Serka Law Firm acts as Turkish citizenship by investment lawyers for investors and their families, from the choice of route to the passport, and the file runs from the investor’s own city on a power of attorney. To instruct us, write on WhatsApp at +90 530 127 59 35 or to info@serkalaw.com.
The regulation fixes the figures: USD 400,000 in real estate with a three-year no-sale annotation on the deed; USD 500,000 held for three years in a Turkish lira bank deposit, in Turkish lira government debt instruments, in real estate or venture capital fund units, or in the private pension system; USD 500,000 of fixed capital; or 50 jobs created (Article 20(2) of the Regulation on the Implementation of the Turkish Citizenship Law). The spouse and the children who are minors or dependants join the same file with no second investment (Article 12(1)(b) of Turkish Citizenship Law no. 5901), and a well-prepared file reaches the passport in three to four months. What decides a file is rarely the threshold. It is the order in which the money, the bank and the documents are put in place, and that order is set before the investor sends anything.
The currency rule that decides the file before the money moves
On five of the seven routes the investment has to arrive as foreign currency and be sold. Article 20(10) of the Implementing Regulation requires the currency to be sold, before the transaction, to a bank operating in Türkiye and by that bank to the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye; the lira from that sale is what is held for three years in the deposit, the bonds, the fund units or the pension. The Central Bank’s Implementation Instruction of 16 May 2022 adds three rules that shape the transfer itself. The Central Bank buys only US dollars, euros, pounds sterling and Swiss francs (Article 5(2)), so a transfer in rubles, yuan or dirhams works because the Turkish bank converts it first, while a transfer in Turkish lira has nothing to sell and does not count. On the deposit route the bank that buys the currency must be the bank that holds the lira (Article 6(1)). And once the Central Bank has completed its purchase, the sale can be neither abandoned nor cancelled (Article 7).
That last rule is why the bank, the account in the investor’s own name and the day of conversion are fixed in writing before a dollar moves. The foreign exchange purchase certificate (döviz alım belgesi, DAB) that proves the sale has to carry the investor’s own name, so the money goes to the investor’s own account in Türkiye first and never through a third party’s. A conversion made at the wrong bank, or in the wrong name, cannot be taken back.
What the banks wrote to us in 2026
The regulation says what an investment must be. Whether a given bank will carry it is a separate question, and we put it to the bank in writing before an investor commits. These are the written answers on our files of August and September 2026, as the banks gave them; no client is named.
- The government debt route is not run at every bank. On 31 August and 1 September 2026 three branches, two of one private bank and one of a participation bank, wrote that for citizenship they run only the three-year lira deposit or participation account, not government debt instruments. On 21 September 2026 a branch of a state-owned bank confirmed in writing that it runs the government bond route under Article 20(2)(d), opens the account under a power of attorney it can verify, does not set up internet banking under a power of attorney, and needs every banking act listed in that power one by one. Article 20(8) of the Regulation lets the investor move between investment types to complete the three years, so a file that cannot run on one route at one bank is carried to another route rather than abandoned.
- Bonds are chosen by their maturity, and the choice is final. The Ministry of Treasury and Finance’s revised procedure for the bond route, which replaces its procedure of 14 February 2020, excludes any instrument with less than three years to maturity and leaves the choice of instrument to the bank and the investor; it requires the lira from the currency sale to buy the bonds the same day or the next working day, at the same bank, with no transfer between banks; it allows no switch between instruments unless the Ministry redeems one early; and it accepts the file only as the bank’s own official letter, never from the investor or his lawyer directly (Articles 4(2), 4(4), 5 and 7(1)). Of the seven lira bond issues on the list a state bank’s branch gave us with value date 21 September 2026, one met the maturity rule.
