Serka Law Firm acts as counsel on Turkish citizenship by investment. The advocate who signs the file is Av. Serkan Kara, entered on the İstanbul Barosu roll under registration 53770, and the mandate covers the whole route: choosing it on your own documents, designing the payment trail before the money moves, the Certificate of Conformity, the residence step, the citizenship application and the passport. Whether you are already invested in Turkey or have not yet moved a single dollar, the first thing that happens is that somebody reads your documents.
Two things separate representation from advice on this route. The first is sequence: the money moves after the documents are confirmed, never before, because an investment that has already been executed cannot be restructured to fit a rule it missed. The second is that no institution repairs another institution’s paperwork after the fact. Route selection, the source of funds, the valuation, the deed annotation and the family records are decided together, at the start, by the person who will sign the application. If you are still choosing a country rather than a route, that question is answered on our survey of citizenship by investment programs worldwide, country by country.
Who acts on your file
The file is run by Av. Serkan Kara, founder and managing partner of Serka Law Firm. Clients reach this page having searched for a lawyer, an attorney or a solicitor. Those three words name three legal systems rather than three different jobs, and on a Turkish file the work is done by an advocate admitted in Türkiye and answerable to a bar that publishes its roll. Everything below can be checked before you send us a single document, and where a public register exists the link goes to the entry itself rather than to the institution’s front page.
- İstanbul Barosu, registration 53770. The Bar’s public roll returns the entry directly, so all that is left for you to do is look: open the register entry for roll 53770. The national register kept by the Union of Turkish Bar Associations carries sicil 121348 and is searchable at the Türkiye Barolar Birliği lawyer search.
- CCBE Lawyer’s Professional Identity Card, issued under the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe. European recognition on this route is evidenced, not asserted.
- Both of the great legal families, examined in both. Turkish and continental civil law by admission and by practice; United States law on the CUSL program at the University of Cologne Faculty of Law in 2012 and 2013, covering US Family Law, Business Law, Legal Negotiations and American Legal Terminology, two of them graded vollbefriedigend. A cross-border file is therefore read in both traditions by the same person instead of being handed across a border halfway through.
- Named in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs list of lawyers in Türkiye, compiled by the Embassy in Ankara together with the Consulates General. It is named here without a link, because that document is itself a directory of law offices.
- In practice since 2015, from the registered law office at Gayrettepe Mah., Cemil Aslan Güder Sk., Modül Apt. No:26 D:2, 34349 Beşiktaş / İstanbul, Türkiye.
- The technology is worked, not bought in. Software and hardware at developer level, hands-on since the MS-DOS era from the age of eleven, current standing in the Google Developer Program at Premium tier, and machine learning among the firm’s specialisms. It belongs on this page because a citizenship file is a document and data problem long before it is an argument, and because the firm builds and runs its own tooling rather than waiting on somebody else’s.
What the mandate covers
Serka Law Firm structures Turkish citizenship by investment files for an international client base: investors and their families, on any of the qualifying routes, including the ones who arrive with the investment already made and the paperwork already wrong. Representation is a defined scope of work, and this is the scope. It is written out because this is the only place where a buyer can actually see the difference between a lawyer and an intermediary.
- Route selection decided on your own documents, before any money moves. The seven qualifying routes are not interchangeable. Your nationality, the currency you can actually remit, whether the funds are your own, and whether a family member is on the file each rule some of them out. The decision is taken on the documents you hold, not on the threshold you can afford.
- Source of funds and the payment trail designed in advance of the transfer. A payment made and then explained is the most expensive mistake available on this route, because a transfer cannot be re-issued once it has cleared. Payer, beneficiary, date and stated purpose are fixed on paper first, and the name on the transfer is the name in the document that explains it.
- Written confirmation from each institution before funds move. The SPK-licensed valuer, the bank, the land registry and the custodian each issue a document in a particular format, and a file is restarted rather than merely delayed when the format is wrong. What each one will actually issue for your transaction is confirmed in writing before the transaction happens.
- The filings themselves. The route confirmation before the determining authority, the Certificate of Conformity (Uygunluk Belgesi), the short-term residence permit under Article 31/j of Law No. 6458 before Göç İdaresi, the citizenship application before Nüfus ve Vatandaşlık İşleri, the TKGM and tapu steps on a property file, and the BDDK-facing bank correspondence on a deposit file.
