Citizenship By Investment
Turkey’s CBI program offers five main routes to citizenship:
- Government bonds: Investors can qualify by purchasing $500,000 in government bonds.
- Bank deposits: Simply placing $500,000 in a Turkish bank account also qualifies the account-holder for citizenship.
- Capital investments: Investors can obtain citizenship by making a $500,000 capital investment, or an investment of any amount that creates 50 or more jobs.
- Investment in funds: Citizenship can be acquired by purchasing a $500,000 share of a real-estate investment fund or a venture capital investment fund.
- Real estate: The cheapest option, and a straightforward one: investors can qualify for citizenship by investing $400,000 or more in real estate.
The real estate option is the most popular option: besides being the cheapest route, it is also being heavily promoted across the Middle East by Turkish developers, who are pitching it as a value-added incentive for investments in Turkey’s real estate sector. Still, the industry is weakly regulated, and experts advise retaining local counsel to ensure that developers handle the necessary paperwork, including formal property valuations, correctly.