- For Russian citizens, one branch refused a SWIFT transfer of the investment amount. On 31 August 2026 a private bank’s branch answered in writing under eight headings: no commission on the conversion; the rate taken from the Central Bank on the day and not fixed in advance; the three-year block requested by letter to its treasury unit and usually confirmed within one working day; approval in about two weeks, depending on the customer; a deposit rate of 35 per cent, neither fixed nor guaranteed for three years; and, for Russian citizens, no transfer of the investment amount by SWIFT, the amount to be paid in cash under its current procedure. Whether a bank accepts the transfer from the investor’s own country is therefore the first question on every Russian file, put to each bank in writing before a flight or a transfer is planned.
- Two participation banks set their own document rules. One asked for the Russian taxpayer number (INN) of a Russian citizen (1 September 2026). Another, opening a non-resident account, accepted the translated address page of the Russian internal passport in place of a utility bill, took a utility bill in the investor’s own name from any country if it was under three months old, and refused a bank statement and a title deed as proof of address (10 September 2026).
Where the investor lives decides the document route
A citizenship file carries two kinds of paper: the civil-status records that prove who the family is, and the banking records that prove where the money came from. Both have to stand in Türkiye, and the way they get there depends on the state that issued them. Türkiye is a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, and the Convention runs only between two parties.
Russia and Belarus
Both states are parties to the Apostille Convention, in force for each since 31 May 1992 (the Hague Conference’s own status table, read 5 October 2026). A birth or marriage certificate, or a power of attorney signed before a Russian or Belarusian notary, takes an apostille and then a sworn translation certified by a Turkish notary, and the original itself travels to us: the apostille authenticates the foreign notary’s signature and does not turn a copy into an instrument. A power of attorney drawn up by a Turkish consulate is Turkish from the moment it is signed and needs neither an apostille nor a translation (Articles 191, 193 and 103 of Notary Law no. 1512), and where the consulate will draw it up, that is the route we take. The money question comes first on these files: a ruble or dollar transfer qualifies once the Turkish bank has sold it on, but whether the bank will receive it at all is that bank’s answer, given in writing, as above.
The United Arab Emirates and Qatar
For an investor who lives in the Emirates or Qatar on another country’s passport, the documents come from two states. Neither the United Arab Emirates nor Qatar is a party to the Apostille Convention (status table, read 5 October 2026), so a document either of them issues has no apostille to obtain; it is legalized by the issuing state’s own authority and then by the Turkish mission, which can certify the Turkish translation in the same visit (Articles 195, 193 and 103 of Notary Law no. 1512). A certificate issued by the investor’s home state follows that state’s own rule, and where the home state is a party, its apostille is enough. For the power of attorney, we asked the consular section of the Turkish Embassy in Doha in writing whether it draws one up for a Qatari citizen; it answered on 27 September 2026 by naming its own sworn Arabic translators, through whom the act is done for a principal who does not read Turkish. For the account in Türkiye, the participation bank mentioned above takes a utility bill in the investor’s own name from any country; a bill in an employer’s or a landlord’s name is not the investor’s own.
China
Two rules of Chinese law are settled before the file starts. Article 9 of the Nationality Law of the People’s Republic of China provides that a Chinese national who has settled abroad and acquires a foreign nationality of his own will loses Chinese nationality automatically, and Article 3 does not recognize dual nationality. Turkish law does not ask the investor to give up his first nationality, so the consequence on the Chinese side is weighed by the family before the application, not after it. Mainland China also sets an annual facilitation quota of USD 50,000 equivalent per person for buying foreign currency (Article 54 of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange’s Guidelines on Current Account Foreign Exchange Business, 2020 edition), and under the same Guidelines a person who lends his quota to help someone else around it is warned and, if he does it again, put on a watch list; where a USD 500,000 investment will come from is therefore decided before the route is chosen.
