If a developer in Türkiye has not delivered an off plan flat, a consumer buyer is protected by the Consumer Protection Law, Law No. 6502: delivery may not exceed 48 months from the contract (Article 44), and the buyer may rescind within 24 months without reason, paying nothing if the developer is in breach, with the refund due within 180 days (Article 45). Every buyer can also serve notice and, under Articles 123 to 125 of Law No. 6098, demand delivery plus delay damages or withdraw and reclaim the price. Mediation is mandatory before money claims in consumer courts.
A buyer who signed for an apartment in Alanya, Mersin, Antalya or Istanbul, paid most of the price and was promised the keys within two years is often left with an unfinished building, an unreachable sales office and no title deed. Since the 2022 amendment made by Law No. 7392, the Consumer Protection Law, Law No. 6502, caps delivery of prepaid housing at 48 months from the contract, and the Turkish Code of Obligations, Law No. 6098, lets a buyer facing a developer in default choose between delivery with damages and a refund. The checks to make before buying are covered in our article on securing the title deed when buying off plan; this article starts once something has gone wrong.
Three facts decide almost everything. The first is consumer status: under Article 3 of Law No. 6502 a consumer acts for purposes that are not commercial or professional, so a foreigner buying one apartment to live in or as a holiday home normally qualifies, while a buyer of several units for resale or a company buying for its business may not.
The second is the contract: an official sale at the land registry, a satış vaadi sözleşmesi, a promise to sell drawn up by a notary, or a private contract signed in the developer's office. Under Article 705 of the Turkish Civil Code, Law No. 4721, ownership is acquired by registration, so only the first gives you title. The third is the land register extract, which shows whether kat irtifakı, the construction servitude allowing flats to be registered before completion, exists, whether your contract is annotated and whether mortgages or a concordat restriction burden the land.
An off plan purchase by a consumer is an ön ödemeli konut satışı, a prepaid housing sale, under Article 40: the consumer pays in advance and the seller delivers later. Standard terms cannot remove these protections, because Article 5 makes unfair terms drafted in advance absolutely null while the rest of the contract stays in force.
Article 40 forbids prepaid sales before a yapı ruhsatı, a building permit, is obtained and requires a preliminary information form at least one day before signing. Article 41 requires the sale to be registered in the land register or, for a promise to sell, to be drawn up by a notary as an official deed; otherwise the developer cannot rely on the invalidity of the contract to the detriment of the consumer. The developer may not ask for any payment before a valid contract exists. The Regulation on Prepaid Housing Sales of 27 November 2014 lists the mandatory content in Article 7, including the delivery date and method, the building permit date, the guarantee and the payment plan.
Under Article 42 and Article 12 of the regulation, a developer selling a project of 30 or more units must, before sales begin, take out bina tamamlama sigortası, building completion insurance, or provide another listed guarantee such as a bank letter of guarantee or a system linking payments to construction progress. Compensation and guarantees under building completion insurance cannot be included in a bankruptcy or liquidation estate and cannot be attached (Article 42(2)). If your contract does not name the guarantee, ask in writing which one was provided.
Article 44 requires delivery within the contractual period and in any event within 48 months of the contract. Registration of construction servitude in the buyer's name together with transfer of possession also counts as delivery. The earlier limit was 36 months, and under provisional Article 3, contracts concluded before the change are, as a rule, governed by the law in force when they were made. No extension clause can push delivery beyond the statutory cap.
Under Article 43, a consumer may withdraw within 14 days without reasons or penalty; it is enough that notice is sent within that period, and the developer must prove it informed you of the right. Article 45 adds sözleşmeden dönme, rescission without reasons, at any time up to 24 months from the contract. The developer may then charge statutory taxes and fees plus compensation capped as follows:
| Time Since the Contract | Maximum Compensation |
|---|---|
| First 3 months | 2 percent of the price |
| 3 to 6 months | 4 percent of the price |
| 6 to 12 months | 6 percent of the price |
| 12 to 24 months | 8 percent of the price |
| Developer has not performed at all or properly | Nothing |
The refund must be made within 180 days of the notice reaching the developer (Article 45(3)). As the 24 month window often closes before delivery falls due, a buyer whose developer is late usually relies on the default rules in section 5.
