A foreigner can make a will in Turkey before a notary with two witnesses or in his or her own handwriting, and a will made abroad is valid in form if it complies with the law of the place where it was made or the testator's national law. Succession follows the deceased's national law, but Turkish law always applies to real estate in Turkey, including the reserved shares of descendants, parents and the spouse (Law No. 5718, Article 20; Civil Code, Article 506).
A growing number of foreign nationals own an apartment in Istanbul, a villa on the Aegean or Mediterranean coast, or a plot of land acquired as part of a citizenship by investment application, yet very few of them have considered what will happen to that property when they die. Without a will, Turkish real estate passes under the Turkish rules of intestate succession, which frequently produce a result the family never expected. A will made abroad is not automatically a solution either: it may be valid in form yet still collide with the mandatory reserved share rules of the Turkish Civil Code, Law No. 4721, where Turkish immovable property is concerned. This guide explains which law governs a foreigner's estate under the Code on Private International and Procedural Law, Law No. 5718, the three forms of will recognised in Türkiye, how much of a Turkish property can be left freely, and what happens procedurally between the date of death and the registration of the heirs at the land registry.
Quick Answer: Under Article 20 of Law No. 5718, the estate of a foreigner is governed by his or her national law, but Turkish law always applies to immovable property located in Türkiye. A will made abroad is valid in form in Türkiye if it complies with the law of the place where it was made, the law governing the succession, or the national law of the testator, and it is used before Turkish authorities with an apostille or consular legalisation and a sworn Turkish translation. Turkish law itself recognises three forms of will under Article 531 of the Civil Code: the official will drawn up before a notary or a judge of the civil court of peace with two witnesses, the handwritten will, and the oral will in an emergency. However valid the will, Turkish reserved shares under Article 506 of the Civil Code limit how freely Turkish real estate can be disposed of: descendants retain half of their statutory share, each parent one quarter, and the surviving spouse the whole statutory share when inheriting alongside descendants or parents. After death, anyone holding the will must deliver it to the civil court of peace, which opens it within one month under Articles 595 and 596 of the Civil Code, after which the heirs obtain a certificate of inheritance, settle inheritance tax, and register the property in their names.
Turkish real estate owned by foreigners has become a significant asset class, driven both by lifestyle purchases and by the citizenship by investment programme, which requires a real estate acquisition of at least 400,000 United States Dollars held for three years. The owners of these properties are frequently resident elsewhere, married under a foreign matrimonial regime, and parents of children who live in a third country. When such an owner dies without a plan, the family faces a succession that is split between two or more legal systems, a Turkish court procedure conducted in Turkish, and a set of mandatory inheritance rules that may be entirely unfamiliar to them.
The practical cost of not planning is measured in time and money: a certificate of inheritance obtained through the courts rather than a notary, a dispute between heirs over a will that ignored reserved shares, or a property that cannot be sold for years because one heir abroad cannot be located or will not cooperate. Most of these outcomes can be avoided by understanding the three questions addressed in this guide: which law applies, what form the will must take, and how much of the property can be disposed of freely.
Article 20 of the Code on Private International and Procedural Law, Law No. 5718, contains the basic conflict of laws rule for succession. Its first paragraph provides that succession is governed by the national law of the deceased, but that Turkish law applies to immovable property located in Türkiye. The remaining paragraphs of the same article add that the provisions concerning the opening, acquisition, and distribution of the estate are governed by the law of the country where the estate is located, that an estate without heirs located in Türkiye passes to the Turkish State, and that the capacity to make a will is governed by the national law of the testator at the time the will is made.
The practical effect of Article 20 is to split the estate of a foreigner into two parts governed by different laws, as the table below summarises.
| Asset or Question | Governing Law |
|---|---|
| Apartment, house, or land in Türkiye | Turkish law, including reserved shares |
| Bank accounts, company shares, vehicles, and other movable assets | National law of the deceased |
| Opening, acquisition, and distribution of the estate | Law of the country where the estate is located |
| Capacity to make a will | National law of the testator at the time the will is made |
| Formal validity of the will | Law of the place of making, law governing the succession, or national law of the testator |
A British or German owner of Turkish property can therefore leave a Turkish bank account under his or her own national law, while the Turkish apartment follows Turkish rules in every respect, including the reserved shares described in section 5 below. Where the national law of the deceased itself refers the matter back to Turkish law or to the law of a third country, the rules on renvoi in Article 2 of Law No. 5718 apply, which in practice means that Turkish courts will follow such a reference in matters of personal status and succession.
Under Article 4 of Law No. 5718, where the deceased held Turkish nationality alongside another nationality, Turkish law is applied as the national law. Where the deceased held several foreign nationalities, the law of the state with which he or she was most closely connected is applied. For a stateless person or a refugee, the law of the domicile, or failing that the habitual residence, takes the place of the national law. These rules matter particularly for investors who obtained Turkish citizenship through the investment programme while retaining their original nationality: from the moment of naturalisation, Turkish law governs their entire estate before Turkish courts, not only their immovable property.
