Turkey Cancels Citizenship of 6,134 People Over Investment-Program Fraud

Turkey has cancelled or withdrawn the citizenship of 6,134 people who obtained it through the country's citizenship-by-investment program, the Interior Ministry announced in a written statement on 4 August 2026. The action covers 1,413 principal investors together with their spouses and children, and is the largest single enforcement step against the program since it launched in 2017. Most of the cases involve fraudulent or collusive real-estate valuations used to fake the minimum investment; a smaller group lost citizenship on national-security and public-order grounds. The announcement landed the same day prosecutors unveiled an operation across 16 provinces against the network accused of arranging the sham purchases.

Background

Turkey's citizenship-by-investment program grants a passport to foreigners who, among other routes, buy real estate above a minimum value, set at $250,000 between September 2018 and June 2022 and $400,000 since. The real-estate route made Turkey one of the world's highest-volume investment-citizenship programs, and also its most fraud-prone: appraisers could inflate a cheap property's paper value to clear the threshold, with the buyer paying far less in reality. Authorities began tightening in stages, and in February 2026 started cancelling the citizenship of investors whose eligibility certificates were revoked after inspections; that earlier tranche cost 1,358 people their citizenship, plus 7 withdrawn on security grounds. The 4 August announcement is a much larger program-wide sweep built on inspections by the General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre, the Tax Inspection Board and the security services.

What exactly changed

According to the ministry statement, 5,391 people lost citizenship because 1,150 investors were found to have completed collusive or irregular property transactions, with spouses and children losing status alongside them. A further 743 people, tied to 263 investors, had citizenship withdrawn on national-security and public-order grounds. The ministry cited articles 31 and 40 of the Turkish Citizenship Law (No. 5901), which cover cancellation for false declarations or concealment and withdrawal of citizenship, as well as article 31 of the Foreigners and International Protection Law (No. 6458). In the parallel criminal operation announced by Justice Minister Akın Gürlek, courts issued detention warrants for 90 suspects, 72 of whom were detained, and investigators seized 1,045 properties, a hotel in Bodrum, 15 vehicles, a yacht and 10 bank accounts. The minister put the sum that should have entered Turkey through the investment route but never did at roughly 2.5 billion lira, about $52.6 million, and said work is under way to revoke citizenship from 687 more people.

Who it affects

The direct impact falls on the revoked families, who revert to foreigner status: a family of four that bought a Bosphorus-view apartment through an inflated appraisal in 2021 now holds no Turkish citizenship at all, since spouses and children acquired through the principal applicant lose status with them. According to IMI Daily's reporting, revoked citizens must sell their Turkish property within one year or the Treasury sells it for them, crediting the proceeds. Beyond the named cases, the sweep matters to every current holder and prospective applicant of the program: it shows Turkey is auditing historical files back to the $250,000 era and acting on what it finds, and that citizenship acquired through a tainted valuation is revocable years after the passport was issued. Our Turkey country guide (/country-guides/turkey) covers the residency and citizenship landscape more broadly.

What this means in practice

Anyone who obtained Turkish citizenship through the real-estate route and has doubts about how their purchase was appraised should have a Turkish lawyer review the file, since cancellation decisions can be challenged in the administrative courts. Prospective applicants should treat the valuation step as the highest-risk part of the process: use independent, bank-commissioned appraisals, insist that the full declared price actually moves through the Turkish banking system, and keep every payment record. The 687 additional revocations the Justice Ministry says are in progress make clear this sweep is not the end of the audit.