A Turkish citizenship acquired by investment can be taken away by the state in exactly two ways, and both are written in the Turkish Citizenship Law No. 5901: annulment under Article 31, where the acquisition decision was obtained through the applicant’s own false statement or concealment, and forfeiture under Article 29, for a short list of acts against the state. On 4 August 2026 the Ministry of Interior announced that 6,134 people, investors and the family members attached to their files, had lost Turkish citizenship in an operation against forged property valuation reports. If you are one of them, the decision against you is an administrative act, it can be challenged in court, the deadline is sixty days from the day it was notified to you, and the family and the property questions are decided by provisions that most of the people affected have never been shown. This page sets out what the law actually allows, what the decision does to your spouse, your children and your property, and how the challenge is filed.
Serka Law Firm files these cases before the Council of State under a power of attorney, wherever the investor now lives. To instruct us, write on WhatsApp at +90 530 127 59 35 or to info@serkalaw.com; the file opens on the decision as served, or on the population record that shows the entry.
What did the Ministry of Interior announce on 4 August 2026?
The Ministry of Interior stated on 4 August 2026 that the Turkish citizenship of 6,134 foreign nationals had been annulled or withdrawn after an investigation into citizenship obtained through forged real estate valuation and appraisal reports, following an operation across sixteen provinces in which 72 suspects were detained. Reading the statement as it was reported by Demirören News Agency, the figure is made of two groups. The first is 1,150 investors whose certificates of conformity were canceled and, with their family members, 5,391 people whose citizenship decisions were annulled. The second is 263 investors and, with their families, 743 people whose citizenship was withdrawn on national security and public order grounds. The statement adds that since 11 February 2026 a further 443 investors whose certificates of conformity were canceled, 1,358 people with their families, had already lost citizenship, and it records that no fault was found in the work of the Directorate General of Civil Registration and Citizenship Affairs.
Two words in that statement decide how each file is defended. The Ministry speaks of decisions that were annulled and of decisions that were withdrawn. Annulment is Article 31 of the Citizenship Law and has a single statutory ground. A withdrawal is a different administrative act with a different footing. Which of the two was taken against you is written on the notification you received, and it is the first thing we read, because the argument and the evidence differ.
Is there a list of names, and what happens to the people on it?
The Ministry of Interior publishes figures, not names. Its statement of 4 August 2026 counts 1,413 investors and 6,134 people whose citizenship was annulled or withdrawn under Articles 31 and 40 of Law No. 5901. Its statement of 21 September 2026, as quoted by the national press, reports that an investigation run by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office identified 1,070 people, 263 investors and 807 family members, as having acquired citizenship through sham property sales, and 11 more whose acquisition was still in process. A list of 1,070 names circulated that day as a video on a news account on X. It is not an official publication, it carries personal identity numbers that we do not reproduce, and the statement it follows says the 1,070 were identified, not that their citizenship had been annulled.
What happens next to a person on that list turns on the article the authority uses and on the day its decision is served. An annulment under Article 31 rests on the applicant’s own false statement or concealment; a withdrawal under Article 40 rests on a decision taken without the legal conditions being present. Either is challenged before the Council of State within sixty days of notification, and where an annulment is taken to court, Article 33 leaves the liquidation of property in Türkiye to the end of the case. Until a decision is served, no deadline is running, and the time is spent assembling the acquisition file: the deed, the valuation report and the TTB, the DAB and the payment trail.
What does Article 31 of the Turkish Citizenship Law actually allow?
Article 31 of Law No. 5901 allows the decision granting Turkish citizenship to be annulled by the authority that gave it where that decision was the result of the person’s own false statement or of the concealment of important matters on which the acquisition was based. That is the whole ground. Article 57 of the Implementing Regulation adds the procedure: when such a matter comes to light by any means, the Ministry conducts or commissions an investigation, and the acquisition decision is annulled only where the investigation proves the concealment or the false statement.
The provision attaches the false statement to the applicant. An investor who paid the price recorded on the deed, brought the money into Türkiye through the banking channel in his own name, and filed a valuation report signed by a firm licensed by the Capital Markets Board has made no false statement of his own, whatever a third party did with that report before or after it reached him. Whether the investigation established a statement or a concealment attributable to you, rather than a forged document produced by someone else in a chain you did not control, is the question the court will be asked, and the answer is in your own file: the deed, the bank’s foreign exchange purchase certificate, the transfer confirmations and the valuation report, read side by side.
