If an investment incentive certificate (yatırım teşvik belgesi) in Türkiye is revoked, the support already received does not merely stop: it is recovered from the investor as a public receivable, with a default surcharge attached. Article 32(3) of Decision No. 9903 on State Aids in Investments, published in the Official Gazette of 30 May 2025 and numbered 32915, provides that where certificates are revoked or a partial sanction is applied, the support provided is recovered from the investor within the framework of Law No. 6183 on the Collection Procedure of Public Receivables. But the same article also contains the provision that decides most files in practice, and it points the other way.
What Article 32 Actually Says — Including Its Reservation
Article 32(1) lists the conduct that leads to revocation. It covers acting contrary to the decision or related legislation, failing to meet the entries and conditions recorded in the certificate, falsification of the certificate or other documents, issuing or using false and materially misleading documents, giving incorrect and misleading information, selling machinery and equipment covered by the certificate before the prescribed periods or causing it to be sold — including, in express terms, transactions carried out through enforcement or bankruptcy proceedings because of unmet obligations towards other institutions or firms — failing to complete the investment and the ecosystem development plan within the period recorded in the certificate, and failing to observe the minimum investment amounts.
The paragraph then ends: the certificates of such investors are revoked without prejudice to the provision of the second paragraph. Reading the list without reading that closing clause produces exactly the impression that circulates online — that any breach ends the certificate. It does not.
Revocation or Partial Sanction: The Distinction That Sets the Figure
Article 32(2) is the reservation. Where the investor has partly failed to perform its obligations but revocation of the certificate is not required either, the relevant portion of the support provided under the certificate is recovered by applying a sanction.
Two consequences follow. First, the choice between full revocation and partial sanction is a legal characterisation of the facts, not an arithmetic step — it turns on whether the failure is partial and whether revocation is genuinely required. Second, the recoverable amount is defined by reference to the part of the support that corresponds to the unmet obligation, which means the file has to be broken down support by support rather than settled as a single number.
Article 32(4) adds an exposure that catches finance parties: where machinery and equipment are subject to a financial lease, the corresponding portion of the sanction may be applied, wholly or partly, to the leasing company as well.
Revocation and sanction are not the only recovery mechanism in the decision. Article 33(1) provides that investments benefiting from the support elements in Decision No. 9903 may not benefit from the supports of other public institutions and organisations, and that where this is breached the supports enjoyed under the decision are recovered within the framework of the relevant legislation. The sentence that follows rescues a category of files: investments that have benefited only from a subsidised credit support of another public body, or from another support relating to the credit used within the investment, may still be granted the other support elements of the decision, provided that no interest or profit-share support and no machinery support is given for that credit. The paragraph extends that possibility to every certificate whose completion visa has not been made, including certificates issued under earlier decisions.
What Each Support Costs on the Way Back
The recovery does not travel through one channel. Customs duty exemption under Article 13, VAT exemption under Article 14, interest or profit-share support under Article 15, machinery support under Article 16 and reduced corporate tax under Article 20 of Decision No. 9903 are unwound under different laws, on different measures, with different penalties.
| Support | Provision governing recovery | Interest runs from | Tax-loss penalty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interest or profit-share support | Art. 15(8), Decision No. 9903 | The date of each individual support payment | Not applicable — default surcharge under Art. 51, Law No. 6183 |
| Machinery support | Art. 17(5), Decision No. 9903 | The date of each individual support payment | Not applicable — default surcharge under Art. 51, Law No. 6183 |
| VAT exemption on machinery and equipment | Art. 13(d), VAT Law No. 3065 | The date the tax should have been collected (default interest) | Yes — collected from the buyer with a tax-loss penalty |
| Reduced corporate tax | Art. 32/A(5) and (6), Law No. 5520 | The date the tax should have accrued (default interest) | No — expressly collected without a tax-loss penalty |
| Excess support found at the completion visa | Art. 29(8), Decision No. 9903 | Under Law No. 6183 | Not applicable |
Two lines in that table deserve emphasis. Articles 15(8) and 17(5) both run the Article 51 default surcharge from the date each support payment was made — so on a multi-year credit facility the claim is not one debt but a series of separately dated ones, and the oldest instalments carry the longest surcharge. Article 15(8) closes with a sentence that widens its reach considerably: this provision applies to certificates issued under this decision and under earlier decisions.