China has applied the Apostille Convention since 7 November 2023, so a Chinese public document takes an apostille. A power of attorney can instead be drawn up at a Turkish consulate general in China, with a sworn Chinese interpreter present because the investor does not speak Turkish, and then it needs no apostille at all. On our Shanghai file of 2026 the consulate’s online system took no booking made for a foreign national, so the appointment was requested in writing with the passport copy, the draft power and the lawyer’s bar card. On the same file, a transfer from a Hong Kong bank reached Türkiye fourteen days after it was instructed, across two weekends in the correspondent chain; the sending bank would not release the MT103 to its own customer, and the transfer’s UETR is what both banks traced.
Who acts on your file
The file is run by Serka Law Firm, founded by Av. Serkan Kara. 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.
- The founding advocate’s bar entry. The entry of Av. Serkan Kara on the İstanbul Barosu roll, with the link that opens the Bar’s own register, is on his page.
- 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 a Bachelor of Law (LLB) from Uludağ University Faculty of Law in 2015, 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 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 the legal profession since 2015, the year Av. Serkan Kara’s traineeship began.
- 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.
Six checks before you sign with any citizenship lawyer
No statute makes a lawyer compulsory on this route, and an investor in Türkiye can file for himself. What an advocate holding a power of attorney adds is reach: the Turkish-language correspondence, the bank’s letters, the registry and the filings are done where they happen, while the investor stays where he lives. Whoever you choose, six things can be checked before any money moves, most of them on a public register or in the text of Attorneyship Law no. 1136. Each check gives the rule, then how we meet it.
1. Is the lawyer on a Turkish bar roll?
Article 35 of Law no. 1136 reserves legal opinions, the conduct of proceedings before courts and other judicial bodies, and the drafting of the papers for them to advocates entered on a bar’s roll (“yalnız baroda yazılı avukatlara aittir”; official text). The opinion on whether your investment qualifies, and any objection or court step if the file is refused, are an advocate’s work, whoever else handles the paperwork. Av. Serkan Kara’s page carries his bar roll entry with the link to the Istanbul Bar’s own register.
2. Whose name will the power of attorney carry?
The person named in the power of attorney is the one who acts for you before the land registry, the banks and the migration and civil registration offices. Ask for that name before you sign at a notary or a consulate, and look it up on the bar roll. The powers of attorney we work under name an advocate entered on the Istanbul Bar roll.
3. Is the lawyer paid by anyone on the other side of the deal?
Article 38(b) of Law no. 1136 obliges an advocate to refuse a matter where he has acted or given an opinion, in the same matter, for a party whose interest is opposed. In a citizenship purchase the seller, the developer and the agency that introduced you can each hold an interest opposed to yours, so ask who pays the lawyer they recommend. The investor instructs Serka Law Firm directly, and the firm takes no commission from an agency or any other intermediary.
4. Is there a signed engagement that names the service?
Under Article 163 of Law no. 1136 the engagement agreement covers a specified legal service, and an agreement left unwritten has to be proved under the general rules of evidence. Ask for a signed engagement that names each step, from the review of the deed or the bank’s letter to the citizenship decision. We open a file only on a signed engagement.
5. Does the lawyer work from the current rule, with its source?
The rules of this route move: the valuation rule changed on 28 September 2026, the Treasury rewrote its procedure for the bond route, and a bank’s practice differs from one branch to the next. A lawyer who cannot name the instrument behind each step is working from memory. Every rule on this page carries its instrument and its date.
6. Is what you send protected?
Article 36 of Law no. 1136 forbids an advocate to disclose what a client entrusts or what the advocate learns through the work, and even with the client’s consent the advocate may decline to testify about it. A citizenship file carries passports, family records and the full source of the money, so send them to an advocate bound by that article.
What the mandate covers
Serka Law Firm structures Turkish citizenship by investment files for 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.
- 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.
- 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 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 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(1)(j) of Law no. 6458 before the Presidency of Migration Management, the citizenship application before the Directorate General of Civil Registration and Citizenship Affairs, the land registry steps on a property file, and the bank’s correspondence with the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency on a deposit file.
