You verify a Turkish tapu before buying by reading the property’s current page in the land register (tapu kütüğü) at the competent Land Registry Directorate (Tapu Müdürlüğü), not the paper copy the seller produces. The register is public: under Article 1020 of Turkish Civil Code No. 4721 (Türk Medeni Kanunu) anyone who makes their interest credible may ask to be shown the relevant page and documents before the registry officer, or to be given copies, and no one may plead ignorance of an entry in the register. As a rule, ownership of immovable property is acquired by registration, not by contract (Article 705); the transfer contract is valid only in official form (Article 706); and that official deed (resmî senet) is drawn up at the Directorate under Article 26 of Land Registry Law No. 2644 (Tapu Kanunu). Three things are read before any commitment or payment: the type of title registered (condominium ownership (kat mülkiyeti), construction servitude (kat irtifakı) or a bare undivided share of land), what the annotations, declarations and mortgage columns say, and whether an occupancy permit (yapı kullanma izni) exists. The dates on the page matter as well: under the same Article 26, an annotated notarised promise to sell is struck off ex officio if no sale is made within five years of the annotation.
These checks are not a formality before signing; they are the whole of the buyer’s security in a system built on the register. The register is public, and a buyer who does not read it is treated as if they had. This guide sets out how the page is read, where the online enquiries stop, and which signs should halt the purchase, on the law as at September 2026. It is one chapter of the stage-by-stage guide to protecting a property investment in Türkiye and sits alongside the general guide to buying property in Türkiye as a foreigner.
How can I verify a Turkish title deed (tapu) before buying property?
Work from the register, not from the documents handed to you. First fix the province, district, block (ada), parcel (parsel) and unit number and match them on the TKGM parcel enquiry; then have the owner authorise you through Web Tapu, or attend the Directorate yourself as a person with a credible interest under Article 1020 of the Civil Code. Read every column of the page, owner, annotations, declarations, mortgages and servitudes, entry by entry; because a land charge is created by registration in the land register (Article 856 of the Civil Code), a mortgage will as a rule appear there. Finally, confirm the occupancy permit and the zoning status at the municipality and complete the transfer by official deed at the Directorate, the only form in which the contract is valid (Article 706).
What is the difference between the tapu document and the register page?
The title deed document (tapu senedi) is a copy handed to the right-holder on completion, together with the application form, the official deed and any mortgage documents, under Article 85 of the Land Registry Regulation (Tapu Sicili Tüzüğü); copies of the other documents making up the register are issued to an interested person on request.
But the document depicts only the moment it was issued. The current legal position lives on the property’s page, updated with every transaction. That is why the buyer’s first question is the date of the enquiry, not its content: a year-old paper says nothing about a mortgage registered last month.
The page is divided into columns: the owner column (malik), recording the owner’s identity, the cause of acquisition, and the date and journal number of the entry, with co-ownership shares shown as fractions (Article 28 of the Regulation); the servitudes column (Article 30); the mortgages column (Article 31); the annotations column (şerhler) (Article 46); and the declarations column (beyanlar) (Article 52). Every entry carries a date and a journal number (yevmiye), the key to tracing the sequence and rank of rights.
Article 1020 of the Civil Code settles the consequence: the land register is public; anyone who makes their interest credible may ask to see the relevant page and its documents or to be given copies; and no one may plead ignorance of an entry in the register. The rule protects the person who reads, not the person who neglects to.
Condominium ownership, construction servitude, or a land share?
This is the most important line on the deed, and the one most often misread in offers to buyers abroad.
Under Article 1 of Condominium Law No. 634 (Kat Mülkiyeti Kanunu), condominium ownership (kat mülkiyeti) is created over the separately and independently usable parts of a completed building — a floor, an apartment, an office, a shop, a cellar, a warehouse. Where the building is under construction or not yet built, servitude rights (kat irtifakı) are created over those future units as the basis for the condominium ownership to follow. Article 3 adds that condominium ownership is a special ownership tied to the land share and the common areas of the parent property, and the construction servitude a type of servitude tied to the land share.
The difference is not one of quality but of legal status: a deed reading kat irtifakı means the building is not yet legally complete. Buying it is lawful, but completion of the position stays suspended on a future event controlled by someone else.
