Türkiye annuls the investor citizenship of 6,134 people across 1,413 files

Türkiye’s Ministry of Interior said on 4 August 2026 that the citizenship of 6,134 people — 1,413 investors together with their family members — granted through the country’s investment route had been annulled or withdrawn. The ministry set out the figures alongside an account of an operation across 16 provinces, in which 72 suspects were apprehended over property valuation reports it describes as false.

What the ministry counted

The statement separates the total into two groups. Inspections by the land registry directorate, the Tax Inspection Board and the national police found collusive or irregular transactions behind 1,150 investors, whose investment conformity certificates were cancelled; on that basis the citizenship decisions of 5,391 people, family members included, were annulled. A second group of 263 investors was assessed after naturalisation, by the police and the national intelligence organisation, as objectionable on public order and national security grounds; the citizenship decisions of 743 people, again counting family members, were withdrawn on the ground that the legal conditions had never been formed. The ministry does not link that second group to the valuation inquiry.

The two groups are attributed to Articles 31 and 40 of Law No. 5901, the Turkish Citizenship Law. The statement gives no start date for the total and no breakdown by nationality. It does supply one narrower figure: since 11 February 2026 the certificates of 443 investors have been cancelled, taking the citizenship of 1,358 people with family members, and 7 people have had citizenship withdrawn on security grounds. If those 1,365 sit inside the 6,134, the remaining 4,769 fall before that date. The statement neither says so nor explains what 11 February 2026 marks.

Two powers, and they are not interchangeable

Article 31 governs annulment. It applies where the decision to grant citizenship came about through the applicant’s own false declaration, or through the concealment of matters material to the grant, and it is exercised by the authority that took the original decision. Article 40 governs withdrawal and reaches something else: decisions on the acquisition or loss of citizenship are withdrawn where it later emerges that they were taken without the legal conditions having been formed, or were taken twice over. Neither article’s text makes a criminal conviction a precondition.

Article 32 carries the effect of an annulment across a household. An annulment takes effect from the date of the decision, and applies to the spouse and children who acquired Turkish citizenship through the person concerned. That is how 1,150 investors produce 5,391 people in the first group. The ministry counts family members in the second group as well, but the statutory text checked here does not explain how Article 40 operates on them.

What the route requires, and where it was tested

Turkish citizenship by investment runs through Article 12(1)(b) of Law No. 5901, inserted in July 2016, and reaches holders of a residence permit granted under Article 31(1)(j) of the foreigners law. The Investment Office of the Presidency sets out the thresholds fixed by regulation in September 2018:

• property worth at least USD 400,000, carrying a three-year resale restriction annotated on the title deed;
• USD 500,000 in fixed capital;
• USD 500,000 held for at least three years in bank deposits, government bonds, real-estate or venture-capital investment fund participation shares, or a private pension contribution;
• employment for 50 people.

The President decides each grant.

The document the ministry cancelled first is the investment conformity certificate, and on the property route that certificate rests on a valuation. According to the ministry’s statement, valuations were prepared by companies licensed by the capital markets board until 2024, when the work moved to a state-owned valuer operating under the land registry directorate’s coordination; the directorate then issues the certificate on the strength of that report. Security vetting by the police and the intelligence service follows the certificate and precedes approval, and the statement says a positive result is what completes the grant. The second group nevertheless came to notice only after naturalisation; the statement does not say why.

The property question

Article 33 governs what can follow an annulment. Those whose citizenship is annulled fall under the law on foreigners; where liquidation of their property is considered necessary, the annulment decision must say so; and those persons must then liquidate their property in Türkiye within one year at the latest. Failing that, the Treasury sells it and pays the proceeds into an account in their name at a state bank. If they challenge the annulment in court, liquidation waits for the judgment.

Three limits sit inside that. Liquidation is conditional rather than automatic, and has to appear in the decision itself. Article 33 attaches to annulment under Article 31 and does not, by its terms, reach a withdrawal under Article 40. And the ministry’s statement does not say whether any decision carried a liquidation requirement.

What the checked sources do not settle is the position of property already registered when citizenship falls away without such a requirement. The Investment Office states limits on acquisition by foreign natural persons — up to 30 hectares nationwide, no more than ten per cent of the area of a district in which private property is permitted, and no acquisition inside prohibited military zones or military security zones — but those are rules for acquiring, not a statement of what happens to a holding already on the register.

Article 33 still refers to the 1950 residence law. That statute was repealed in 2013, and the foreigners and international protection law which replaced it provides that references to the old one are read as references to the new.

What is unresolved

The ministry says it found no weakness or negligence within the duties and powers of its civil registry staff, and that irregularities constituting an offence are being referred to the judicial authorities. It does not say who has been referred or on what allegation, and it does not exclude investors: the same statement records that 1,150 of them were found to have carried out collusive or irregular transactions. Also unstated are whether any liquidation requirement was imposed, and the number of grants against which 6,134 should be read — a denominator absent from the statement and not established by any source checked here.

What stays open on a property file is narrower than the headline figure. The statement does not identify the evidence on which irregularity was established in any individual case, and it does not say which years of valuations the inspections covered. Where an annulment under Article 31 does carry a liquidation requirement, the statute does not say from when the year is counted; Article 32 fixes only the date from which the annulment itself takes effect. Our explainer on the Turkish property route discussed valuation risk on this route, and the ministry now reports valuation-related irregularities among the cases it examined.