Under Article 237 of Law No. 6098, a sale of immovable property and a promise to sell it are valid only in official form, and Article 12 provides that a contract lacking the required form produces no legal effect. For a promise to sell, that means a deed drawn up by the notary, not a private document on which a notary has merely certified signatures.
A valid promise, drafted as described in our article on drafting a promise of sale contract, gives you a personal right to demand transfer of title. Under Article 1009 of Law No. 4721 it can be annotated, şerh, in the land register and then binds anyone who later acquires rights over the unit. Under Article 26 of the Land Registry Law, Law No. 2644, either party may request the annotation, which is cancelled ex officio if the sale is not completed within five years. Without an annotation, a third party relying in good faith on the register is protected (Article 1023 of Law No. 4721), and even with one, earlier rights such as a bank mortgage over the project land rank ahead of you, as our article on annotations in the land register explains.
For consumers, Article 41 of Law No. 6502 stops the developer from invoking the missing notary against you. Whether a court will go further and order a transfer of title on an unnotarised contract is decided on the facts, and the case law is not uniform. For other buyers the contract is void, and the remedy is return of the price as unjust enrichment under Article 77 of Law No. 6098. That claim is time barred two years after you learn of your right to reclaim and in any event ten years after payment (Article 82), so a void contract should not be left to drift in the hope of delivery.
The general default rules of Law No. 6098 apply to every buyer and are, as a rule, subject to the ordinary ten year limitation period in Article 146.
Under Article 117, a debtor falls into default on a reminder, but where the contract fixes the performance date, default begins when that date passes. Even so, send an ihtarname, a formal notice served through a notary, as explained in our article on serving an ihtarname in Türkiye: it records the default, sets additional time and reserves your claims. Article 123 allows you to give an appropriate additional time or ask the judge to set one. Under Article 124 none is needed where it would plainly be ineffective, as with a site abandoned for months, or where late performance has become useless to you.
When the additional time expires, or none was needed, Article 125 gives you three options:
The second and third choices must be declared immediately, and where prices have risen sharply the choice should be made with a valuation in hand.
The choice is also practical. Withdrawal turns you into an ordinary money creditor of the developer, while insisting on performance keeps a claim to the flat itself. Which is better depends on how far the building has progressed and what the company still owns.
A developer invoking force majeure must prove it bears no fault (Articles 112 and 118). One citing rising costs under Article 138, excessive difficulty of performance, must ask a judge to adapt the contract and prove an extraordinary, unforeseeable change it did not cause; it cannot simply raise the price. An extra payment demanded before handover is not owed unless the contract provides for it, so if you must pay to obtain the keys, pay under a written reservation.
Many contracts contain a cezai şart, a penalty clause, for late delivery, often a monthly amount. Under Article 179 of Law No. 6098 you may claim it together with delivery unless you have waived it or accepted performance without reservation. Buyers often lose it by signing the handover protocol silently, so write an ihtirazi kayıt, an express reservation of rights, on it. Under Article 180 the penalty is owed even without loss, and loss above it can be claimed if the developer was at fault. A judge reduces an excessive penalty of its own motion under Article 182, but under Article 22 of the Turkish Commercial Code, Law No. 6102, a merchant debtor cannot itself request that reduction.
Where the price is paid and the developer will not transfer, Article 716 of Law No. 4721 lets a buyer under a valid promise ask the judge to transfer ownership by judgment, in practice through a tapu iptal ve tescil davası, an action for cancellation and registration of title. Under Article 12 of the Code of Civil Procedure, Law No. 6100, the court where the property is located has exclusive jurisdiction. Every payment must be proved, any unpaid balance will normally have to be paid or deposited, and the land registry still applies the rules on acquisition by foreigners in Article 35 of Law No. 2644. Selling the same unit twice may also amount to fraud under Article 157 of the Turkish Penal Code, Law No. 5237; see our article on recovering money lost in property fraud.