- Family inclusion as one file rather than several. The spouse and dependent children are assessed 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: a power of attorney drawn up by the Turkish consulate, or signed before a local notary and then apostilled or legalized, sworn-translated into Turkish, then filed. A document legalized out of order is a document obtained twice.
What you receive
The legal work in Türkiye stays with the firm from the first filing to the passport: the sworn translation and notarization of your documents, the official inquiries and every filing are arranged by the firm, so no step is handed to a broker or a translation bureau you have to find yourself.
What arrives with the engagement: the engagement agreement in Turkish and your language, 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 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.
What our own files show
The timings on this page are read from citizenship files we ran ourselves. From 2019 to 2021 Serka Law Firm carried the files of a residential developer’s foreign buyers from the Certificate of Conformity to the Turkish identity card. The dates below come from those files; the threshold and the valuation rules were different then, and the sequence they show is the one that runs today. No client is named.
The Certificate of Conformity starts the clock, and what happens on the day it arrives sets the weeks that follow. On 3 February 2020 two certificates reached us in the afternoon, both residence applications were at the migration desk that evening, and both citizenship applications were ready to file the next day. A file of the week before went from the residence filing to the citizenship application in two days, and in July 2021 the citizenship appointment was taken for the Friday of the week the residence was filed. In 2020 one certificate was issued and reached us only weeks later, and those weeks were simply lost: the certificate belongs on the desk of whoever files the next step.
The residence card took about three weeks. A residence application filed at the end of December 2019 gave the card in hand on 20 January 2020, and the citizenship application went in the next day; it was approved by 29 March 2020, together with four other applications of the same round. By 31 May 2020 all but two of the files on that list had been approved, among them applications filed at the end of January and early in February, through the first weeks of the Covid-19 closures. A family of seven whose residence was filed on 26 April 2019, with the citizenship application following in May, paid the fees for its identity cards and passports on 4 September 2019. Those dates are why we put a well-prepared file at three to four months.
What held files back was paper, never the investment. The copy of a birth certificate sent for one file carried a wrong date of birth, and a new notarized translation was made from the original (December 2019). A power of attorney the applicant’s wife had drawn up in the wrong form stopped a file that was otherwise complete (December 2019). The translation of a marriage certificate was wrong and was done again under consular approval, then notarized (July 2021). The longest file took fifteen months, from the document list in August 2019 to the citizenship application on 10 November 2020, because its Certificate of Conformity took that long to come: the investor’s stay was kept lawful on an ordinary residence permit in the meantime, an information update was filed with the provincial migration directorate, and the investor residence permit was taken again once the certificate arrived. And the question that held one family for weeks in 2026, which spouse goes on the file, changes one document rather than the file, because Article 12(1)(b) of Law no. 5901 covers the minor or dependent children of the applicant as well as those of the spouse; the same family’s youngest child had no passport yet, and a child’s first passport is the document to start first.
What changed on 28 September 2026 for property files
The TTB, the land registry’s certificate of the amount invested, may now be up to twelve months old when the citizenship transaction is filed at the registry, where six months was the ceiling, and the valuation report behind it may come from any valuation firm authorized by the Capital Markets Board of Türkiye (SPK), where only GEDAŞ reports were accepted from 4 March 2024 (TKGM circular 2024/4, as amended by the Makam Oluru of 28 September 2026, no. 21914825). A seller that is a real estate investment trust (GYO) needs no TTB but must present the valuation report it published on KAP before the deed, or order a new one through WebTapu. The USD 400,000 threshold did not move. A file stalled on a TTB older than six months is inside the window again if the TTB is younger than twelve, and a fresh valuation no longer waits in one firm’s queue. Four things are still checked before any purchase: that the seller is a Turkish natural or legal person, that the unit was not used in another citizenship file, the mortgages and annotations on the deed, and the valuation and TTB. The wording of the circular is on our page on the Turkish citizenship valuation report rule change.
