Buying property in Türkiye ends a transaction; it starts an obligation. The purchase itself is covered in our guide to buying property in Türkiye as a foreigner; this page starts where that guide ends. From the day the deed is registered, a set of duties runs against the owner whether or not the owner is in the country, and none of them is suspended by absence. The four that produce most of the difficulty are contribution to the building’s common expenses under Condominium Act No. 634, the binding force of resolutions taken by an owners’ assembly the absent owner did not attend, the occupancy status of the building under Zoning Act No. 3194, and the permit regime that now governs short lettings under Law No. 7464. A fifth surfaces only when something has gone wrong: a person using the property without a right, which Turkish Civil Code No. 4721 addresses through the owner’s actions and the liability of a possessor who is not in good faith. This guide takes the duties as they arise after completion; the acquisition itself belongs to the Turkish real estate law side of the file.
The duties that do not stop when you leave
The pattern is consistent across the statutes: each duty attaches to ownership, each has its own authority and deadline, and each has a consequence that accumulates quietly while the owner is elsewhere.
| Duty | Source | Timing | What happens if it is missed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contribute to common expenses and advances | Law No. 634, Art. 20 | As set in the operating budget | 5% monthly late compensation; proceedings or enforcement by the manager or any owner (Art. 20/2) |
| Comply with owners' assembly resolutions | Law No. 634, Arts. 28, 32 | From the resolution | Binding on the owner and on successors; challenge only within Art. 33 periods |
| Obtain and hold an occupancy permit | Law No. 3194, Arts. 30-31 | On completion, or on completion of usable parts | Utilities withheld from units without the permit until it is obtained |
| Hold a permit certificate for lettings of up to 100 days | Law No. 7464, Arts. 2-3 | Before the letting contract is made | Administrative fine per dwelling and a 15-day period to regularise (Art. 4) |
| Submit a project on unbuilt land bought by a foreign buyer | Law No. 2644, Art. 35 | Within two years of purchase | Liquidated and converted into money, the price paid to the entitled person, unless the owner liquidates it within a period of up to one year given by the Ministry of Finance |
| File the property tax declaration | Law No. 1319, Art. 23 | In the budget year the triggering event occurs | Tax assessed by the administration (Art. 32); transfer blocked while tax is unpaid (Art. 30) |
Common expenses: the bill an empty flat still gets
Article 20/1 of Condominium Act No. 634 splits common expenses on two different keys (some equally, some in proportion to the land share, arsa payı) and does so unless the owners have agreed otherwise between themselves. What matters most to an owner who is not in the country is sub-paragraph (c): the charge cannot be shed by renouncing the right to use a common area, or by pointing out that an empty flat has no need of the lift, the boiler or the gardener. There is no non-user discount and no dormant status for a unit nobody lives in.
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The amount comes from the operating budget, the işletme projesi, that the owners’ assembly approves, and non-payment moves faster than distance allows you to react. Article 20/2 fixes late compensation at 5% per month for the days in delay; Article 37/4 places a finalised budget among the documents that shorten the route to enforcement; and where the money cannot be got from either the owner or the occupier, Article 22/2 allows a statutory mortgage to be registered over the unit itself in favour of the other owners. How the budget is built, who approves it, what the 2026 ceiling actually limits and how each owner’s share is calculated are worked through in our note on Turkish building maintenance charges and the 2026 cap on provisional budgets.
Decisions taken while you are not in the room
Article 32/2 states the rule without qualification: all owners together with their universal and particular successors, and the manager and auditors, are obliged to comply with the resolutions of the general assembly. Article 28 says the same of the management plan, which has the force of a contract binding on all owners and, expressly, on their successors. An owner abroad is therefore bound by a resolution taken at a meeting they never heard about: a budget increase, a façade project, a change in how the site is run.
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What absence changes is the calendar. The assembly meets on a cycle fixed by Article 29, and Article 33/1 gives an owner who wants to challenge a resolution a short window that is measured from the resolution for those who attended and from the date of learning of it for those who did not, with an outer limit in any event, and no time condition at all where the resolution is non-existent or absolutely void. The two dates that matter to an absent owner are therefore not in the statute at all: when the meeting happened, and when they can be said to have learned of it.
