Pursuant to the authorization under Article 20/9 of the Regulation on the Implementation of the Turkish Citizenship Law (“Regulation”), certain amendments were made to the Guideline on the Regulation on the Implementation of the Turkish Citizenship Law attached to Circular No. 2019/5 and the final version of the Guideline (“Guideline”) has been published. The Guideline entered into force on 01.01.2023.

In this memorandum, the differences between the previous version and the current version, which entered into force on 01.01.2023, of the Guideline will be highlighted under the relevant headings.

1      Characteristic of the Immovable

Rights registered as time-share in the land registry and immovable properties acquired in shares shall not be subject to the acquisition of citizenship through the acquisition of immovable property.

For applications based on preliminary sales agreements, the amount required by the Regulation (at least USD 400,000) shall be fulfilled with a single agreement. Even though it is possible to include more than one immovable property under a single preliminary sales agreement, applications made with more than one preliminary sales agreement shall not be accepted.

In cases where the immovables acquired through purchase after 01.01.2023, do not fulfill the amount required for the acquisition of citizenship, it shall not be possible to complete the missing amount through a preliminary sales agreement.

2      Value Determination of an Immovable

Immovable valuation reports shall be obtained through Tadebis-Web-Tapu (https://webtapu.tkgm.gov.tr/) system.

The construction of the unfinished immovables and immovables with construction servitude, for which a valuation report will be issued, shall have been started.

For preliminary sales agreements, valuation reports issued up to 3 months prior to the date of issuance at the notary public shall be accepted. A separate valuation report shall not be sought during the registration of the purchase of the immovable by the promise creditor after the annotation of the preliminary sales agreements to the registry.

The foreign currency purchase certificate in the preliminary sales agreement shall be issued at least for the paid amount in advance and on the date of the agreement, at the latest.

The immovable number has been added to the minimum information required to be included in the foreign currency purchase certificate in addition to the name and surname, passport number or foreign identity number, etc. The immovable number shall be obtained from https://parselsorgu.tkgm.gov.tr/.

If the amount stated in the receipt is not equal to the amount in the foreign currency purchase certificate, it shall be sufficient for the amount in the receipt to satisfy the minimum amount required by the Regulation at the exchange rate in the foreign currency purchase certificate.

While the receipts regarding the money transfer before the issuance of the foreign currency purchase certificate shall be in foreign currency, the receipts issued afterward shall be in TRY.

3      Payment in Instalment Sales Transactions

Receipts for payments made before the implementation of the Foreign Currency Purchase Certificate (24.01.2022) shall be accepted based on the effective selling rate or cross-currency exchange rates of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey on the business day preceding the date of the payment of the US Dollar equivalent of the amount in the receipts.

4      Conditions for the Parties

The immovables subject to sale and preliminary sales agreements should not be registered in the land registry on behalf of foreign persons and Turkish citizens who are first degree relatives (blood or marital relatives) of the buyer foreign real person.

It is required that the second-hand immovable property in the sale and preliminary sales agreements, has not been transferred by a foreign real person to a Turkish citizen or a Turkish company within the last three years. However, acquisitions arising from construction contracts are excluded from this rule.

While the previous version required that the immovables subject to the sale or preliminary sales agreements should not be registered in the name of a company subject to Article 36 of the Land Registry Law No. 2644 (“LRL”) of which foreign real persons of the same nationality are shareholders, after the recent amendments, the Guideline requires that the immovables subject to the sale or preliminary sales agreements should not be registered in the land registry in the name of a company within the scope of Article 36 of the LRL without mentioning the requirement of a shareholder of the same nationality. The former nationality of the shareholders of the company who acquired Turkish citizenship pursuant to Article 12/b of the Turkish Citizenship Law No. 5901 (“TCL”) shall be taken into account while assessing whether the company will be considered within this scope.

The immovable/immovables subject to the sale or preliminary sales agreements must not be registered in the name of persons who have acquired Turkish citizenship in exceptional ways (those acquired pursuant to Article 12/b of the TCL) at the land registry.

5      Mortgage

If the mortgage debt on the immovable is paid and the mortgage is canceled in order to fulfill the commitment request, the amount in the foreign currency purchase certificate shall be required to meet the amount required in the Regulation.

Foreign real persons shall not be able to purchase immovable properties with legal mortgages and shall not be able to subject such immovable properties to citizenship acquisition.

6      Obtaining Commitment

In principle, declaration requests shall be made only by the land registry directorate where the immovable was acquired. In case of acquisition of more than one immovable, one shall apply to the land registry directorate where the highest number of immovables have been acquired. No declaration or commitment shall be accepted in the directorate where there is no immovable acquisition.

The condition of providing explicit authorization regarding the establishment of the commitment in the transactions to be carried out by proxy could be satisfied by including a statement of “…to give all kinds of commitment and consent in the land registry directorates…” in the power of attorney.

7      Cancellation of Commitment

In principle, it is not possible to transfer the immovable property to a third party before the expiration of the commitment period for foreign real persons who have acquired Turkish citizenship through the acquisition of immovable property. However, if the General Directorate of Population and Citizenship Affairs sends an official letter indicating that the citizenship or citizenship application of the person concerned has been canceled after the issuance of the “Certificate of Conformity” and before the expiration of the 3-year commitment period, cancellation of commitment or transfer to a third party upon the cancellation shall be possible.

8      Miscellaneous Issues

Save for the preliminary sales, it is possible to establish all kinds of annotations and limited real rights on the immovables with commitment.

In cases where there is a usufruct right established after 24.01.2022 on the immovable subject to sale in favor of the person requesting citizenship acquisition based on the sale of bare ownership, a foreign currency purchase certificate shall also be sought for the usufruct right. For usufruct rights established before 24.01.2022 but after 12.01.2017, an approved bank receipt shall be required. In these cases, the minimum amount sought shall be calculated over the sum of the bare ownership and usufruct fees.

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