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. That reconstruction is built on the refusal notice, the route confirmation file and the payment records, the three documents to have at hand when you instruct us. 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 a report requested through Web Tapu from an SPK-authorized valuation firm, or the TTB built on it was more than twelve months older than the application for the citizenship transaction at the registry. The declared value on the deed 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. The deed, the valuation report and the transfer receipts show 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.
My citizenship was annulled after the August 2026 operation
An annulment is a decision of the authority that granted the citizenship, and it is challenged on the investor’s own documents. Under Article 31 of Turkish Citizenship Law no. 5901, a decision is annulled where the acquisition resulted from the person’s own false statement or the concealment of a material fact; under Article 32 the annulment takes effect from its date and reaches the spouse and the children who acquired citizenship through the applicant; under Article 33 the decision may order the investor’s assets in Türkiye to be liquidated within a year. The case turns on the foreign exchange certificate, the title deed and the bank’s records: an investor who paid the declared price through a Turkish bank, in the investor’s own name, made no false statement of the kind Article 31 requires, and the file is built to prove that separation. The route is set out in Turkish citizenship annulment and appeal. Serka Law Firm acts on written instruction under a signed engagement agreement, and the file opens on the annulment decision, the passport and the title deed.
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 authorizing 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 rule runs in one direction only and lira already in Türkiye has nothing to sell.
I need my spouse and children on the same file
The spouse and the children who are under eighteen or dependent are included in the same application with no second investment; an adult child, a disabled one included, comes in as a dependent child, on documents that prove the dependency and are gathered before filing. Majority is Turkish majority, so a child under eighteen who is married is of age and comes in only as a dependant (Article 11 of Civil Code no. 4721). 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.
The route rules, in short
Turkish citizenship by investment is the exceptional acquisition under Article 12 of Law no. 5901, granted by Presidential decision after a national security and public order screening; a qualifying investment satisfies the condition and does not compel the decision. Five routes carry a three-year hold, recorded by the bank, the custodian or the pension system, or as a non-disposal annotation on the title deed; fixed capital and the employment route carry none and sit outside the currency sale. Each route has its own determining authority, and the residence permit that carries every file is issued under Article 31(1)(j) of Law no. 6458. The full treatment, with the documents, the authorities and the timing, is in our guide to Turkish citizenship by investment; route by route: citizenship by bank deposit, citizenship by buying property and citizenship by establishing a company.
Questions clients ask before they instruct
Do I have to travel to complete the file?
No. The file runs on a power of attorney drawn up at the Turkish consulate in your country, or signed 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 engagement agreement and the power of attorney, then the consular or notarial step, then legalization and sworn translation, then filing. A power of attorney drafted for a property purchase does not cover a citizenship application, and a bank may refuse a general banking clause, so the wording is settled with the bank 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.
Will you take over a file another adviser started?
Yes. A file begun by an agent, a developer or another adviser 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.
Which language is my file run in?
Yours. Correspondence, the engagement 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 firm arranges the sworn translation that gets them there.
Four facts decide which route fits
Route selection is a document question before it is a money question. Four facts decide it: your nationality, the amount and the currency you can actually remit and from which bank, whether the funds are your own or a third party’s, and the family members you want on the file. Write to us on WhatsApp at +90 530 127 59 35 or at info@serkalaw.com; those four are the first thing we ask, and a route that does not fit your documents is never sold to you.
An immigration agency or a family office introducing a family works on the terms set out in how an agency introduces a Turkish citizenship by investment file: the applicant instructs the firm directly, and no commission is paid in either direction.
WhatsApp +90 530 127 59 35. Email info@serkalaw.com. Comparing Türkiye against other programs first? The citizenship by investment country comparison sets every open program beside the Turkish routes on the authorities’ own figures, and the naturalization route behind it is set out in how Turkish citizenship is granted.
General information, not legal advice. Turkish law. Your own position is assessed on your own documents.