- Family inclusion as one file rather than several. The spouse and dependent children are assessed together with the main application, so their civil-status records are built to the same standard on the same timetable.
- Power of attorney with the consular roadmap. You instruct from your own city. The sequence is a power of attorney executed before the Turkish consulate, or before a notary locally; apostille, or full consular legalization where your state is not a party to the Apostille Convention; sworn translation into Turkish; then filing. Each step is named because the order is not interchangeable, and a document legalized out of order is a document obtained twice.
What you receive, and what the fee includes
One all-inclusive figure per matter, quoted in writing once we have read your documents, and never itemised into a fee plus a list of charges. No number appears on this page, because a figure written for a stranger is a figure written for the wrong file.
Inside the fee: all legal work in Türkiye, sworn translation, notarisation, official inquiries and filing charges. Outside it, and said so before you instruct rather than after: the investment itself, the title-deed acquisition tax on a property file, foreign apostille and consular legalization, and international courier on your own documents. Payment is structured 60/40 across instruction and result, or 50/25/25 where the file is complex.
What arrives with the engagement: the fee agreement, a payment guide, the document list, a written route comparison, the work plan, a guarantee letter, a non-disclosure agreement, the power of attorney draft with its consular roadmap, and a source-of-funds and bank-compliance guide.
The guarantee is of conduct, and it is deliberately not a guarantee of outcome. Turkish citizenship under Article 12 of Law No. 5901 is granted by Presidential decision after a national security and public order screening, and no lawyer anywhere controls that decision. What is entirely controllable is the thing that actually sinks files: whether every document is in the format the receiving institution issues and accepts, whether the amounts reconcile across the valuation, the deed and the transfer, and whether the steps were taken in the right order. Anyone who guarantees you the passport is guaranteeing something they do not own.
My application was refused and I want the file taken over
A refused Turkish citizenship by investment file can be taken over, and the first task is not an appeal. Refusal notices on this route are short and rarely name the defect, so the file is reconstructed from the documents themselves: which threshold was tested, on which date and at which conversion rate, against which valuation; whether the non-disposal annotation was in fact recorded on the deed; whether the payer on the transfer is the applicant; whether a civil-status record contradicts the passport. Only then is it clear whether the file is repaired and refiled or the investment has to be restructured. Send the refusal notice, the route confirmation file and the payment records, and you get that answer before you spend anything further. The recurring failure patterns are set out in our study of Turkish CBI rejection causes and how they are fixed.
I bought the property through an agent and the file is now stuck
A property already bought through an agent is the commonest stuck file on the real estate route, and it almost always stalls on one of four things. The valuation was not produced by an SPK-licensed office, or it was dated after the transfer rather than before it. The declared value on the tapu does not match the valuation or the money that actually moved. Payments went to an intermediary account instead of bank to bank between the named parties, or brokerage and title charges were folded into the figure later presented as the purchase price. Or the seller was not a Turkish natural or legal person, which disqualifies the purchase outright. Send the tapu, the valuation report and the transfer receipts and you will be told which of the four it is and whether the position is recoverable on this property. The valuation rules themselves are in our note on the SPK valuation report in a citizenship investment.
I am outside Türkiye and cannot travel
A Turkish citizenship by investment file is run from abroad on a power of attorney, and no part of it requires you to live here. The instrument is executed at the Turkish consulate in your country, or before a local notary and then apostilled, or fully legalized where your state is not a party to the Apostille Convention, and then sworn-translated into Turkish. The wording has to be right the first time: a power drafted for a property purchase does not cover a citizenship application, and a second instrument means a second consular appointment weeks later. The one appearance that cannot be delegated is the short biometric visit at the end. Send a scan of your passport page and tell us which city you are in, and you get the exact text of the power, the consular sequence for that country, and the list of what to take to the appointment.
The money is coming from a company or from a family member
Funds arriving from a company or a relative rather than from the applicant are workable, and they are also the commonest reason a file is questioned, so the legal basis is documented before the transfer and never after it. A transfer from a family member needs a documented gift or loan, dated ahead of the payment, with the relationship provable from civil-status records. A transfer from a company needs the applicant’s position in it, a corporate resolution authorising the payment, and an account of how the company came by the money. The transfer instruction has to state its purpose, and the payer’s name has to match the document that explains it. Tell us at the outset if the money is already inside the country or already converted, because the currency mechanic in the Regulation runs in one direction only: foreign currency is sold to a Turkish bank and by that bank on to the Central Bank before the investment is made, so a transfer denominated in Turkish lira has nothing to sell and does not qualify. Send the account statements and the corporate papers and the trail is either built or you are told to restructure before anything moves.
