Buying Property at a Turkish Enforcement Auction as a Foreigner: The Electronic Sale and the Domestic-Address Bar (İİK Art. 134)

For a foreign bidder that raises two separate questions: whether Land Registry Law Art. 35 permits the holding at all, and whether İİK Art. 134 lets you be heard if the sale is attacked.

A foreign national can bid at a Turkish enforcement auction, and can win one: the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law No. 2004 (İcra ve İflas Kanunu, “İİK”) attaches no nationality condition to bidding, and ownership passes to the highest bidder at the moment the electronic auction closes (İİK Arts. 115/2 and 129). Whether that win survives is decided by two entirely separate filters: Article 35 of Land Registry Law No. 2644, which governs whether a foreigner may hold the property at all, and İİK Article 134/2, which allows only a closed list of persons — and only those who show an address inside Türkiye — to attack or defend the sale before the enforcement court.

Law No. 7343 of 2021 moved Turkish enforcement sales onto an electronic portal integrated into the National Judiciary Informatics System (UYAP), and amendments in 2022, 2024, 2025 and July 2026 have continued to reshape the timetable, the bid increments and the penalties for non-payment. This page sets out the procedure and the allocation of risk as the statute now reads. It is not investment guidance: an enforcement sale is a forced sale, and the law places most of the risk on the buyer.

1. How the Electronic Sale Actually Runs (İİK Arts. 111/b, 114, 123)

Under İİK Article 111/b the sale of an attached asset takes place by open auction on the UYAP-integrated electronic sale portal, and the bidding window is seven days. Each bid must exceed the last by at least the statutory increment, which the article expresses both as a proportion of the appraised value and as an absolute floor. A bid in the final ten minutes extends the auction by three minutes, and each further bid extends it again by three, with the cumulative extension capped at one hour unless the Ministry of Justice shortens, extends or removes that cap.

Immovables are to be sold within three months of the sale request (İİK Art. 123), and Article 126 applies the Article 114 preparation regime to them: the auction dates are advertised at least fifteen days before bidding opens, the second auction begins no later than one month after the first ends, and the advertisement must state the participation conditions — which is where a foreign bidder’s planning starts.

The enforcement director draws up the auction result minutes on the first business day after bidding ends and publishes them on the portal the same day; where a technical fault prevented bids in the final ten minutes, the auction is extended by one day (İİK Art. 115). The wider machinery that produces these files — attachment, valuation, distribution — is set out in our overview of debt collection and enforcement in Türkiye.

2. What You Are Buying: No Warranty, and the Burdens Come With It

The Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098 (“TBK”) is blunt in Article 280: the rules on liability for eviction and for defects do not apply to forced auctions, and the buyer becomes owner together with the condition, rights and burdens apparent from the land register, from the sale terms, or from the law. The seller’s warranty that the same article preserves belongs to voluntary auctions, not to enforcement sales.

İİK Article 125 then specifies what travels with the title. The immovable is sold together with the easements, real burdens, mortgages, mortgage bonds and income bonds registered on it, and the debtor’s personal debts secured by that immovable pass to the buyer. The article immediately qualifies this: matured debts secured by a charge on the immovable are not transferred to the buyer at all, but are paid preferentially out of the sale price. Where a mortgage-secured debt does pass, the original debtor is released only if the creditor has failed, within one year of the auction, to notify that it reserves its right of recourse.

Two documents in the file carry most of the answer. Before the sale the enforcement officer lists every encumbrance registered in the land registry or resting on an official deed, serves the list on the attaching creditors and the debtor and allows three days for objection, and has the property valued with the effect of those encumbrances taken into account (İİK Art. 128). Anyone served with the valuation report may complain to the enforcement court within seven days, and a valuation that has become final binds for two years unless a natural disaster or a very significant change in the zoning position intervenes (İİK Art. 128/a). The advertisement in turn calls on mortgagees and other interested parties to declare their rights with supporting documents within fifteen days, failing which they are excluded from the distribution unless the right appears in the land register (İİK Art. 126).

None of this is a title report prepared for the buyer; it is prepared for the enforcement file. A bidder who wants the equivalent of the pre-contract due diligence described in our guide to buying property in Türkiye as a foreigner must commission it independently inside the fifteen-day advertisement window, and our real estate law page sets out how that review is structured.

3. Ownership Before Registration, and the Article 35 Filter

The Turkish Civil Code No. 4721 (“TMK”) provides in Article 705 that ownership of an immovable is acquired by registration, then lists the exceptions in which it is acquired earlier — inheritance, court judgment, forced execution, occupation, expropriation. An enforcement auction is forced execution, so the successful bidder is owner from the close of the auction. The same paragraph adds the restriction that matters: in these cases the owner cannot carry out dispositions — sale, mortgage — until the ownership is entered in the register.

That is where Land Registry Law No. 2644 Article 35 enters. Foreign natural persons may acquire immovables and limited real rights in Türkiye only if they are nationals of countries determined by Presidential decision, and their total holding may not exceed ten per cent of the privately-owned surface area of the district or thirty hectares per person nationwide, a figure the President may double. Foreign commercial companies formed under their own national laws may acquire only within the framework of special legislation; other foreign legal persons may not acquire at all. One exception runs the other way: those limits do not apply to the creation of a mortgage in favour of such companies or of foreign natural persons — a foreign lender may hold Turkish security and enforce it even where it could not itself hold the land.