The VAT and corporate tax lines diverge for a reason worth knowing before a file is argued. Article 13(d) of VAT Law No. 3065 provides that where the investment is not realised as foreseen in the certificate, the tax not collected in time is collected from the buyer with a tax-loss penalty and default interest, and it resets the limitation period to the start of the calendar year following the year in which the event requiring assessment occurred. Article 32/A(5) of Corporate Tax Law No. 5520, by contrast, collects taxes not accrued in time without applying a tax-loss penalty, together with default interest. Because these are assessed by the tax administration under their own laws, they survive independently of anything said to the Ministry of Industry and Technology; they belong with the rest of a company’s Turkish tax exposure rather than with the incentive file.
Which Decision Governs a Certificate Issued Before 30 May 2025
This is where most published commentary is now wrong, because it describes rules that were repealed. Article 34 of Decision No. 9903 repealed Decision No. 2012/3305 on State Aids in Investments and Decision No. 2018/11201 on the Support of Investments within the Scope of the Attraction Centres Programme. Article 28 of Communiqué No. 2025/1 repealed their implementing communiqués.
Repeal, however, did not move existing certificates onto the new regime. Provisional Article 2(1) provides that practice concerning certificates issued under decisions preceding the entry into force of Decision No. 9903 continues within the framework of the decision on which the certificate is based and other related decisions. Provisional Article 1 of the Communiqué says the same about the implementing legislation. Provisional Article 1 of the decision handles applications that were still pending on the entry-into-force date: they are concluded under the decisions in force on the application date, although a request for a new certificate may, if the applicant asks, be assessed under Decision No. 9903.
So the first question on any revocation letter is not what Article 32 says. It is which decision the certificate rests on — because the ground relied on must be found there. A handful of provisions in Decision No. 9903 do reach back by their own terms, and each says so in its own text: Article 15(8) on the surcharge, Article 28(5) on relocation, Article 29(5) on the completion visa, and Article 29(6) and (7) on completion expertise. Those express extensions are the exceptions to look for, not a general rule.
Revocation by Silence: The Completion Visa Deadline
More certificates are lost to a missed filing than to any inspection finding. Article 29(2) provides that the period needed to complete the investment is submitted by the investor, that the Ministry may reduce it to three years where the proposal is longer, and that where the investment cannot be realised in time an additional period of up to half the original period may be granted.
Article 29(5) then sets the sequence that ends certificates. The investor applies for the completion visa within three months following the end of the period or the additional period. If it does not, the Ministry notifies the investor to apply. If no application is made within two months of that notification, the certificate is revoked under Article 32. The paragraph adds that where no application was made in that time and the certificate is subsequently revoked or partially sanctioned for any reason, responsibility for the penalty arising from the elapsed time belongs to the investor — the delay is charged to the company, not treated as a neutral gap. And it closes by extending itself to certificates issued under earlier decisions.
Article 26 of Communiqué No. 2025/1 routes the application through the E-TUYS system with the information and documents in its Annex 4, and Article 29(8) of the decision provides that where the investment is found at the completion visa stage to have partly or wholly failed to meet the support conditions, the supports may be revised — provided the revision conforms to the legislation in force on the date of the application for the certificate — with excess support recovered under Law No. 6183. That is a materially softer outcome than revocation, and it is only available to a company that filed.
Selling Assets, Moving the Plant, Restructuring the Company
Several ordinary commercial steps become clawback events during the certificate’s life, which is why incentive status belongs in the deal plan of anyone establishing a company in Türkiye as a foreign investor rather than being treated as a post-closing formality. Which of those steps needs the Ministry’s permission before signature, rather than after, is set out on our investment incentives and state aid page.