Does the annulment take citizenship from my spouse and children too?
Yes, for the family members who acquired Turkish citizenship through your application, and no for two groups the regulation carves out. Article 32 of the Citizenship Law provides that the annulment decision takes effect from the date of the decision and applies also to the spouse and the children who acquired Turkish citizenship dependent on the person concerned. Article 58 of the Implementing Regulation then draws two lines that the Ministry’s statement does not mention: the annulment does not affect a child born after the parent acquired Turkish citizenship, and it does not affect a spouse who acquired Turkish citizenship by marriage rather than through the investment file. The same article provides that acts performed as a Turkish citizen between the date of acquisition and the date of annulment are not undone by the annulment.
So the first question on a family file is not whether the family is affected but who on it is inside Article 32 and who is outside it. A child born in Türkiye after the passport issued stands on different ground from a child who was on the original application, and a decision that treats them identically is open on that point alone.
What happens to the property or the deposit after annulment?
Article 33 of the Citizenship Law governs it, and its second paragraph is the reason to file the court case rather than to wait. Under Article 33, a person whose citizenship has been annulled is treated as a foreign national for residence purposes, and where the annulment decision states that his assets are to be liquidated he must liquidate his assets in Türkiye within one year at the latest; failing that, the Treasury sells them and deposits the proceeds in his name at a public bank. Article 33 paragraph 2 then provides that where the person applies to the courts against the annulment decision, the liquidation of the assets is left to the end of the case.
That paragraph does two things at once. It stops the one-year clock on the property for as long as the case runs, and it means that an investor who lets the sixty days pass without filing has also given up the only provision that protects the asset. The property route’s three-year no-sale annotation and the deposit route’s three-year lira holding period were conditions of the citizenship; once the decision is annulled they no longer serve that purpose, but what may be sold, when, and on whose terms is decided by the annulment decision and by whether a case is pending, not by the investor alone.
Where is the case filed, and how long do I have?
Sixty days from the day the decision was notified to you, before the Council of State, and the two facts come from two statutes read together. Citizenship by investment is granted under Article 12 of the Citizenship Law by Presidential decision, and Article 31 places the annulment with the authority that gave the acquisition decision, so the act being challenged is a Presidential decision. Article 24 paragraph 1(a) of the Council of State Law No. 2575 makes the Council of State the court of first instance for annulment actions against Presidential decisions. Article 7 of the Administrative Procedure Law No. 2577 sets the period for filing before the Council of State and the administrative courts at sixty days from notification.
Where the act taken against you is described as a withdrawal rather than an annulment, or was signed by a different authority, the forum and the period are read off that act, which is why the notification itself, with its date of service, is the document we ask for first. A suspension of execution can be requested in the same petition under Article 27 of the Administrative Procedure Law; the court grants it only where both statutory conditions are met together, that execution would cause damage that is difficult or impossible to repair and that the act is clearly unlawful, and it must give reasons. The application is prepared to meet both limbs, because a petition that argues only hardship is refused on the second.
What if the decision cites national security or public order?
Then the legal basis has to be identified before anything else, because the Citizenship Law names its grounds exhaustively. Article 12 makes the absence of a national security or public order impediment a condition of the grant, and Article 12 paragraph 2 provides that an application by a person carrying such an impediment is refused by the Ministry. After the grant, the statute gives the state two instruments: annulment under Article 31, whose only ground is the applicant’s false statement or concealment, and forfeiture under Article 29, which lists specific acts such as continuing in the service of a foreign state against Türkiye’s interests after being told to stop, serving a state at war with Türkiye, or voluntary military service for a foreign state, and which under Article 30 is personal and does not extend to the spouse and children. A decision that removes citizenship on security grounds without citing either provision, or that cites one whose text does not cover the facts stated, is challenged on its basis, and Article 30’s rule that forfeiture is personal is the first thing checked where a family has been removed together.
What the files that have reached us since August show
Three things recur in the annulment files and enquiries we have read since the Ministry’s statement of 4 August 2026, and none of them is in the statement. The first is that the register moves before the post does. In September 2026 an investor who had acquired citizenship by investment in 2021 learned at a routine check at the population directorate that his citizenship and his child’s had been annulled on 14 August; the officer said the entry was tied to a Presidential decision, and no reasoned decision had been served on him. Article 41 of the Citizenship Law requires the decision to be served on the person, and the sixty days of Article 7 of the Administrative Procedure Law run from the day after written notice, so the population record printout showing the entry and its date is the first document we take, and the decision itself is the second.
