Property fraud in Türkiye is answered on two tracks opened together, not in sequence. Criminally, a denunciation goes to the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office under Article 158 of Criminal Procedure Law No. 5271: fraud (dolandırıcılık) carries 1 to 5 years’ imprisonment plus a judicial fine of up to 5,000 days (Article 157 of Criminal Code No. 5237) and 3 to 10 years in its aggravated form (Article 158). Civilly, the action is title cancellation and registration (tapu iptali ve tescil) under Article 1025 of Civil Code No. 4721, or unjust enrichment under Article 77 of Code of Obligations No. 6098. What usually decides the outcome is a third element: freezing the assets before they reach a good-faith third party. The position is as at September 2026.
Which fraud patterns recur most often?
Fraud here rarely attacks the register itself, well defended as it is by the official-form requirement. It attacks what precedes it.
Forged or over-used powers of attorney end in a registration in someone else’s name, and cover genuine instruments used for unauthorised transactions as well as outright forgeries. Article 204 punishes creating a forged official document, altering a genuine one so as to deceive, or using a forged one with 2 to 5 years’ imprisonment, increased by half where the document remains valid until its forgery is established.
Double sales turn on the rule that ownership passes on registration: the registered buyer owns the unit, the other holds a personal claim. Annotation (şerh) changes that — Article 1009 lets a promise to sell (satış vaadi) be annotated, after which it binds rights acquired later. But that promise is valid only in official form (Article 237 of the Code of Obligations), drawn up by a notary in düzenleme form under Article 89 of Notaries Law No. 1512; a private paper signed in an agency office is not a promise to sell and cannot be annotated at all.
Impersonating intermediaries and phantom projects run on status, not documents. Article 158 lists matching circumstances: commission by merchants or company managers in commercial activity (bent h); information systems or banks used as an instrument (bent f), the closest fit for fake listings; posing as a public official or bank, insurance or credit employee (bent l); and abuse by liberal professionals of professional trust (bent i). Characterisation is for the prosecutor and the court.
Deposit scams need care: not every lost deposit is a crime, since fraud requires fraudulent acts deceiving a person and producing a benefit at their expense. Money given at the making of a contract is bağlanma parası — proof of the contract and, unless the contract or local custom provides otherwise, deducted from the price — not the price of walking away (Article 177); forfeiture or double return applies only where a cayma parası was agreed (Article 178). See recovering a deposit (kapora).
When is fraud aggravated, and is there a deadline to complain?
In sub-paragraphs (e), (f), (j), (k) and (l) the custodial minimum rises to four years and the judicial fine may be no less than twice the benefit obtained — a floor, not a ceiling, and one that applies only to those five sub-paragraphs. Article 158/3 increases the penalty by one half where three or more act together, and doubles it within a criminal organisation. The 3-to-10-year range came from Law No. 6763 of 24 November 2016, displacing the two-to-seven-year figure still repeated in some sources. Cutting the other way, Article 158/4, added by Law No. 7589 of 16 July 2026 (Official Gazette, 31 July 2026), halves the penalty where a person’s participation in fraud under Article 157 or 158 is limited to handing someone else a payment instrument such as a bank or credit card, or the mandatory information or devices enabling use of an account held at a bank, intermediary institution, payment service provider or crypto-asset service provider, in order to obtain an unjust benefit. That is the account holder through whom the money moved — still a participant in the offence, but no longer sentenced on the same footing as the person who ran the deception.
There is no complaint deadline. Neither Article 157 nor 158 requires a complaint; the six-month period in Article 73 governs only complaint-dependent offences, and the sole such form here is Article 159, fraud to collect a claim based on a legal relationship. Time bites through limitation instead: Article 66 bars prosecution after 8 years for Article 157 and 15 years for Article 158. Ordinary fraud falls within reconciliation (uzlaştırma) under Article 253; aggravated fraud does not. Denunciations go to the prosecutor or law enforcement — or, for offences abroad but prosecutable here, to Türkiye’s embassies and consulates.