Article 35 also requires a foreign buyer of unbuilt land to submit the project to be developed for ministerial approval within two years, and it channels military forbidden zones, military security zones, strategic zones and special security zones into the registry through maps and coordinates supplied by the Ministry of National Defence and the Ministry of Interior.

The sanction sits in the final paragraph of Article 35: immovables acquired contrary to the article — along with those used contrary to the purpose of acquisition, or where the project was not submitted or not realised in time — must be liquidated by the owner within a period set by the Ministry of Finance not exceeding one year, failing which they are liquidated and converted into money, the price being paid to the entitled person. A bidder who wins outside the Article 35 boundaries therefore does not simply lose the bid; the person acquires an ownership the state can compel to be turned back into cash. Turkish companies in which foreign natural persons, foreign legal persons or international organisations hold fifty per cent or more of the shares, or the power to appoint or dismiss the majority of managers, are governed instead by Article 36, which permits acquisition to carry on the activities stated in the articles of association. Either way the question belongs to the competent Land Registry Directorate, on the specific parcel and the specific nationality, and it must be settled before the deposit is paid.

4. The Domestic-Address Bar in İİK Article 134

İİK Article 134/2, as amended in 2021 and again in December 2025, attaches a condition of standing that catches non-residents directly. An application to set the auction aside — including on the grounds in TBK Art. 281, which addresses auctions procured by unlawful or immoral means — may be made only by the creditor who requested the sale, the debtor, those recorded in the official register of the attached asset, holders of limited real rights, and those who took part in the auction by bidding, and only “on condition of showing an address inside Türkiye”, by complaint to the enforcement court within seven days of the auction date. An application by anyone outside that list is rejected on the file, and that rejection is final.

The seven-day clock is unforgiving because the article deems interested parties to have learned of any irregularity in the steps up to the auction by the auction day at the latest. It runs from actual knowledge only in the narrow cases the article names — the sale advertisement was not served, or an error in the essential qualities of the property, or fraud in the auction, is discovered afterwards — and even then it cannot exceed one year from publication of the auction decision on the portal. In every case the applicant must prove that the irregularity harmed that applicant’s own interests.

Where the fee or the security is missing or short, the court issues a two-week peremptory notice and, if it is not made good, rejects the application on the file. A hearing is held within twenty days, unless the application must be refused on procedural grounds. The decision may be appealed to the regional court of appeal within two weeks of service, above a monetary threshold the statute revalues annually; İİK Art. 363 keeps neighbouring decisions final and unappealable — notably complaints about the valuation and decisions on the deposit required to take part in the auction — and provides that an appeal suspends no enforcement step other than the sale.

For a foreign bidder the operative point is administrative rather than substantive: an address inside Türkiye must exist and be capable of accepting service on the day the auction closes. In practice that address is established by a notarised power of attorney designating a Turkish address for service before bidding begins — not afterwards, when the seven-day period is already running.

5. Payment, Registration and Possession (İİK Arts. 130, 131, 134, 135)

The price is payable in cash within seven days of publication of the result minutes even if an application to set the auction aside has been filed, unless the buyer bid by set-off against its own claim (İİK Arts. 130 and 134). Money paid in is held in an interest-bearing account until that application is finally decided, then released with the interest to those entitled.

Two protections sit on the buyer’s side. The auction price is not paid out to the creditors until the auction is final and the property has been delivered or made ready for delivery; where it cannot be, the enforcement director cancels the auction and returns the price to the buyer (İİK Art. 134). And on the buyer’s request the office orders a tenant to pay the rent, and any other occupier a monthly use fee set by a court-appointed valuer, into the enforcement file pending the outcome; an occupier who ignores the order is pursued under İİK Art. 356 by analogy, without a separate judgment.

Against that, during any period allowed for payment the property is administered by the enforcement office at the buyer’s risk and expense, and no registration may be made without the office’s permission (İİK Art. 131). The writ to the land registry issues only after the complaint period has expired or, if a complaint was filed, after the decision has become final (İİK Arts. 134 and 135). Possession then follows İİK Art. 135/2: a fifteen-day eviction order and forced removal where the property is occupied by the debtor or by others without a contract evidenced by an official document dated before the attachment — and no such route where a pre-attachment official document does exist.

The file should also be read for how the asset entered the debtor’s estate. Where a creditor reached the property through a judgment under İİK Arts. 277-284, title may still stand in a third party’s name while the creditor holds only a statutory power to realise it — the structure explained in our note on the action for annulment of fraudulent conveyance. Where a third party asserts that the attached asset was never the debtor’s, the third-party ownership claim over seized goods procedure under İİK Art. 97 may be running alongside the sale.

6. A Pre-Bid Sequence for a Non-Resident Bidder

1. Confirm with the competent Land Registry Directorate, before any money moves, that the nationality and the specific parcel fall within Land Registry Law Art. 35 — district and per-person area limits and any military or security zone restriction included.
2. Read the encumbrance list and the valuation report in the enforcement file (İİK Arts. 128 and 128/a); İİK Art. 125 makes the sale terms decisive on which costs fall on the buyer.
3. Establish a Turkish address for service and a notarised power of attorney covering both bidding through a representative (İİK Art. 114) and any application under İİK Art. 134.
4. Position funds so the 10% deposit is credited before 23:30 on the day preceding the close of bidding, or arrange a definite and open-ended bank guarantee letter for delivery by close of business on the last business day.
5. Reserve the full price for the seven-day post-auction window, which runs whether or not anyone applies to set the auction aside.