There is a third case, fundamentally different from both: an undivided share in a parcel of land with no independent unit registered against it. Here the buyer holds no real right over any particular apartment, whatever plans were shown; only a contractual promise backed by a co-ownership share in land. The distinction — a land share as part of a registered right over an independent unit, or as the whole of what was bought — is the one most often blurred in marketing material.
Why does the size of the land share (arsa payı) matter?
Because it measures the unit’s stake in the land and the common property.
The second paragraph of Article 3 of Law No. 634, as amended by Law No. 5711 of 2007, provides that condominium ownership and construction servitude are created by expressly showing, on co-ownership principles, the land share allocated in the project to each independent unit in proportion to its value by location and size. Where shares were not so allocated, every condominium owner or servitude holder may apply to the court for re-allocation. The article then closes the door to later manipulation: the share allocated cannot be changed on account of a later rise or fall in the unit’s value.
The consequence is practical: a land share disproportionately small for the unit’s value is a defect that passes to the buyer with the unit, and its remedy is a court application, not a negotiation. The figure is therefore read against its neighbours in the same project, never in isolation.
What do the annotations, declarations and mortgage columns say?
The annotations column (şerhler). Under Article 46 of the Land Registry Regulation it carries personal rights, annotations that restrict or bar the power of disposal, provisional-registration annotations and whatever else statute provides for. Article 1009 of the Civil Code lists the personal rights that can be annotated: the construction contract in return for a land share, the promise to sell, the lease, the rights of purchase, pre-emption and repurchase, and any other right a statute expressly makes annotable. The effect is that an annotated right can be asserted against those who later acquire rights in the property — the buyer included. An annotated lease binds the buyer after ownership passes; an annotated promise to sell in someone else’s favour ranks ahead of them.
The promise to sell has a time rule of its own. Article 26 of Law No. 2644 allows a notarised promise-to-sell contract to be annotated at the request of either party, and the annotation is struck off ex officio if no sale is made or right registered within five years. An old annotation may therefore have lapsed; an unannotated promise binds its parties but not third parties.
Some restrictions on disposal exist without any annotation at all. Article 194 of the Civil Code prevents one spouse from transferring the family home, restricting the rights over it or terminating its lease without the other spouse’s express consent, and lets the non-owning spouse ask the Directorate to annotate the home as such. The absence of the annotation does not dispense with the question about the seller’s marital position.
The declarations column (beyanlar). Under Article 52 of the Regulation it carries what legislation requires to be recorded, with date and journal number. More importantly, its second paragraph obliges the Directorate to note ex officio any legal or technical reason it finds that makes a registration, amendment, deletion or correction defective (yolsuz). The same column records an earlier refusal decision, the refused transaction being barred until the ground is removed (Article 26 of the Regulation); appurtenances (eklenti), entered on the owner’s written request (Article 53); and places set aside for common use — social facilities, commercial premises, swimming pools, tennis courts — with the block, parcel or unit they are shared with (Article 29). The storeroom the seller promises is either recorded or merely asserted.
The mortgages and servitudes columns. A mortgage is created only by registration in the land register — subject to statutory exceptions — and the contract creating it requires official form (Article 856 of the Civil Code); it is entered in its column under a letter indicating its type, with amount, rank, term, date and journal number (Article 31 of the Regulation). Servitudes and real burdens are entered on the pages of both the benefiting and the burdened property (Article 30). The published guidance of TKGM and of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressly recommends checking for mortgages, attachments and anything else preventing a sale at the competent Directorate before buying.
What does the occupancy permit (iskân) reveal?
Article 30 of Zoning Law No. 3194 (İmar Kanunu) requires an occupancy permit from the municipality or governorate that issued the construction permit before a finished building, or a finished unit of it, may be used; the authority must decide within thirty days, failing which permission is deemed granted. Its closing sentence cuts against wishful reading: the permit releases the owner neither from liability for breaches of the law or the construction permit nor from any tax, duty or fee. Article 31 makes the date the permit is granted the building’s completion date, and withholds electricity, water and sewerage from buildings without one, while allowing the connection of units that have obtained it.
This is where the two statutes meet. The third paragraph of Article 3 of Law No. 634, as amended by Law No. 5912 of 2009, provides that a construction servitude is converted ex officio (resen) into condominium ownership on the strength of the occupancy permit issued for the whole building, and that the step may be taken even on the request of the land owner or of a single co-owner holding a servitude. The permit is the key; once it exists an individual owner needs no unanimity to turn it. What a missing permit blocks, and what it does not, is set out in the companion note on buying a Turkish apartment without an occupancy permit.