I need my spouse and children on the same file
The spouse and the children under eighteen are included in the same Turkish citizenship by investment application with no second investment, and a disabled child is included with no age limit. A child who has already turned eighteen needs a file of their own. What delays family files is almost never the investment; it is the civil-status paper. Marriage, birth and parentage records have to be issued, apostilled or legalized and sworn-translated, and the transliteration of every name must be identical across the passport, the marriage certificate and the birth record, or the family tie has to be proved again from scratch. A previous marriage, a custody order or a change of name is resolved by formal document, never by explanation. The family is assessed as one unit, so one incomplete member holds the whole group. Send the family’s passport pages and the marriage certificate and you get the document list per person and the order to obtain them in.
The route rules, and the answers clients need before they instruct
The parameters that decide a file are set out below in the form a client needs before instructing. The full treatment lives on one page rather than being repeated across the site: the full guide to the routes, thresholds, holding periods and documents.
What it is, and the legal grounds. Turkish citizenship by investment is the exceptional acquisition route under Article 12 of the Turkish Citizenship Law No. 5901, granted by Presidential decision after a national security and public order screening, with the qualifying investments fixed by the implementing Regulation. Around it sit the Land Registry Law No. 2644 for the deed and its annotation, the Capital Markets Law No. 6362 for the fund and custody routes, and Law No. 6458 on Foreigners and International Protection for the residence step. A qualifying investment satisfies the condition; it does not compel the decision.
The seven qualifying routes, and what each one is worth. Article 20/2 of the Regulation lists seven, lettered (a) to (f), with (c) counting people instead of money: real estate at 400,000 USD under (b); 500,000 USD each for fixed capital under (a), a bank deposit under (ç), government debt instruments under (d), real estate or venture capital investment fund units under (e), and a private pension contribution under (f); and the employment of 50 people under (c). Most published summaries say five or six. The Regulation says seven, and the count matters because fixed capital and the employment route sit outside the currency sale chain that governs the other five.
How the real estate route is actually tested. Eligibility turns on the title record, so condominium ownership (kat mülkiyeti) or condominium easement (kat irtifakı) is the safe case, and land-only or complex titles are checked before anything is signed. Value is tested as a consistency problem across the SPK-licensed valuation, the declared deed value and the payment trail, anchored by the foreign exchange conversion document (DAB) used in the deed process; if one anchor falls below the threshold in force or contradicts another, the file is flagged even where a different anchor is higher. The seller must be a Turkish natural or legal person, the property must not already have been used in someone else’s application, and a mortgage or restrictive annotation on the deed ends the matter.
How long must the investment be held?
Five of the seven routes carry a commitment of three years, and it is recorded differently depending on the route. On the bank deposit under (ç), the government debt instruments under (d), the fund units under (e) and the private pension under (f) it is a lock-up evidenced by the bank, the custodian or the pension system: no withdrawal, no sale, no exit from the system for three years. On real estate under (b) the same three-year commitment is recorded as a non-disposal annotation on the title deed itself, which is why the annotation being present and correctly worded is checked at the land registry rather than taken on trust from a seller. Fixed capital under (a) and the employment of 50 people under (c) carry no lock-up of that kind and are audited on continuity instead. The period is fixed by the Regulation and not by preference, so any sale, withdrawal or restructuring is planned strictly around it.
Which authority determines each route?
A different authority determines each qualifying route, and a certificate obtained from the wrong one is a restart rather than a delay. Real estate is determined by the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change; the bank deposit by the BDDK; fixed capital by the Ministry of Industry and Technology; government debt instruments by the Ministry of Treasury and Finance; fund units by the Capital Markets Board; the private pension by the SEDDK; and the employment route by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security. Whichever route is used, the residence permit that carries the file is issued under Article 31/j of Law No. 6458, and the citizenship decision itself is a Presidential decision. Route by route: citizenship by bank deposit, citizenship by buying property and citizenship by establishing a company.