Those periods interact badly with distance. Notification of the operating budget under Article 37/3 goes to owners or to those actually benefiting from the unit, so a letter delivered to a tenant can start clocks the owner never sees. In litigation, service abroad runs under Article 25 of Notification Act No. 7201, through the competent authority of the foreign country, with the documents routed via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Turkish embassy or consulate, although the article adds that where the Ministry’s intermediation is not considered necessary the documents may be sent directly to the mission. For a Turkish citizen abroad, Article 25/a offers a faster and harsher route: a notice warning that service will be deemed effected if no application is made within thirty days, and service deemed effected at the end of the thirtieth day where the notice is documented as delivered and no application follows. Article 35 completes the picture for everyone: a person already served who changes address must inform the issuing authority immediately, and where they do not, and no residence address can be established from the address registration system, a copy is affixed to the door of the old address and the date of affixing counts as the date of service.
For an owner who lives abroad, the person at the centre of this table is the manager. Article 34/2 of the Condominium Act (Law No. 634) makes the appointment of a manager mandatory where the number of independent sections is eight or more, and Article 34/4 provides that the manager is appointed by a majority of both the number of owners and the land shares. The opening sentence of Article 35, which lists the manager’s duties, carries a qualification that must not be skipped: those duties apply unless the management plan provides otherwise, so the first document an owner abroad should read is not the statute but the management plan of their own building. Sub-paragraph (f) of the same article leaves the acceptance of notifications concerning the whole of the main property to the manager, which means that a notice directed at the building as a whole may be validly served while the owner is in another country. The last paragraph of Article 35 fills the gap: where the conditions of Article 34 are met but no manager has been appointed, the owners are jointly responsible for the matters listed in the first paragraph. Article 18/2 applies the provisions on owners’ debts to those who benefit from an independent section on a continuing basis and makes them jointly and severally liable together with the owners; a tenancy therefore does not remove the owner’s liability towards the management.
Occupancy status: what it actually blocks
Article 30 of the Zoning Act requires permission from the authority that issued the building licence before a completed building, or a completed part capable of separate use, may be used, on the owner’s application and upon a finding that the building conforms to the licence and its annexes and that there is no technical objection to its use. The administration must conclude the application within thirty days at the latest; failing that, permission to use the building or the completed part is deemed given. The paragraph that follows is the one owners tend not to read: permission granted under the article does not relieve the building owner of liability arising from non-compliance with the law or with the licence and its annexes, and does not relieve them of any obligation to pay taxes, duties or charges.
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Article 31 sets the sanction and its limit in three sentences. The day construction is completed is the date the occupancy permit is issued. Buildings for which the permit is not issued and not obtained are not supplied with electricity, water and sewerage services and installations until it is obtained. And then: independent units which have obtained the permit are supplied. The relevant question for an owner abroad is therefore about their own unit and not only about the block. What the shortfall blocks elsewhere (the conversion of a construction servitude into freehold condominium ownership, the registered class of the property) we treat separately in the guide on buying a Turkish apartment without an occupancy permit.
Letting the property: the hundred-day line
Law No. 7464 draws its boundary by duration, not platform. Article 2/1-(g) defines tourism-purpose letting as letting dwellings to users for any purpose for a maximum of one hundred days, and Article 1/3 places lettings longer than one hundred days made in a single transaction outside the Act. Inside that line, Article 3/1 requires a permit certificate before the letting contract is made and a plaque at the entrance of the dwelling; Article 3/2 gives the certifying power to the Ministry, which may exercise it through the governorship.