The second is the list. An investor came to us in September because his name was on the list of 1,070 that circulated on 21 September 2026. Its size and its structure, investors and their family members in numbered rows, are those of the Istanbul investigation the Ministry described that day as having identified 1,070 people, and identification is not annulment. A family in that position spends the time on its own acquisition file. In his, the deeds and the bank transfers showed more paid than the valuation recorded on each of his two properties, which is the shape of a real sale at a real price, and that comparison is the first page of the defence.
The third is the children. The same statement of 21 September counts 55 children among the 1,070 who acquired Turkish citizenship after the date of the investor’s decision. Article 58(2) of the Implementing Regulation keeps the annulment away from a child born after the parent acquired citizenship, so those children’s position is argued on its own and does not fall with the investor’s case.
What should you do in the first week?
Secure the notification and its date, then assemble the acquisition file, because both the deadline and the defense live in those documents. We ask for the decision as served and the envelope or electronic notification record that fixes the date; the title deed with the three-year annotation, or the bank’s blocked-deposit confirmation; the valuation report and the name of the licensed firm that signed it; the foreign exchange purchase certificate and the transfer confirmations showing the money entering Türkiye in your name; the certificate of conformity; the residence permit issued under Article 31(1)(j) of the Foreigners Law; and the Turkish identity cards and passports of every family member on the file. A notarized power of attorney to us, issued at a Turkish consulate or a Turkish notary, lets the case be filed and conducted while you are outside Türkiye, which most people in this position now are.
Within the sixty days we file the annulment action before the Council of State with the suspension request, we put the Article 33 paragraph 2 protection of the property on the record, and we identify each family member’s position under Article 32 and the regulation’s Article 58. The passport question is handled in the same file: Article 36 of the Citizenship Law treats a passport and the population record as a presumption of citizenship until the contrary is established, and the annulment decision is the contrary, so travel on the Turkish passport after notification is not an option and the residence position is regularised under the Foreigners Law while the case runs.
Three situations that change the defense
The investor paid the full price and the valuation report was forged by someone else
This is the file the statute’s wording was written for. Article 31 requires the applicant’s own false statement or concealment, and a buyer whose deed value, bank certificate and transfer confirmations agree with each other has documented a real transaction at a real price. The investigation under Article 57 of the regulation had to prove concealment by you; the court case asks whether it did. The valuation firm’s license, the report’s registration and the chain by which it reached the file are the evidence, and they are obtained from the institutions, not from the intermediary who sold the property.
The family lost citizenship together and one child was born after the passport issued
Article 58 paragraph 2 of the Implementing Regulation places a child born after the parent acquired Turkish citizenship outside the annulment, and a spouse who acquired citizenship by marriage outside it as well. A decision that removed such a child or spouse together with the investor is defective on that point independently of the investor’s own case, and it is argued separately so that it does not fall with the main claim.
The property was already sold after the three-year annotation lapsed
Article 33’s one-year liquidation rule speaks of assets in Türkiye at the time of the decision, and a sale completed before the annulment was an act performed as a Turkish citizen, which Article 58 paragraph 1 of the regulation leaves in place. The tax on that disposal is a separate question decided by the five-year rule in the Income Tax Law, set out in the guide to capital gains tax on property in Türkiye, and it does not change with the citizenship decision.
Act on the day the decision reaches you
The sixty days run from notification and nothing stops them except the petition itself. The file opens on the decision as served, the date it reached you, and the deed or deposit confirmation, because whether the act is an annulment or a withdrawal, which family members stand outside it and what the petition will argue are all written in the decision itself. We conduct the case before the Council of State under a power of attorney for clients anywhere in the world, in the client’s own language. The papers reach us on WhatsApp at +90 530 127 59 35 or at info@serkalaw.com.
For the conditions of the route itself, the thresholds, the documents and the reasons files are refused before they are granted, our guide to Turkish citizenship by investment is the reference, and the SPK valuation report and DAB foreign exchange certificate guides explain the two documents every one of these cases turns on.
This article is general information about Turkish law and is not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is formed by reading it; representation begins only under a signed engagement.