Since January 2017, foreigners in Turkey can obtain citizenship by purchasing a certain amount of real estate. According to the report prepared by Nevita for the sale of residences to foreigners and compiled with the data of the General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre, 17,968 foreign persons from 122 different countries in total were entitled to obtain citizenship by acquiring real estate from 48 different cities between January 2017, when the citizenship program started, and June 2021.
10 THOUSAND PEOPLE IN 6 MONTHS
According to Nevita’s report, there was a $1 million real estate purchase requirement for citizenship in the two years covering 2017-2018, and a total of 70 people obtained citizenship in these two years. In 2019 and 2020, approximately 7,500 people gained citizenship by purchasing real estate. Only in the first six months of 2021, 10 thousand people obtained the right to citizenship.
GREAT INTEREST FROM CHINA
In the report, which stated that the figure increased geometrically, the top 10 countries with the most citizenship were listed. Accordingly, Iran came first, followed by Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, China, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Pakistan, respectively. It was also emphasized in the report that China showed interest in the citizenship program in the last 1.5 years, and it was able to enter the top 5 in a short time. Housing sales to foreigners increased by 64% compared to the same month of the previous year and became 4 thousand 495. In this way, house sales to foreigners in July 2021 reached the highest sales figure of all July months to date. The closest figure to this was the sales of 4,192 units in July 2019. In the housing sales to foreigners, Istanbul took the first place with sales of 1,951 houses. Antalya was followed by Antalya with 931 house sales, Ankara with 312 house sales and Mersin with 217 house sales, respectively. In July, Iraqi citizens bought 712 houses from Turkey. Iraqi citizens were followed by Iran with 619 residences, Russian Federation with 365 residences, Afghanistan with 229 residences and Germany with 198 residences.
Source: Sabah / Translated by Irem Yildiz