| Condition | Provision | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Consent of the building | Art. 3/3 | A resolution taken unanimously by all owners of the building must be produced; in complexes it is required only for the building concerned, and a copy of the certificate goes to the site management |
| Concentration limit | Art. 3/4 | In buildings of more than three units, at most 25% may be certified to the same lessor; where more than five units in the same building are certified to the same lessor, a workplace opening and operating licence is also required, and in a complex a further unanimous resolution of all owners |
| Who must hold the certificate | Art. 3/5 | The obligation rests on the person letting; where the activity is carried on by anyone else, it may be done only through group (A) travel agencies certified under Law No. 1618 |
| Sub-letting | Art. 3/7 | A user may not re-let on their own account, and a tenant who took the dwelling as a residence may not let it for tourism purposes on their own account |
| Guest reporting | Art. 3/8 | Identity Notification Law No. 1774 applies, and the certificate holder is the responsible person for the reporting obligation |
| Exception for qualified residences | Art. 3/10 | A certificate may be issued without the third and fourth paragraph conditions to high-qualified residences whose management plan under Art. 28 of Law No. 634 permits short-term letting and which provide reception, security, daily cleaning and comparable services |
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Article 4/1 attaches administrative fines to each of those failures, for letting without a certificate, for continuing after the fifteen-day period given to regularise, for re-letting on one’s own account, and for intermediating in the letting of uncertified dwellings. The figures in the statute are the nominal amounts as enacted; under Article 17/7 of Misdemeanours Act No. 5326 administrative fines are increased each year, with effect from the beginning of the calendar year, by the revaluation rate determined and announced under repeated Article 298 of Tax Procedure Law No. 213, so the amount actually applied should be taken from the current year’s figure rather than from the text as published in 2023.
When someone is using the property without a right
An owner who has been away for a season sometimes comes back to a relative, a former tenant or a neighbour in possession. Turkish law answers that with two claims rather than one, and the distinction is not a formality: getting the property back and being paid for the period of occupation are separate actions, resting on separate Civil Code provisions, with separate proof. Whether the occupier is treated as being in good faith changes the money claim substantially, and the date on which the owner made the position clear is usually what decides it, which is why an owner abroad should be recording that date rather than waiting for a visit. How the two actions are pleaded, why they are kept apart, and what good faith does to the figure are set out in unlawful occupation of your Turkish property.
Registry and tax duties that outlive the purchase
Two obligations sit outside the building and are easily forgotten from abroad. Article 35 of Land Registry Act No. 2644 requires foreign real persons, and commercial companies established abroad under the laws of their own countries, to submit the project they will develop on unbuilt land they have purchased to the approval of the relevant Ministry within two years; the approved project, with its start and completion dates, is recorded in the declarations column of the land register and its realisation is monitored. The final paragraph of the same article sets the consequence: property acquired contrary to the article, found to be used contrary to the purpose of acquisition, not the subject of a timely application, or whose project is not realised in time, is liquidated if the owner does not liquidate it within a period of up to one year given by the Ministry of Finance, and the price is paid to the entitled person.
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The tax side stays deliberately short here, because filing and computation belong to a certified public accountant under Law No. 3568 rather than to legal advice. In outline: Article 23 of Property Tax Act No. 1319 makes a declaration compulsory where one of the value-modifying reasons in Article 33 arises, filed with the municipality where the property is situated within the budget year in which the event occurs (or within three months where it falls in the last three months of the year); Article 30 sets the two instalments, in March-May and in November; and Article 30/8 provides that land registry directorates query the outstanding property tax electronically and that, apart from inheritance, court decision, forced enforcement, expropriation and cases provided for in special laws, a building or land with an outstanding property tax debt is not transferred. An owner who intends to sell should therefore check the municipal record well before the appointment, and take the rest of the tax position from an accountant.
Keeping the capacity to act from a distance
All of the above assumes someone can sign. Article 89 of Notaries Act No. 1512 provides that contracts and powers of attorney which by their nature require a transaction at the land registry are executed under the provisions governing drawn-up instruments, a fuller form than the certification of a signature, and one that a document produced abroad in the wrong form will not satisfy. Article 191 provides that notarial business in foreign countries is conducted by consuls, and Article 193, read to its end, lists the provisions of the Act that do apply to consuls, a list that runs through Articles 78 to 108 and so takes in Article 89. Where an instrument is instead executed before a local notary, Article 195 provides that the signature and seal of the competent authority of that country are certified by the consul, subject to special statutory provisions. Owners living in Germany can see both routes, the Turkish consulate and the German notary followed by an apostille, in our guide for property owners and other clients in Germany.
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Alongside the instrument, the address is the practical point. Article 37/3 of the Condominium Act notifies the operating budget to owners or to those actually benefiting from the unit against signature or by registered letter, and Article 35 of the Notification Act treats an unnotified change of address as a reason to affix the document to the door of the old address and count that date as service. An owner who keeps a current address on the building’s records, and an instrument in the right form with someone able to use it, turns most of the obligations above from a risk into a diary entry.
