Turkish Citizenship by Investment Attracts More and More Investors

Acquiring a citizenship and thus a passport with investment in certain countries has been a boon to many countries’ economies especially quite recently. That increased the number of countries creating such programs to attract investors. Recent years (and especially the last few months) have seen an increase in the number of investors that are interested in Turkish citizenship by investment programs. Let us now see why this is so, and why you too should consider taking part in a Turkish citizenship by investment program.

It Is Cheaper than Ever to Get Turkish Citizenship

Turkey started to have its own citizenship by investment program in 2016. Back then the real estate that had to be bought for the application had to be a million dollars. This was, and still is, much higher than what many other countries with Golden Visas demand. There are some Caribbean countries where you can get a citizenship for as low as 100.000 dollars. Many European countries as well, despite being in the EU, offered much cheaper alternatives to Turkish citizenship by investment programs. By the end of 2018 however, Turkish government decided to pull down their prices to compete with the market and made it 250.000 dollars. This caused the applications for Turkish second citizenship to skyrocket. There were more than 200 new applications in the first five weeks that followed the price change.

Investment Offices are Struggling to Keep Up with the Demand

In fact, many offices that help their customers to acquire their second citizenships from other countries struggled to keep up with the demands for a Turkish passport since the beginning of 2019. Certain offices are processing up to 20 new applications a week which is unprecedented for many countries with Golden Visa programs. Even the Turkish Government itself started to struggle trying to keep up with the new paperwork. As a result, a new office just for the processing of such documents has been formed in Istanbul Commerce Centre. It is hoped that the new office will be able to keep up with the demand.

A Successful Record of Investors

Although the country enjoyed a huge rise in the number of people that applied to its citizenship by investment program, it was always a rather sought-after program in the region. In 2018 alone 250 applications went through which brought the country about 100 million dollars via various investment types. There was a total of 4.8-Billion-dollar worth of sale of real estate to foreigners in 2017, and this number increased to 10 Billion by the end of 2018. Around 75.000 units of housing in total was sold to foreigners in the last two years. With the current change in the pricing of the program this number can only expected to grow.