Under Article 389 of Law No. 6100, an ihtiyati tedbir, an interim injunction, may be ordered where a change in the situation would make obtaining the right much harder or impossible. For a buyer claiming title, the order usually prohibits transfer of the unit and is recorded in the land register, which makes it effective against later acquirers (Article 1010 of Law No. 4721). You must show your claim is probably well founded (Article 390) and normally give security, which may be waived where the request rests on an official document (Article 392). Enforcement must be requested within one week (Article 393), and an injunction obtained before suing requires the action within two weeks of that request (Article 397), a period paused during mandatory mediation under Law No. 6325 on Mediation in Civil Disputes. For a refund claim, Article 257 of the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law, Law No. 2004, allows a precautionary attachment of the developer's assets, such as unsold units and bank accounts.
Timing matters more than anything else here. By the time a construction dispute reaches judgment, a failing developer's accounts are often empty and its unsold units sold or mortgaged. Buyers who obtain an attachment or an injunction early are paid from those assets; buyers who wait for a judgment share what is left.
Developers sometimes hand over keys before the municipality has issued the yapı kullanma izin belgesi, the occupancy permit, often called iskân. Without it the floor easement, kat irtifakı, registered for the project cannot be converted into full condominium ownership, kat mülkiyeti, resale and mortgage finance become difficult, and permanent utility subscriptions are often delayed.
A missing permit is therefore a defect in delivery, not an administrative detail. For a consumer, a home is a mal under Article 3 of Law No. 6502 and is defective if it lacks features it should objectively have (Article 8). Article 11 then lets the consumer withdraw, keep the flat with a price reduction, or demand that the defect be cured, and Article 12 sets a five year limitation period from delivery for homes. Record the missing permit in writing at handover and keep the delay penalty reserved at the same time (section 6).
Consumer disputes go to the tüketici mahkemesi, the consumer court (Article 73 of Law No. 6502), where consumers are exempt from court fees and may also sue at their own domicile, although for title claims Article 12 of Law No. 6100 points to the court where the property is located. A company buying for its business normally goes to the commercial court under Article 4 of Law No. 6102, and other buyers to the civil court of first instance. Consumer claims below 186,000 Turkish Lira in 2026 go to the consumer arbitration committee (Article 68).
Under Article 73/A of Law No. 6502, mediation is a precondition for consumer court actions, with exceptions that include consumer disputes arising from rights in rem over immovable property. Refund, penalty and delay claims therefore go to a mediator first, and since claims mixing title and money are not always classified alike, mediating first is safer. The mediator has three weeks, extendable by one (Article 18/A of Law No. 6325), and limitation is suspended meanwhile; for commercial buyers, Article 5/A of Law No. 6102 imposes mediation on money claims. A settlement signed by the parties, their lawyers and the mediator has the effect of a judgment (Article 18 of Law No. 6325). A foreign claimant must also provide security for costs unless exempted on the basis of reciprocity (Article 48 of the Code on Private International and Procedural Law, Law No. 5718).
Disputes between a landowner and a contractor under a kat karşılığı inşaat sözleşmesi, a land for flats contract, follow a different track. They usually turn on whether the landowner can end the contract and have the completed share registered, so a buyer who bought a unit from the contractor's share should check the state of that relationship early.
Our article on Turkish bankruptcy and concordat for foreign creditors explains the procedures. For a buyer facing a konkordato, a composition with creditors supervised by the court, the key points are:
When a project fails, dozens of buyers usually hold the same kind of claim against the same company. Acting together has real advantages: one set of evidence on the state of the works and the company's assets, consistent expert findings, shared costs and, above all, attachments and injunctions obtained at the same time instead of one buyer after another. Each buyer still relies on their own contract and payments, and buyers whose claims arise from the same or similar facts and legal grounds may sue together (Article 57 of Law No. 6100).
