Turkey Moves to Revoke 1,070 Citizenships Over Collusive Property Sales in Second Fraud Operation

Turkish authorities have opened proceedings to strip citizenship from 1,070 people who obtained it through property purchases prosecutors say were collusive, in the second enforcement operation against the country's investment citizenship route in seven weeks. Justice Minister Akin Gurlek announced the action on Monday 21 September 2026.

What changed

Police examined 734 property purchases by foreign nationals and classified 274 of them as collusive sales. Those 274 transactions produced citizenship for 1,070 people once spouses and dependent children are counted. Eleven further applications were still in processing when the operation ran.

The transactions carried a stated value of more than TL 3.5 billion, roughly 71.7 million dollars. Seventy-two people were detained, 88 suspects face prosecution, and 30 companies were placed under court-appointed trustees. Investigators seized 2,011 properties, one hotel, 86 vehicles, two yachts and 42 bank accounts.

Three developers sit at the centre of the file: Gul Insaat, Beyaz Insaat and LIV Insaat. The operation was coordinated by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office and carried out by the Istanbul Provincial Police Department.

This follows a first operation in August 2026 built around the developer Babacan Insaat, which produced 72 detentions across 16 provinces and revocation proceedings against 687 people. Prosecutors estimated TL 2.5 billion, about 52.6 million dollars, never actually entered Turkey in that case. Seizures there covered 1,045 properties, one hotel, 15 vehicles, one yacht and 10 bank accounts.

The mechanism

Turkey grants citizenship by investment under Law No. 5901 on Turkish Citizenship, through the exceptional naturalisation route. The property threshold was 250,000 dollars from 19 September 2018 until mid-June 2022, when it rose to 400,000 dollars.

Two separate provisions of the same law are doing the work in these cases. Article 31 provides for cancellation, iptal, where citizenship followed a false declaration or the concealment of a material fact. Article 40 provides for withdrawal, geri alma, where the legal conditions for the grant were never actually satisfied. A collusive sale, where the recorded price on the title deed does not reflect money that actually moved, can fall under either.

Article 33 sets out what happens next. A person who reverts to foreign status must liquidate their Turkish assets within one year. If they do not, the Treasury sells the assets on their behalf.

As of early August 2026, Turkey had cancelled or withdrawn citizenship from 6,134 people in total across the programme, covering 1,413 principal investors. Of that total, 5,391 came from fraud cases and 743 from security grounds.