Turkey cancels 6,134 investment citizenships after fraud review

Turkey has long run one of the largest citizenship by investment programs in the world by number of applicants. On August 4, 2026, its Interior Ministry disclosed that 6,134 people who became Turkish through the program have had their citizenship cancelled or withdrawn. On the same day, Justice Minister Akın Gürlek announced a police operation against networks accused of faking the investments behind some of those applications.

The headline number sounds dramatic, and it deserves context. It is a cumulative figure across the life of the program, it counts family members as well as investors, and most of the cases relate to an earlier period with much weaker controls.

What the ministry announced

According to the ministry, the 6,134 people are linked to 1,413 principal investors, in two groups:

• Fraudulent transactions. 1,150 investors, and 5,391 people in total once spouses and children are counted, lost citizenship after inspections found collusive or irregular property deals. Their investment eligibility certificates, the official confirmation that a qualifying investment was made, were cancelled. The inspections were carried out by the land registry, the Tax Inspection Board and the national police.
• Security grounds. 263 investors, or 743 people in total, had citizenship withdrawn after later checks by the police and the National Intelligence Organization on public order or national security grounds. No fraud is alleged in this group.

The ministry said the misconduct involved forged or misleading documents prepared before applications were filed, and that its own citizenship staff were not at fault. It did not say which years the cancelled files cover.

How the schemes worked

The property route requires a purchase worth at least US$400,000, held for three years. Prosecutors allege that organised networks arranged sales at inflated prices backed by inflated valuation reports, or recorded transactions in which the money never actually arrived. The result was a citizenship file that appeared to meet the threshold when the real investment was far lower, or absent.

The Istanbul operation announced alongside the figures involved 72 detentions across 16 provinces and the seizure of 1,045 properties, a hotel in Bodrum, vehicles, a yacht and bank accounts. Prosecutors put the foreign currency that should have entered Turkey but did not at about TL 2.5 billion, roughly US$52.6 million. Revocation proceedings have begun against 687 people tied to that case. An earlier operation in September 2025 reportedly concerned 451 investors.

Why family members are affected

Under the Turkish Citizenship Law, number 5901, a cancellation extends to the spouse and children who obtained citizenship through the same application. That explains how 1,413 investors become 6,134 people. Those affected revert to foreign status and may be required to sell Turkish property within a year; anything left unsold is sold by the Treasury and the proceeds paid to the owner.

Controls are tighter than they were

Much of the abuse dates from the years when the threshold was US$250,000, between September 2018 and June 2022, when it rose to US$400,000. Since then the rules have closed several gaps:

• Qualifying investments must be made in foreign currency and converted through a Turkish bank.
• From March 2024, valuations for citizenship purposes were centralised with GEDAŞ, a valuation company owned by TOKİ, the state housing agency.
• From December 2024, the land registry has issued an amount determination certificate generated from that valuation and sent directly to the registry office, which removes paper reports from the process.
• A property already used for one citizenship application cannot be used again.

Industry advisers in Istanbul say the kind of scheme now being prosecuted would be very hard to repeat under the current system.

What it means if you are considering Turkey

For a genuine investor, the main lesson is that a Turkish passport rests on the integrity of the underlying purchase, and that the state is willing to look back years later. The protections are practical: a property with clean title, a price that matches the official valuation, money that moves through the banking system in foreign currency as the rules require, and a complete paper trail kept for the full three year holding period and beyond.

Turkey still offers citizenship for a spouse and children under 18 with no residence requirement, through property from US$400,000 or a US$500,000 deposit, bonds or fund investment. We help clients apply, work with our local team for due diligence and the purchase, and quote our fees in writing.

Buying property as part of a residency or citizenship plan? Our real estate due diligence service checks the title, the developer and the valuation before you commit, so the purchase also satisfies the visa rules.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice.