- may not be welcoming to all cultures if you choose to live there
- ruled by a brutal, crazy dictator (Erdogan)
- at war with everyone
- currency collapsing, economy struggling because of gross government misbehavior
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I know Turkey has some issues but in terms of a passport /CBI Turkey this week is 20% cheaper than last week due to insane inflation and currency devaluation. This could be good or bad but certainly worth a look.
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I have just returned from TR checking the situation on the ground.
A few BUTs for yâall to be aware of:
- the TL rate is very volatile at the moment with no sign of stabilizing, which is both good and bad, i.e. you can find a bigger/better place today than yesterday for your greenback dollar, BUT if you are researching properties locally in TL just above the $ threshold (naturally) then every next day they may all go under and youâve got to start your search all over again from scratch;
- you need to find something with both the purchase price and the official valuation above the threshold, which is kind of obvious BUT in Turkey everybody wants to show the value as low as they possibly can. So the value may be as low as 60% of purchase, meaning overpayment of 40% above the citizenship threshold;
- some nicer properties are advertized via âsilent saleâ which you may think is alright until it turns out that the seller has multiple liens and execution orders against the property. Making it not suitable for a citizenship transaction = time wasted, start all over again;
- some other nice properties are being withdrawn from the market or put on hold by sellers due to the TL situation (see point 1), hoping they could raise the price in the future when TL stabilizes;
- very rarely the property description in the ad would include the citizenship eligibility (look for VatandaĆlık) which means youâd need to manually text/call each agent BUT not everyone will reply as many donât speak English very well;
- no one wants to pay CGT so realistically you will not find an eligible property for resale under 5 y.o., again reducing your choice. Offplan - maybe, but there is a whole lot of other risks with offplan in general.
Despite all this, I agree with mmtravelguy - great investment opportunity worth exploring 
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Wow. great info. Itâs possible the world is moving to a sort of duopoly of nations. On one hand those that subscribe to the eco-friendly, humanity-based, tolerant, progressive , quasi-socialist mentality, and on the other hand the brutal dictatorships or those countries that donât fall into the first camp (e.g., Hungary). Turkey to me seems somewhere in the middle. Investing there is a crap-shoot. If they go one way, it will probably turn out well (very well), and the other way --they will be ostracized and isolated and you will suffer.
There must be a great deal of sacrasm in your post as I am yet to see a country that would declare itself NOT to be all of these things you quoted âeco-friendly, humanity-based, tolerant, progressive , quasi-socialistâ. In fact they all claim they are while pointing fingers at others who they claim to be the opposite i.e. âbrutal dictatorshipsâ. And certainly over the last two years any distinction completely melted and blurred.
So as for me personally, I donât really care too much which of those labels Turkey will be âofficiallyâ (by whom?) assigned with as long as I can be treated there best. Legally 
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Actually, yes it was both sarcastic and realistic. You are right, every country thinks they are perfect and their policies just and fair. What I meant was that if a country wants to express itself, culturally or morally, they are bullied to get in line.
I personally think Turkey will be a good place to be long-term. However, there is a reason for the recent turmoil.
Yes, fully agree. Which still makes them a great place to invest today.
Letâs not allow a good TL crisis go to waste
Oh yes, nearly forgot to mention, the food was also tested - awesome as expected.
Had a three-course dinner at a local restaurant with raki and a bottle of wine.
The money I paid will not buy me a burger in a Paris hotel I am currently staying at 
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Thank you for the report. Iâm continuing to contemplate CBI in Turkey. It would be fantastic to score a second passport soon, and the price is right. However, the risks are substantial, and Erdogan hasnât been good for the Turkish brand.
I had been considering another option in that region, ostensibly an inexpensive 3 year paper residency leading to citizenship. I visited this fall and found that employees in the foreign ministry were delighted by my interest, and aware of the nominal law about naturalization, but had no idea how to move forward. No one had ever asked about citizenship who wasnât ethnically connected to that country. [Iâm masking my identity here to avoid prejudicing my pursuit of that other passport; the countries donât get along.]
Travel seems dicey right now in this moment of moral panic. Iâll fly over to Turkey when I get a chance, maybe this spring. I want to get a feel for myself. If I buy a residence there, I may well spend some time in the neighborhood, though I may also just rent it out.
If Erdogan goes under because of economic mismanagement, that might be the perfect moment to strike while the iron is hot. Unwinding Turkeyâs expensive and disruptive martial mischief might help to repair their economy. But I also speculate that the program could vanish quickly if Turkey sheds its crazy dictator and gets back on a better footing for success.
Letâs stay engaged here. Perhaps we can benefit from economies of scale and mutual support in an unfamiliar market. If it starts to get lively, we might want to create a Signal group for privacy and convenience.
Absolutely Turkey is risky now, but Iâd consider if it looks like erdogan might be out of power soon. Following with interest, but for the investment thoughts, not the politics
I went to Istanbul for a bit a couple years ago. The food was really good. The prices were good. Took a boat across the harbor, saw a few things. Hagia Sophia was closed for Ramadan. (Poor timing, it was a Turkish Airlines stopover deal on my way to Frankfurt, I wanted to try the Do&Co catering in bizclass thatâs been raved about, which it turns out is pretty good though I think itâs still better on Austrian.)
It wouldnât be the worst place to be, but I donât know how many passports I need to be collecting, really. Or how many residences I want to have laying around managed by someone else. But I guess Iâm not really much of a digital nomad or world-citizen either.
It is a little tempting to buy some TRY though. Only issue is how to buy a short-dated TRY treasury bill or the like so you can actually capture the funding rates. Not so easy, and the marks on longer dated bills imply a heavily-inverted yield curve.
Sure, feel free to ping me if any questions as I learned quite a bit over the two days I was there.
I am primarily looking at TR as a property investment opportunity at a great price point, and in a place with the sun, sand and the sea.
And if they give me passports for the whole family on top of that, well, thatâs just a nice bonus in the world that turns funnier every dayâŠ
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Makes sense to me. I just know Iâm terrible with property.
Just to share a quick update as my âprojectâ in Turkey seems to be progressing rather fastâŠ
I did not quite expect this kind of pace especially comparing to my ongoing experience with another Mediterranean country we all here know and love 
When it comes to the price tag advertized as $250k, in reality it translates to roughly x1.3 of this amount due to property valuation always being lower than the sale price.
Maybe you heard of mytapu.com ? Their website claims it is a common âscamâ against foreigners - about inflated buyer prices in Turkey⊠and buying âlike a localâ they say avoids the up to 40% overpricing issue. I have read similar info on other online forums for Turkiye. Would be interested to know if you are going to actually become tax resident in Turkiye and any links anyone can share to good expat tax strategy websites for Turkiye. Thanks!
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I have not used mytapu.com. Their website looks a bit âfunnyâ.
However I am not sure what they may be referring to here as âbuying like a localâ.
Of course the asking price is up for negotiation between the buyer and the seller. And of course it may be inflated on the ad.
But the appraisal report is not something the locals need at all. It is only mandatory for the citizenship investment (or any foreign buyer as far as I understand). The effect of it is the sale price for the tax purposes cannot be declared lower than the valuation.
I spoke with several agents and my lawyer and their information is quite consistent that the official appraisal is normally lower than the sale price. How much lower? The opinions differ from 50 to 90%. But in my practice so far it came out at approx. 80%, which is not too bad.