Price of Turkey’s Citizenship by Investment Program Cut to $250,000

According to an Official Gazette (in Turkish), new prices are now in effect for the Turkey citizenship by investment program. 

The minimum investment necessary to qualify for citizenship is now US$250,000, down by three quarters from the initial minimum requirement of $1 million. Investors may choose from a variety of options, including real estate, bank deposits, job creation, and capital investments.

The new investment requirements are for real estate $250,000 (down from $1 million); for bank deposits $500,000 (down from $3 million); for capital investment $500,000 (down from $2 million).

For the job creation option, fifty positions of employment are now sufficient, down from 100.

Read also: Bowing to Market Forces: Turkey to Cut CIP-Price From $1 Million to $300,000

Laszlo Kiss, head of Discus Holdings, a leading investment migration firm with a significant presence in Turkey, thinks the program’s policy change could benefit savvy investors with a moderate tolerance for risk.

“Turkey is in a financial crisis, with the depreciation of the Turkish Lira, the real estate investors who invested five years ago lost a lot of funds. Currently, with the effect of the crisis and the depreciation, available prices for real estate investment for pleasure or as an investment seems to offer a quite good upside potential in the medium term,” writes Kiss in an email.

What does Turkey offer? Without visa-free access to Schengen, a Turkish passport in itself is not particularly attractive, but Turkey is an E2-treaty signatory country, which means its nationals are eligible for E-2 visas in the US.

Update: A previous version of this article indicated the Turkish CIP may offer an expedited route to EB-5 visas for nationals from retrogression countries. This is not the case as EB-5 visas – contrary to E2 visas – are issued on the basis of country of birth rather than of citizenship.