An underused lever: effective remorse (etkin pişmanlık) under Article 168. Full restitution before prosecution begins cuts the sentence by up to two-thirds; after prosecution but before judgment, by up to one half. Partial restitution additionally requires the victim’s consent.
What does the civil track deliver?
Article 1025 lets a person whose real right is harmed by an unwarranted registration (yolsuz tescil) sue for correction; Article 1024 treats an entry as unwarranted where it rests on a non-binding legal act or lacks a legal ground. The limit is the good-faith third party: Article 1023 protects someone acquiring a real right in good-faith reliance on the register. Hence the race — every day before an annotation is a day in which a protected later purchaser can arise.
Two fallbacks matter. Unjust enrichment (Article 77) is time-barred two years from learning of the right to reclaim and ten years from the enrichment (Article 82). And under Article 1007 the State is liable for all damage arising from the keeping of the land registry, with recourse against at-fault officials — the route that matters when the property itself cannot be recovered.
Where the occupier holds no title at all rather than a forged one, the civil route is a different one, set out in prevention of interference and ecrimisil.
How are assets frozen before they move?
Interim injunction (ihtiyati tedbir). Article 389 of Civil Procedure Law No. 6100 applies where a change in the existing situation would make obtaining the right significantly harder or impossible, or delay would cause serious harm. Its force comes from annotation: Article 1010 lists court decisions protecting disputed rights among annotatable restrictions on disposal, which then bind rights acquired later.
Provisional attachment (ihtiyati haciz). Article 257 of Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law No. 2004 covers a matured, unsecured money debt. Article 259 requires the applicant to put up security for the loss the debtor or a third party may suffer if the attachment proves unjustified — none where the claim rests on a judgment, court discretion where it rests on a document equivalent to one, and no percentage fixed by statute. No suit need be pending, but a creditor who attaches first must file enforcement or suit within seven days of execution, or the attachment lapses (Article 264).
Criminal seizure (elkoyma). Article 128 permits seizure — on strong suspicion based on concrete evidence that the offence occurred and the assets derive from it — of immovables, bank accounts, rights, receivables and company shares, even in another person’s possession. Both fraud offences and breach of trust (Article 155) are expressly listed; only a judge may order it, and an immovable is seized by annotation in the land registry. Article 128/A, added by Law No. 7571 of 24 December 2025, is faster for money moved electronically: a bank, payment service provider or crypto-asset service provider may itself suspend an account for up to 48 hours on reasonable suspicion of aggravated fraud under bents (f) or (l), reporting at once to the prosecutor; proceeds seized in that window are returned to the victim.
| Pattern | Criminal | Civil | Urgent measure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forged power of attorney | Fraud (157/158), forgery (204) | Title cancellation (1025) | Annotated injunction (389 + 1010) |
| Double sale | Fraud, depending on the facts | Cancellation or damages | Prior annotation of the satış vaadi (1009) |
| Impersonating broker | Aggravated fraud (158) | Unjust enrichment (77) | Account seizure (128 and 128/A) |
| Deposit scam | Fraud if fraudulent acts are made out | Unjust enrichment (77) | Provisional attachment (257) |
How is property fraud prevented?
Prevention is formal rather than investigative, because Turkish law made form the barrier: a sale is valid only by official deed at the Land Registry Directorate, and a promise to sell — like a power of attorney for a registry transaction — only before a notary in düzenleme form (Article 237 of the Code of Obligations; Article 89 of Notaries Law No. 1512). Where a developer has failed rather than deceived, the analysis differs: see developer bankruptcy and konkordato and suing a developer in the consumer courts.
The instruments exist; their effectiveness falls sharply with time, and what is usually lost is not the right but the ability to enforce it. For the wider framework see buying property in Türkiye as a foreigner, the stage-by-stage guide to protecting a property investment in Türkiye, and our real estate practice.