What does the bank deposit route require?
The bank deposit route under Article 20/2 (ç) requires 500,000 USD or the equivalent, held for three years, with the BDDK as the determining authority and a Certificate of Conformity as the output. The mechanic behind it is the part that catches people: the foreign currency is sold to a bank operating in Türkiye and by that bank on to the Central Bank, and it is the Turkish lira proceeds of that sale which sit in the deposit for the three years, at the same bank that made the sale. Money already held in Turkish lira has nothing to sell and does not qualify. The full route, including the currency detail and the documents the bank alone can issue, is set out in our guide to Turkish citizenship by bank deposit.
How long does a Turkish citizenship by investment application take?
A well-prepared Turkish citizenship by investment file runs about three to four months, and the official framework is three to six. There is no residence requirement, no language examination and no interview, and there is one short biometric visit. Processing duration is a matter of administrative practice rather than of statute, so it is confirmed for current conditions instead of promised in advance. The commonest self-inflicted delay is filing before the route confirmation package is complete, which produces a re-submission demand rather than a question, and the timetable is only ever as good as the file, which is why the sequence is run by the advocate who signs the application rather than by the seller’s agent.
What checks does the application go through?
Every Turkish citizenship by investment application passes a national security and public order screening carried out across several agencies before the file reaches the decision, and the decision itself is a discretionary Presidential decision under Article 12 of Law No. 5901. This is why a qualifying investment is necessary and never sufficient. The screening looks at the applicant and the file as a whole, so an unexplained payment, a document that contradicts another document, or an identity field that does not reconcile across records is a problem of the same class as anything else, and the family is assessed as one unit.
Is a criminal record certificate required?
The Regulation’s own list of application documents does not include a criminal record certificate. What it requires is the application petition, the passport or equivalent travel document, civil-status records including marriage, divorce or death certificates, birth or population records proving the family tie for the spouse and children, population records of any first or second-degree Turkish relatives, a document completing an incomplete date of birth where that arises, and the receipt for the service fee, alongside the route-specific investment evidence. This matters commercially, because checklists circulated by agents routinely demand a police certificate that the Regulation never asked for, and clients spend weeks and money obtaining, apostilling and translating one. The security screening described above happens whether or not such a certificate is in the file; it is not a document the applicant supplies.
The documents, and the order to build them in. A common spine runs through every route: passport and identity records, with transliteration differences resolved by formal document; civil-status records, with marriage documents for the spouse and parentage and dependency proof for the children; bank documentation establishing the source of funds and a traceable payment narrative; and evidence of lawful entry and residence where the route requires it. What changes between routes is where the evidence burden sits, which is the deed, the valuation and the payment trail on a property file, and bank, custody and lock-up letters on a deposit, bond or fund file. Build it in the order a reviewer reads it: identity, civil status, residence posture, investment execution, route confirmation, filing.
The cross-border angle. The funds usually originate abroad, the identity documents are issued under another legal system, and the applicant often carries home-country obligations on dual citizenship or on tax reporting. The work is making the foreign elements verifiable inside the Turkish file: reconciling transliterated names across jurisdictions, documenting the lawful source and path of the money from origin to the Turkish transaction, and aligning civil-status records issued under foreign law with what Turkish institutions expect. Where the second passport is meant to serve later planning, including the treaty-nationality route toward a United States E-2 investor visa, for which Turkey appears on the current E-2 treaty country list, the file is structured for that objective from the first document. Matters that commonly run alongside a citizenship file: immigration and residence permits, establishing companies and foreign direct investment.
The risks that actually end files. Unclear third-party funding, a transaction that does not match the written contract, a title that does not fit the route, a missing or wrongly recorded non-disposal annotation, and contradictions in civil-status documents. Not one of them is about the size of the investment. Because the decision is discretionary, a qualifying investment is necessary and never sufficient, and a single unexplained record can hold an entire family file.
Questions clients ask before they instruct
What does representation cost?
One all-inclusive figure per matter, quoted in writing once we have seen your documents. It is not published here because it depends on the route, the size of the family and how much of the file already exists in the wrong shape. It covers all legal work in Türkiye, sworn translation, notarisation, official inquiries and filing charges. It does not cover the investment itself, the title-deed acquisition tax, foreign apostille or legalization, or courier on your own documents, and you are told that before you instruct rather than afterwards. Payment runs 60/40 across instruction and result, or 50/25/25 on a complex file.