In most cases, yes. Article 20, paragraph 4, of Law No. 5718, read together with the general rule on form in Article 7, provides that a disposition on death is valid in form if it complies with the law of the country where it was made, with the law governing the succession, or with the national law of the testator. A will signed before a notary in London, Berlin, or Dubai, or a will executed in the presence of witnesses under common law formalities, can therefore be recognised and used in Türkiye.
To be used before a Turkish court or the land registry, a foreign will must be authenticated. Where the country of execution is a party to the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961, an apostille issued by the competent authority of that country suffices; where it is not, consular legalisation through the Turkish consulate is required. In both cases the document must be accompanied by a sworn Turkish translation prepared by a translator registered with a Turkish notary, and the translation itself is notarised. Where the will has already been admitted to probate abroad, the probate order or grant should be authenticated and translated in the same manner, since it establishes before the Turkish authorities that the will is the operative one.
The most common misunderstanding among foreign owners is the assumption that a will valid in form is valid in all respects. It is not. Validity of form means only that the document is a will; what the will may lawfully do with Turkish real estate is a question of substance governed by Turkish law under Article 20, paragraph 1. A will that leaves a Turkish apartment entirely to one child, to a second spouse, or to a charity is formally valid, yet open to an action for reduction by the heirs whose reserved shares it impairs, as described in section 5.3 below. The will is not void; it is reduced to the extent necessary to restore the reserved shares.
Article 531 of the Turkish Civil Code provides that a will may be made in official form, in handwritten form, or orally. Each form has its own requirements and its own practical advantages.
| Form | Requirements | When It Is Used |
|---|---|---|
| Official will, resmi vasiyetname | Drawn up by a notary, a judge of the civil court of peace, or another authorised official, in the presence of two witnesses, under Articles 532 to 537 | The safest option and the most common choice for foreigners |
| Handwritten will, el yazılı vasiyetname | Written entirely and signed in the testator's own handwriting, stating the year, month, and day, under Article 538 | Simple and private, but easier to challenge; it may be deposited with a notary or court for safekeeping |
| Oral will, sözlü vasiyetname | Declared to two witnesses in an extraordinary situation such as imminent danger of death, interrupted communications, illness, or war, under Articles 539 to 541 | Only where the other forms are impossible; it lapses one month after the testator regains the ability to use another form |
The official will is prepared by the notary on the basis of the testator's instructions, read back to the testator, signed by the testator, and then dated and signed by the notary. Two witnesses then confirm, by signing the document, that the testator declared before them that he or she had read the will and that it reflected his or her final wishes, and that the testator appeared to them to have capacity. Under Article 536, persons who lack capacity, who have been deprived of public rights by a criminal conviction, who are illiterate, or who are the spouse, ascendants, descendants, or siblings of the testator, or the spouses of those relatives, cannot act as witnesses or as the drafting official, and no disposition may be made in favour of the witnesses, the official, or their close relatives.
A foreigner who does not read Turkish can make an official will through a sworn translator, in which case the notary follows the procedure in Article 535 for testators who cannot read: the will is read aloud to the testator through the translator in the presence of the witnesses, and the witnesses confirm that the testator declared the document to reflect his or her wishes. The original is retained by the notary, and the notary is required to notify the Population and Citizenship Affairs directorate so that the existence of the will is recorded centrally and can be found after death.
A handwritten will must be written from beginning to end in the testator's own hand, must state the year, month, and day on which it was made, and must be signed. A typed document signed by hand does not satisfy Article 538, nor does a handwritten document in which the date is missing or supplied by another person. The will may be written in any language, including the testator's own, since the requirement is that it be in the testator's handwriting, not that it be in Turkish; a sworn translation will be needed when it is opened. Because the handwritten will is not registered anywhere unless the testator chooses to deposit it, there is a real risk that it is never found, and a correspondingly higher risk of challenge on grounds of capacity or authenticity.
Under Article 502 of the Civil Code, any person who has the capacity to discern and has completed the age of fifteen may make a will. For a foreigner, however, capacity is assessed under his or her national law at the time of making the will, in accordance with Article 20, paragraph 5, of Law No. 5718, so a foreign testator must satisfy the age and mental capacity requirements of his or her own law rather than the Turkish threshold of fifteen.
Turkish law, like most continental European systems, protects certain close relatives of the deceased through a reserved share, saklı pay, which a will cannot take away except through a lawful disinheritance under Articles 510 to 513 of the Civil Code. Whatever the national law of the deceased provides, these rules apply to Turkish real estate by virtue of Article 20 of Law No. 5718.
