Turkiye’s CBI/CIP Real Estate Fraudsters: Prosecution & Prevention

For real estate investors Turkiye offers alluring prospects for investment returns and lifestyle benefits. These attractions have resulted in a surge in international buyers at various times during the past two decades. This surge has also resulted in widespread abuse and fraud by unscrupulous middlemen.

One reason fraud is so prevalent is because a prosecution fraud prosecution in Turkiye requires widespread evidence of repeated malpractice effecting many victims. Unlike many countries, evidence is required from more than one transaction effecting more than one victim. The courts are also reluctant to pass judgment on what may or may not have been agreed between two parties on any one transaction.

Often this has created doubt among investors, and sometimes is misinterpreted to mean the authorities are ignoring the problem, For those doubters, we now have reassuring news of the authorities taking action. A recent anti-fraud action underway may aptly be described as ‘very large’… (we reserve the use of the term 'massive’ for describing the enormity of fraud elsewhere....). 

• 106 suspects 

• ·5 different companies

• ·19 provinces across Türkiye

• ·451 foreign investors

• ·1,240 apartments

• ·65 plots of land

• ·47 automobiles
• Total amount estimated at not less than $100 million

Effective January 1, 2026 new Land Registry regulations have been introduced for property purchase and sale transactions:

• All payments to be made by bank transfers to Land Registries’ on-line banking services
• Checking by Land Registries to ensure transaction price declarations, contract prices, and payment amounts - must all be the same

An investor receiving a request to make payment directly to a middleman should cease engagement. Such middlemen have been known to be receiving undisclosed profit sharing of hidden price mark-ups, and these middlemen collude together, including agents, citizenship consultants, lawyers, etc.

In addition, the new measure also brings the business process for property transactions with foreigners into closer alignment with that used by local Turks, whereby one payment transaction suffices for the purchase, instead of an additional payment or any advance payment, reservation deposit etc.

The scope for fraud still exists, as regulators know, a fraudster with a determined intention to deceive will find ways to do so. Thankfully, the new regulations further narrow the scope available to fraudsters. That scope in 2026 is now narrowed down to the practice on profiteering on hidden profiteering by excessively inflating prices at which properties are sold to unsuspecting buyers.

An additional hurdle for Citizenship Investors, is to overcome the risk that the official Eksper Raporu appraisal results in a valuation that is less than the current minimum application threshold of $400,000. There is one key intermediate 'three point’ step in the property search and valuation process that ensures this hurdle is overcome – it s not new- the experts at My Tapu have used it for more than ten years for ensuring mortgage finance completions.