The Turkish government has issued important amendments to the laws on obtaining Turkish citizenship through real estate investment.
The most important of these modifications are:
1- The foreign investor wishing to obtain Turkish citizenship must buy the property exclusively from a Turkish company, the owner of which is Turkish and all of its partners are Turkish. As he will not be able to obtain it if the owner of the company is a foreigner or one of its partners is foreign.
2- No Turkish citizen who is married to a foreigner will be able to sell their real estate to a foreign investor who wants to obtain citizenship. The foreign investor should make sure whether the property owner is married to a foreign person or not.
3- It must be ensured that all partners are Turkish, as citizenship will not be granted if one of them is a foreigner.
4- The investor will not obtain citizenship if he buys the property from the children of a foreigner, even if he has been naturalized.
5- Citizenship is not granted if the property was owned by a foreigner and then sold to a Turkish citizen, and then the Turkish citizen sold it to a foreign investor.
6- If the foreign investor sells the property to the same Turkish seller after the expiry of the three-year period, the Turkish Citizenship Office has the right to conduct an official investigation and withdraw citizenship from the investor.
7- When selling the property, the foreign buyer must declare that there is no manipulation or falsehood in the information and data provided, and the Citizenship Office has the right to withdraw citizenship in the event of any manipulation.
8- If the Citizenship Office suspects the existence of any case of manipulation or fraud after the investor obtains citizenship through future real estate contracts and about its ownership of a third person after the end of the period, they have the right to withdraw citizenship from him.
After all these amendments, the procedures for obtaining citizenship have become more difficult and more complicated than before. Foreign investors must deal with lawyers and legal experts to complete the procedures for applying for citizenship without neglecting the new amendments.