Where do the online enquiries stop?
Three official channels, each with a limit:
- The parcel enquiry at parselsorgu.tkgm.gov.tr returns the basic parcel data — province, district (ilçe), neighbourhood, sheet (pafta), block (ada), parcel (parsel), area and type — without personal data and from anywhere. It confirms that the parcel exists and where it is; nothing about the owner or the burdens.
- The title-information enquiry on the e-Devlet portal, provided jointly with TKGM, lets an authenticated user see their own entries. A buyer cannot inspect the seller’s property from their own account, and a forwarded screenshot is not verification.
- The Web Tapu system is the bridge: an owner can authorise a named person to inspect the information on their property and can withdraw that authorisation. A seller’s refusal to grant it is itself information. A Directorate appointment can also be booked online or through the 181 call line.
Even so, attendance at the competent Land Registry Directorate remains the decisive check for mortgages, attachments and bars on sale, on the official guidance itself. The online enquiry directs the check; it does not replace it.
What does a foreign buyer’s position add?
A further layer sits over the ordinary check. The area ceilings and location restrictions in Article 35 of Law No. 2644 — no more than ten per cent of the privately owned area of a district, and thirty hectares per person nationwide — are applied inside the registry system on the basis of the maps and coordinates of military and security zones supplied by the ministries. Where the property is unbuilt (yapısız), a development project must be submitted to the competent ministry within two years; the approved project is noted in the declarations column and its execution monitored — an entry the next buyer will read.
On procedure: since 24 January 2022, under TKGM Circular No. 2022/1 implementing Article 13 of the Capital Movements Circular, a foreign natural person presents a foreign-currency purchase certificate (Döviz Alım Belgesi), and its Turkish-lira amount is recorded in the official deed as the value on which the title fee is calculated. Since 9 December 2024, under TKGM Circular No. 2024/4 as amended, a valuation report is no longer required in foreigners’ ordinary transactions; where the purchase is meant to support a citizenship application, the investment amount is instead confirmed by an amount-determination certificate (Tutar Tespit Belgesi) — a track outside this guide. Both positions are stated as at September 2026. No residence permit is required to own property; TKGM’s document list does include compulsory earthquake insurance (DASK). A sworn translator is required if a party does not speak Turkish, because the page and the official deed are in Turkish. A buyer who cannot attend acts through a power of attorney executed abroad, which must meet exacting formal requirements.
Signs that should halt the purchase
- An old extract or a copy of the deed instead of a recent entry obtained under authorisation or at the Directorate.
- A declaration pointing to a ground that makes an entry defective (yolsuz), or to an earlier refusal decision whose ground has not been removed.
- A construction servitude without an occupancy permit, with oral assurances that the permit is imminent.
- An undivided share of land presented as an apartment, or a land share out of proportion to the unit’s value.
- An annotated promise to sell or lease in someone else’s favour, or an annotation restricting the power of disposal.
- A subsisting mortgage or attachment, or promised annexes and common areas with no trace in the declarations column.
- A family home sold without the other spouse’s express consent.
- Payment before registration, or outside traceable banking channels; ownership passes only by registration, and whoever pays before it pays on trust, not on right. The recurring patterns are set out in real estate fraud in Türkiye: types and remedies.
Reading a tapu is less a technical skill than an ordering of questions: what right is registered, who owns it and since when, what burdens are entered against it, and whether the building is legally complete. The register answers all of them for whoever asks in time. These points are ordinarily reviewed within our Turkish real estate law work before any contract is signed or sum transferred: correcting an entry after ownership has passed is lengthy court work; reading it beforehand is an hour’s.
Related Practice Areas and Legal Guides
- Real Estate and Property Law: property purchases by foreigners, title checks and lease disputes.
- Protecting a Property Investment in Türkiye: Stage-by-Stage Guide: the hub this guide belongs to, from pre-contract checks to inheritance.
- Buying Property in Türkiye as a Foreigner: who may acquire under Article 35, taxes and the transfer process.
- Buying a Turkish Apartment Without an Occupancy Permit: which transactions Articles 30–31 of the Zoning Law block.
- Legal Services in Istanbul for Foreign Clients and Companies: representation before the property and commercial courts in Istanbul.