Do I have to travel to complete the file?
No. The file runs on a power of attorney executed at the Turkish consulate in your country, or before a local notary and then apostilled or legalized, and sworn-translated into Turkish. The only appearance that cannot be delegated is the short biometric visit at the end. There is no residence requirement on this route, no language examination and no interview.
Who signs what, and in what order?
You sign first, on every document, and the firm’s side of the engagement is counter-signed on the copy you return. The order is the fee agreement and the power of attorney, then the consular or notarial step, then legalization and sworn translation, then filing. Because a power of attorney drafted for a property purchase does not cover a citizenship application, the wording is settled before the consular appointment and not at it.
What happens if the application is refused?
The refusal is read against the documents rather than against the notice, because the notice rarely states the defect. We establish which condition failed, whether it is repairable on the investment already made, and whether the correct move is a corrected refiling or a restructuring. The commitment we give is one of conduct, not of outcome: the decision is a Presidential one taken after a security and public order screening, and no lawyer controls it.
Will you take over a file another adviser started?
Yes, and it is a substantial part of this practice. A file begun by an agent, a developer or another adviser in Turkey is taken over on one condition, which is that we see the real documents first, including the ones you were told not to worry about. If the position is not recoverable on the investment already made, you are told so plainly, because the alternative is charging you to fail slowly.
Which language is my file run in?
Yours. Correspondence, the fee agreement, the document list, the route comparison and every explanation come to you in the language you write to us in. The filings themselves are made in Turkish, because that is what the receiving institutions accept, and the sworn translation that gets them there is inside the fee.
Send four things and we will tell you which route fits
Route selection is a document question before it is a money question. Send your nationality, the amount and the currency you can actually remit, whether the funds are your own or a third party’s, and the family members you want on the file. You get back the route that fits, the thresholds in force on the day we write, the document list and a written all-inclusive fee. If the answer is that no route fits yet, we say that instead of selling you one.
WhatsApp +90 530 127 59 35. Email info@serkalaw.com. Same business day, and no appointment is needed to get an answer. Comparing Türkiye against other programs first? That is our global citizenship and golden visa practice. Clients usually want to know what the passport buys before they ask what it costs, and the naturalisation route behind it is set out in how Turkish citizenship is granted.
Which countries actually run a citizenship-by-investment program today?
Most comparison pages list programs that no longer exist. Six of the thirteen below are closed, were repealed, or never existed in the form the search results promise, and knowing that first is worth more than a price table. Each country is set out in full on its own page, with the instrument and the date behind every figure.
Open, with published thresholds
- Grenada — US$235,000 fund or US$350,000 project, plus the government contribution, and an E-2 treaty with the United States.
- Dominica — US$200,000 on both routes under the 2024 rules, with a three-year property lock.
- St Kitts and Nevis — US$250,000 contribution or US$325,000 real estate, seven-year lock.
- Antigua and Barbuda — official CIU thresholds, plus a five-day presence rule that rules some applicants out.
- Vanuatu — official Citizenship Office fees, an oath that must be sworn in Vanuatu, and a current EU visa position that has to be read before applying.
- Egypt — four routes published by the Cabinet portal in August 2026, USD 250,000 to 500,000, with a five-year exit price.
- Jordan — Cabinet Decision 9238 of July 2026 ended the dollar deposit routes; the thresholds are now in dinars and carry a jobs condition.
Closed, repealed, or not what the search result suggests
- Malta — ruled unlawful by the EU Court in April 2025 and repealed that July.
- Cyprus — the Cyprus Investment Programme was terminated in November 2020 and the law behind it deleted in December 2025.
- Montenegro — stopped accepting economic citizenship applications on 31 December 2022.
- Austria — has no citizenship-by-investment program at all; what exists is naturalisation by Federal Government decision.
- Greece — has no citizenship by investment; the Golden Visa is a five-year residence permit.
- North Macedonia — a discretionary provision with no published price and four grants in three years.
Türkiye sits apart from both lists because its route is written into the Citizenship Law itself with published thresholds and no discretionary gate, which is the whole subject of this page above.
General information, not legal advice. Turkish law. Your own position is assessed on your own documents.