Article 506 of the Civil Code, as amended in 2007, sets the reserved shares as follows.
| Heir | Reserved Share |
|---|---|
| Descendants, children and their issue | One half of their statutory share |
| Each parent | One quarter of his or her statutory share |
| Surviving spouse inheriting with descendants or with parents | The whole of the statutory share |
| Surviving spouse in all other cases | Three quarters of the statutory share |
| Siblings | No reserved share since the 2007 amendment |
The statutory shares themselves are set by Articles 495 to 499 of the Civil Code. Where the deceased leaves a spouse and children, the spouse takes one quarter and the children share the remaining three quarters equally; where the deceased leaves a spouse and parents, the spouse takes one half; where the deceased leaves a spouse and grandparents or their issue, the spouse takes three quarters; and where there are no relatives in those three groups, the spouse takes the whole estate.
The part of the estate above the total of the reserved shares is the freely disposable portion, tasarruf edilebilir kısım, which can be left to anyone, including a person who would not otherwise inherit. To take a simple example, a foreign owner who leaves a spouse and two children and whose only Turkish asset is an apartment may dispose freely of only three eighths of that apartment: the spouse's reserved share is one quarter, and each child's reserved share is half of three eighths, that is three sixteenths, leaving three eighths free. A will leaving the whole apartment to the spouse, which is a very common arrangement under common law wills, impairs the children's reserved shares to that extent.
Where a will exceeds the freely disposable portion, the will is not void. Instead, the heirs whose reserved shares are impaired may bring an action for reduction, tenkis davası, under Articles 560 to 571 of the Civil Code, asking the court to reduce the dispositions to the extent necessary to restore their shares. Under Article 571, the action must be brought within one year from the date on which the heir learned that his or her reserved share was impaired, and in any event within ten years from the opening of the will for testamentary dispositions, or from the opening of the succession for other dispositions. Our guide to reserved share claims explains these actions in detail. Because the action belongs to the individual heir, an heir who chooses not to bring it leaves the will fully effective as regards his or her share; the reserved share is a protection the heir may invoke, not a rule the court applies on its own motion.
The Turkish procedure between the date of death and the registration of the heirs follows a fixed sequence, and each step is a precondition of the next.
Under Article 595 of the Civil Code, any person who holds a will, or who finds one among the belongings of the deceased, must deliver it to the civil court of peace, sulh hukuk mahkemesi, as soon as he or she learns of the death. The obligation applies regardless of whether the person considers the will valid, and a notary holding an official will delivers it on learning of the death from the population registry. A person who conceals or fails to deliver a will is liable for the resulting damage and may face criminal liability.
Under Article 596, the judge of the civil court of peace of the deceased's last domicile opens the will within one month of its delivery and reads it in the presence of the heirs and other interested persons who have been summoned, or who appear. The court then notifies the content of the will to every heir and beneficiary named in it, under Article 597, and this notification starts the one year period for an action to annul the will under Article 559 as well as the one year period for the action for reduction. Where the deceased had no domicile in Türkiye, the competent court is determined under Article 43 of Law No. 5718, which gives jurisdiction to the court of the place where the immovable property is located, and a foreign will must be apostilled and translated as described in section 3.1 before it can be opened.
The heirs then obtain a certificate of inheritance, mirasçılık belgesi, showing who inherits and in what shares. Where the deceased was a Turkish citizen and the family relationships are recorded in the Turkish population registry, the certificate can be issued by a notary; where the deceased was a foreigner, where a will is involved, or where foreign documents must be evaluated, the certificate is issued by the civil court of peace. See our guide to obtaining a certificate of inheritance for the documents required and the time the procedure takes.
Under the Inheritance and Gift Tax Law, Law No. 7338, the heirs must file an inheritance tax declaration and pay the tax, or obtain confirmation that none is due, before the land registry will transfer the property. The declaration is filed within four months of the death where the death occurred in Türkiye and the heirs are in Türkiye, within six months where either the death or the heirs are abroad, and within eight months where the death occurred abroad and the heirs are in a different foreign country. The tax is calculated on the declared value of the inherited assets after an exemption that is updated annually, at progressive rates currently ranging from 1 percent to 10 percent, and may be paid in instalments over three years.
With the certificate of inheritance and the tax clearance letter from the tax office, the heirs apply to the land registry directorate, which registers the property in their names in the shares shown on the certificate, or in accordance with the will where the will has been opened and is not contested. See our guide to inheritance title deed transfer and tax clearance for the step by step procedure. Heirs who live abroad can complete every step of this process through a power of attorney signed abroad and apostilled, without travelling to Türkiye.
For most foreign owners of Turkish real estate, the practical answer is yes. A separate Turkish will, limited to the assets located in Türkiye and drafted with the reserved share rules in mind, offers several advantages over relying on a single worldwide will made abroad. It is already in Turkish, already in a form the Turkish court recognises without authentication, already registered centrally through the notary, and already consistent with the mandatory rules that will apply to the property in any event. It also allows the testator to make use of the freely disposable portion deliberately, for example by leaving that portion to the spouse so that the spouse's position is strengthened as far as the law allows.
