Turkish Citizenship by Fixed Capital Investment

Av. Serkan KARA, Serka Law Firm (Istanbul Bar, no. 53770)

Last reviewed: 21 October 2026 · Reviewed by Av. Serkan Kara

Turkish citizenship through fixed capital investment requires a fixed capital investment of at least USD 500,000, or its equivalent in foreign currency, that the Ministry of Industry and Technology determines (Article 20(2)(a) of the Regulation on the Implementation of the Turkish Citizenship Law). The Ministry determines the investment, the citizenship application goes to the Ministry of Interior, and citizenship is granted by Presidential decision on the Ministry of Interior’s proposal. What decides the file is the Ministry of Industry and Technology’s own procedure for these investments: the currency converted into lira in the investor’s name and paid into the company as a capital increase, a sworn financial adviser’s report that follows that money into fixed assets, and three years in which the shares, the capital and the assets stay where they are.

Serka Law Firm runs fixed-capital files from the company’s structure and its articles of association to the passport, as part of the work set out on our Turkish citizenship by investment lawyer page.

What the Ministry asks for

The application is made to the Ministry of Industry and Technology with a signed petition. It carries the investment information form of Annex 1 (the investor’s passport number, nationality and contacts; the company’s name, tax office and number, capital and shareholders; the investment’s subject, products or services, annual capacity and location, and the investor’s share of it), the identity pages of the passport, the investor’s signature declaration, and the power of attorney where an attorney applies. Where the investment is made through a company, the trade registry gazette entry showing its shareholders and capital goes with it. The investor adds the undertaking of Annex 3, not to transfer his shares for three years, not to reduce the capital and not to dispose of the fixed investment items the application rests on, and the company amends its articles of association to say that his shares will not be transferred and the capital not reduced for three years. The money is shown by the statement of the foreign currency account into which it came from abroad and the bank receipt showing it converted into lira in the investor’s name. The investment itself is shown by a special-purpose report of a sworn financial adviser (yeminli mali müşavir) on the model of Annex 2, with the adviser’s activity certificate (procedure, item 1(a) to 1(j)).

The sworn financial adviser’s report

The report is the file’s spine. It sets out the company’s registration and every change in its shareholding with the trade registry gazettes attached, its activity, the staff it employs and a capacity report where there is one; its legal books, the order of its accounts, its returns and whether the taxes assessed were paid; the balance sheet at the application date, and also at the date of entry where an existing company was bought into. It states the paid-in capital, the dates on which the investor paid his part, and whether he or any other partner owes the company money. It lists the fixed investment item by item (land, building and construction, machinery, equipment and fixtures, vehicles and other fixed assets, investment in progress), and the procedure writes in capitals that current assets, stock included, are never entered as fixed capital. It summarises the currency converted into lira, bank by bank with the date, the currency amount, the lira amount and the rate, on receipts certified by the bank, and lists the invoices behind each item, of which the Ministry may ask for notarised copies. Its conclusion certifies the investment’s amount in lira, that the investor owes the company nothing, the date after which the money was brought, and the amount in US dollars (Annex 2).

Buying into a company, and what does not count

An investor who buys all or part of a company that is not open to the public is credited only with the fixed capital investment made after the purchase or the entry. What the company invested before he joined, and an existing investment taken over, are not counted (explanation (a)). Real estate unrelated to the direct investment’s field of activity is left out, and so are vehicles, car rental included; land and buildings count only where they serve the company’s activity, and the Ministry asks for the difference between balance sheet and title deed values to be explained. Where land, sea or air vehicles or work and agricultural machines are among the items, the Ministry may ask that their registrations carry an annotation that they cannot be sold for three years from the application date (explanation (c); Annex 2).

Three years, and what ends the file

Once the conformity document is issued, the investor may not transfer his shares to anyone for at least three years, reduce the capital, or sell the fixed assets determined (explanation (d)). The Ministry may inspect on site before it decides and, after the conformity document, without notice, and the company’s officers must give its inspectors what they ask for (explanation (e)). An application made with forged or misleading documents stops the citizenship process; for people who are already citizens, such a finding, a transfer of the investment within three years and a fall below the minimum are reported to the Ministry of Interior; and a person who applied with forged or misleading documents is not considered again later, even if he then meets the conditions (explanation (f)). In the undertaking the investor accepts in advance that a breach the Ministry finds is reported to the Ministry of Interior and acted on under the legislation, because the ground of his exceptional citizenship has gone (Annex 3).

The currency

Route (a) is not one of the routes that Article 20(10) of the Regulation sends through a sale of the currency to the Central Bank. The Ministry’s procedure asks instead that at least USD 500,000 or its equivalent be converted into lira at banks, added to the company’s capital as a capital increase, and then proved to have become fixed capital (explanation (b)), and it wants the foreign currency account statement and the bank receipts of the conversion in the investor’s own name (item 1(h)). The receiving bank asks its own questions about where the money comes from before it converts it; what it asks and why is set out on our page on the source of funds a Turkish bank requires.

After the Ministry’s letter

The citizenship application is made to the Ministry of Interior; the Ministry of Industry and Technology answers only whether the investment was made (its incentives FAQ). The Directorate General of Civil Registration and Citizenship Affairs names four steps the investor takes in person: obtaining the Certificate of Conformity, applying for the short-term residence permit, collecting the residence card and applying for citizenship. The spouse and the children who can come onto the same file are set out on our page on the family on a citizenship by investment file.

Fixed capital or the other USD 500,000 routes

On the bank deposit route, the government bond route, the fund route and the pension route the money is sold to the Central Bank and held for three years in a balance, an instrument, fund units or a pension contract. On the fixed-capital route it becomes a working company’s assets: land, buildings, machinery and equipment on its balance sheet, certified by a sworn financial adviser, open to the Ministry’s inspection, and tied for three years by the company’s own articles of association.

Before the money moves

A fixed-capital file is decided before the first transfer: whether the company is new or bought into, which assets the investment will buy, how the capital increase is registered, and who will sign the sworn financial adviser’s report.

The texts this page rests on

• Regulation on the Implementation of the Turkish Citizenship Law, Article 20, consolidated text
• Ministry of Industry and Technology, procedure for fixed capital investments under the Regulation, with its three annexes
• Ministry of Industry and Technology, frequently asked questions on investment incentives, the question on fixed-capital citizenship

This article provides general information on Turkish law and is not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is formed by reading it; such a relationship arises only through a signed engagement with Serka Law Firm.