Under Article 26(1), selling fixed assets acquired for the investment requires Ministry permission where the completion visa has not been made, or has been made but two years have not passed since the application; permission may be given on condition that the support relating to the asset is recovered. The exceptions matter as much as the rule: Article 26(3) makes sales free, with no recovery or suspension of support, once two years have passed from the completion visa application and the visa has been made; Article 26(2) preserves support where a ship built under a certificate whose completion visa has been made is sold with permission, in the ship-building investments supported under Article 18(7); and Article 26(4) recovers only excess support on a transfer between two certificates of the same investor. Article 27(2) suspends employment-related supports where the whole investment is leased out to another firm. Article 28(2) allows relocation to a less-supported region on condition that the excess is recovered, and Article 28(5) applies that article to certificates issued under earlier decisions. Article 25(1) subjects the transfer of the investment as a whole to another investor, by a change of title on the certificate, to the permission of the Directorate General, as it does the transfer of a divided part to a new certificate on a partial demerger; and it refuses transfer as a whole of a certificate whose completion visa has already been made.
For certificates issued under earlier decisions the rest of Provisional Article 2 is restrictive in its own right. Paragraph 2 prohibits the transfer of machinery and equipment acquired under an earlier certificate to a certificate issued under Decision No. 9903; the “however” that follows leaves one narrow door open — where a change in legislation or in the shareholding structure splits the investment into independent production units, transfer of the divided part to a new certificate may be permitted, on condition that any excess support enjoyed is recovered. Paragraph 3 blocks the addition of machinery and equipment that would increase capacity to an earlier certificate whose completion visa has not been made, where the investment subject is not supported under Decision No. 9903.
On the credit side, support can stop without any revocation at all. Article 15(5) provides that if interest, profit share or principal is not repaid on the dates in the amortisation schedule, the first missed payment is reported to the Ministry by the intermediary institution and support payments for the period concerned are suspended; if the intermediary then reports that the repayment obligations have been met, payments restart on the originally scheduled dates without any extension; and if repayment fails again, the support is ended. Article 15(7) makes the intermediary responsible for lending against expenditure within the scope of the certificate: where the credit is found to have been used for another purpose, the support paid is recovered from the intermediary — and in the case of financial leasing companies that recovery is made by applying Law No. 6183 directly.
These interactions run alongside the customs and tax positions covered in the related notes on importing goods into Türkiye, the inward processing regime and the free zones, each of which has its own closure and clawback logic that does not track the incentive rules.
Two Clocks Start When the Decision Is Served
A revocation or sanction decision is an administrative act of the Ministry. Article 7(1) of Administrative Procedure Law No. 2577 sets the period for an annulment action at sixty days before the administrative courts, running under Article 7(2)(a) from the day following written notification. Article 11(1) permits an application to the administration within that period asking for the act to be withdrawn, revoked or amended, and that application suspends the period already running; under Article 11(2), as amended in 2021, silence for thirty days is a deemed rejection. Article 11(3) is where files are lost: when the period restarts, the time that elapsed before the application is counted against it.
The second clock belongs to collection. Recovery under Law No. 6183 proceeds by payment order, and Article 55 gives fifteen days to pay or declare assets. Article 58 allows the addressee to object within fifteen days of service, but only on the grounds it lists — that no such debt exists, that it has been partly paid, or that it is time-barred — and requires a partial objection to state the amount and heading precisely, failing which it is deemed not made. The merits of the revocation cannot be reargued there. Article 102 sets the collection limitation at five years from the beginning of the calendar year following the year in which the receivable fell due, and Article 103 lists the acts that interrupt it.
Because the two proceedings answer different questions on different timetables, the practical response to a sanction letter is to diary both from the date of service and to decide early which forum each argument belongs in. Where the affected company is foreign-owned, the incentive position also interacts with the wider foreign investment framework in Türkiye, including the corporate steps — share transfers, partial demergers, relocation — that Articles 25 to 28 subject to permission.
This note describes the legislation in force on the date shown above and is general information, not advice on any particular certificate. Amounts stated in Decision No. 9903 are nominal amounts updated annually under Article 27 of Communiqué No. 2025/1 by reference to the revaluation rate, and the default surcharge rate under Article 51 of Law No. 6183 is set and adjusted by Presidential decision, so both must be read for the period concerned.