Build the file while the developer still answers: every version of the contract; bank and SWIFT records for each payment, as explained in our article on proving payment of the purchase price; brochures and advertisements showing the promised delivery date; full exports of emails and messages; the building permit and a current land register extract; trade registry announcements; dated site photographs; and every notice with proof of service. Under Article 400 of Law No. 6100 you can also ask the court for delil tespiti, preservation of evidence, so that an expert records the state of construction now. Our real estate and construction law practice handles such files for clients abroad.
| Option | Legal Basis and Key Condition |
|---|---|
| Withdraw without reason | Article 43 of Law No. 6502; within 14 days |
| Rescind without reason | Article 45 of Law No. 6502; within 24 months, 2 to 8 percent at most, refund within 180 days |
| Delivery plus delay damages | Articles 118 and 125 of Law No. 6098; default and additional time |
| Withdraw for default and reclaim the price | Article 125 of Law No. 6098; immediate declaration |
| Agreed penalty | Articles 179 and 180 of Law No. 6098; reserve it on handover |
| Forced title transfer | Article 716 of Law No. 4721; valid promise, price paid |
| Refund under a void contract | Articles 77 and 82 of Law No. 6098; two years from knowledge |
| Block a transfer | Article 389 of Law No. 6100; enforce within one week |
| Freeze the developer's assets | Article 257 of Law No. 2004; debt due, security usually required |
| Price reduction for a missing occupancy permit | Articles 8 and 11 of Law No. 6502; five years from delivery for homes (Article 12) |
| Claim in concordat | Articles 294 and 299 of Law No. 2004; file within 15 days |
Yes. After notice and any additional time, you can withdraw under Article 125 of Law No. 6098 and reclaim what you paid.
For consumers, 48 months from the contract (Article 44 of Law No. 6502); older contracts generally fall under the earlier 36 month limit.
Yes, within 14 days without penalty, and up to 24 months against compensation of 2 to 8 percent, or nothing if the developer is in breach.
No more than 180 days from receiving your notice (Article 45 of Law No. 6502).
Not as a promise to sell, but the developer cannot rely on that against a consumer (Article 41 of Law No. 6502), and other buyers can reclaim payments.
Yes. Annotation binds later acquirers (Article 1009 of Law No. 4721) but lapses after five years if the sale is not completed (Article 26 of Law No. 2644).
You can, if you accept without reservation (Article 179 of Law No. 6098), so record your reservation in writing.
The consumer court for consumers, the commercial court for business buyers and otherwise the civil court of first instance.
Yes for money claims in consumer and commercial courts; consumer disputes arising from rights in rem over immovables are excluded.
No. Consumer actions in consumer courts are exempt from fees under the Fees Law, Law No. 492, though expert costs and security for costs can still arise.
Your claim becomes a money claim of equal value unless the developer performs with the commissioner's approval; file it within 15 days of the announcement.
Not unilaterally. It must ask a judge to adapt the contract under Article 138 of Law No. 6098.
Yes. For a consumer it lacks a feature a home should have (Article 8 of Law No. 6502), which supports a price reduction or the other remedies in Article 11.
No. Ask for a precautionary attachment or an injunction early; by the time of judgment a failing developer's assets are often gone.
A delayed off plan purchase in Türkiye is rarely hopeless. Consumers have the prepaid housing rules of Law No. 6502, and every buyer has the default rules in Articles 117 to 125 of Law No. 6098, the penalty clause and, with a notarised promise, an action for title. Timing usually decides the outcome: the notice, the reservation, the annotation and the injunction must be in place before the developer's assets are gone.
If your delivery date has passed or the developer has announced a concordat, send us the contract, the payment records and a land register extract, and our legal team will assess which of these routes is open to you.