The principal risk of having two wills is that the later one revokes the earlier one. Under Article 544 of the Civil Code, a later will that does not expressly state that it supplements the earlier one is presumed to replace it in so far as the two are inconsistent, and many foreign wills contain a general clause revoking all previous wills. Each will should therefore state clearly which assets it covers and that it does not revoke the will covering the other assets, and the foreign will should be reviewed by the foreign adviser so that its revocation clause is limited to wills covering the same assets.
Beyond the decision to make a Turkish will, a few practical measures prevent most of the difficulties seen in practice. The original of an official will should remain with the notary who drew it up, and the executor or family should know which notary holds it. The will should be reviewed after a marriage, a divorce, the birth of a child, the sale or purchase of Turkish property, or a change of nationality, since each of these events can change the statutory heirs, the reserved shares, or the applicable law. Where the owner has acquired Turkish citizenship through investment, the review is particularly important, because from that point Turkish law governs the whole estate before Turkish courts, not only the real estate. Finally, heirs who live abroad should be told that they will be able to act through a power of attorney, so that the death of the owner does not require the whole family to travel.
Yes. A foreigner can make an official will at a Turkish notary with two witnesses and, where needed, a sworn translator, or a handwritten will. Capacity is assessed under the foreigner's national law.
A will made abroad is valid in form if it complies with the law of the country where it was made, the law governing the succession, or your national law. For Turkish real estate, however, Turkish law governs the substance, including the reserved shares of close relatives.
Turkish law. Article 20 of Law No. 5718 applies Turkish law to immovable property in Türkiye, while movable assets follow the national law of the deceased.
Only within the freely disposable portion. Descendants, parents, and the spouse have reserved shares under Article 506 of the Civil Code and can restore them through an action for reduction.
No. Siblings lost their reserved share with the 2007 amendment to Article 506, so a testator without descendants, parents, or a spouse may dispose of the whole estate freely.
The will remains valid but can be reduced. The affected heirs may bring an action for reduction within one year of learning of the impairment and within ten years of the opening of the will.
By the judge of the civil court of peace of the deceased's last domicile, within one month after the will is delivered to the court. Where the deceased had no Turkish domicile, the court of the place where the property is located is competent.
Yes, where the country of execution is a party to the Hague Apostille Convention; otherwise consular legalisation is required. In both cases a sworn Turkish translation must be attached.
Yes. The notary prepares the official will with the assistance of a sworn translator, following the procedure for testators who cannot read the document themselves, in the presence of two witnesses.
Any adult with capacity who is literate and not deprived of public rights, other than the spouse, ascendants, descendants, or siblings of the testator and their spouses. No disposition may be made in favour of a witness.
Yes. Article 538 requires the will to be in the testator's own handwriting, dated, and signed, but not that it be in Turkish. A sworn translation is prepared when it is opened.
It may, if either will contains a general revocation clause or if the two are inconsistent. Each will should state which assets it covers and that it does not revoke the other.
From the date of naturalisation, Turkish law is treated as your national law before Turkish courts under Article 4 of Law No. 5718, so Turkish succession rules apply to your entire estate, not only your real estate.
Four months where the death occurred in Türkiye and the heirs are in Türkiye, six months where either is abroad, and eight months where the death occurred abroad and the heirs are in a different foreign country.
Yes. Every step, from obtaining the certificate of inheritance to the land registry transfer, can be completed through a power of attorney signed abroad and apostilled.
No. Inheritance tax under Law No. 7338 applies whether the property passes under a will or by intestacy; the will determines who inherits, not whether tax is due.
For a foreign owner of Turkish real estate, estate planning turns on three rules. Under Article 20 of Law No. 5718, Turkish law governs the property regardless of the owner's nationality or the law chosen in a foreign will. Under Article 531 of the Civil Code, a will made in official, handwritten, or oral form is recognised, and a will made abroad is recognised in form once apostilled and translated. Under Article 506 of the Civil Code, the reserved shares of descendants, parents, and the surviving spouse limit how much of the property can be disposed of freely, and a will that ignores them is exposed to an action for reduction for up to ten years after it is opened. A separate Turkish will drafted with these rules in mind, coordinated with the will covering assets elsewhere, removes most of the uncertainty and cost that heirs otherwise face.
We draft Turkish wills for foreign property owners, coordinate them with wills made abroad, arrange official wills at a notary with a sworn translator, and act for heirs in opening the will, obtaining the certificate of inheritance, and transferring the property. See our inheritance law service and our overview of Turkish inheritance law. For advice on a specific estate or a will already made abroad, our legal team can review your situation and set out the steps required under the current law.
