Does buying property in Turkey for USD 200,000 give citizenship?

No. The USD 200,000 threshold grants a short-term residence permit under Article 31/1(b) of Law 6458, issued for up to two years at a time and in practice typically for one year. Turkish citizenship by property investment is a separate route with a USD 400,000 threshold. Marketing material frequently blurs the two.

Can I rent out a property bought for Turkish residency?

No. Turkey's property residence route requires residential use only - the property may not be rented out or used to produce income. Dubai places no such restriction, so a property held for the Golden Visa can be rented while the visa runs.

Which is cheaper, UAE or Turkey?

Turkey's entry threshold is USD 200,000 against Dubai's AED 2,000,000, about USD 544,588 - roughly USD 345,000 less. However Turkey's property cannot earn income, its transfer tax could not be verified against a primary source, and its threshold rose between 2.7 and 4 times between 2022 and 2023.

How long does Turkey's property residence permit last?

Short-term residence permits may be issued for at most two years at a time under Law 6458 Article 31(2), and in practice are typically issued for one year and renewed while ownership continues. Dubai's permit runs 10 years and is renewable.

Home / Compare / UAE and Turkey

Comparison · Edition 1 data

UAE Residency or Turkish Citizenship: What Each One Actually Grants

These are not the same product, and the confusion is expensive. Turkey's USD 200,000 property route buys a short-term residence permit - one to two years at a time, residential use only. Turkish citizenship by property is a separate route at USD 400,000. Dubai's AED 2,000,000 buys a ten-year renewable residency and no citizenship at any price.

Both programmes: Open Verified: 17 July 2026, adversarial pass Index rank: UAE 3rd · Turkey 9th of ten Turkey scored on 5 of 7 criteria

The distinction that matters most What the index measures for Turkey is the residence permit at USD 200,000, not the citizenship route at USD 400,000. They are separate products with separate thresholds and separate outcomes. Marketing material frequently blurs them, and a buyer who purchases at USD 200,000 expecting a passport has bought the wrong thing.

Side by side on what the index measures

UAE (Dubai) and Turkey's property residence route, on the measured criteria
Criterion	UAE - Dubai	Turkey
Entry threshold	AED 2,000,000USD 544,588 at the peg	USD 200,000purchases on or after 16 Oct 2023; about EUR 175,000
What it grants	10-year renewable residency	Short-term residence permit under Article 31/1(b) of Law 6458
Term	10 years, renewable	Up to 2 years per issuance by statute; in practice typically issued for 1 year and renewed while you own
Time to permit	DLD 7-10 business days plus GDRFA about 5 working days	Appointments run 2-4 weeks, approval averages 6-10 weeks after interview. Reported - no official service-level commitment found
Use restriction	None - the property may be rented out	Residential use only. The property may not be rented out or used for income
Family	Spouse, children and parents, at AED 5,774.50 per dependant	Co-owners named on the deed can apply with a family-ties document; non-owner dependants go through a separate family residence permit
Presence required	None; exempt from the standard six-month absence rule	No confirmed day count. The widely quoted 120-day absence rule has no primary backing we could find
Citizenship path	None via this route	None via this product. A separate route exists at USD 400,000

The use restriction is the buried cost

Turkey's residence route requires the property to be for residential use only - it may not be rented out or used to produce income. For an investor whose plan was to buy, let and hold, that removes the yield entirely and turns the purchase into a pure cost of holding the permit. Dubai places no such restriction: the property can be rented while the visa runs.

This single condition changes the arithmetic more than the difference in entry price does. Turkey is cheaper to enter by roughly USD 345,000 and then earns nothing while you hold it.

Turkey's rule record runs one way

Since 2020 Turkey's record shows four tightenings and one loosening. On 26 April 2022 minimum property values were attached to residence eligibility for the first time - USD 75,000 in metropolitan areas, USD 50,000 elsewhere. On 1 July 2022 the closed-neighbourhood quota list expanded to 1,169 locations, applying to residence permits and address changes. Then on 16 October 2023 the minimum rose to USD 200,000 - between 2.7 and 4 times the original figures, inside the measurement window.

That is the worst threshold-stability record of any open programme in Edition 1, and it is the main reason Turkey ranks ninth of ten despite having the lowest entry price in the set.

What we could not verify about Turkey

Two things a buyer would want settled, and neither has a primary source we could reach:

The title-deed transfer tax, commonly cited at 4%, could not be confirmed against a primary TAPU or Revenue Administration source.
Any hard days-per-year absence cap for keeping the short-term permit. The often-quoted 120-day figure has no primary backing.

That is why Turkey is scored on five of seven criteria and marked accordingly in the ranking. Its score is not comparable with full-data scores and should not be read as though it were.

What this comparison does not claim It does not compare Turkish citizenship with UAE residency. Those are different categories with different thresholds. The USD 400,000 citizenship route is named here only to prevent the confusion, and is not measured by this index, which covers property-linked residency.

Currency exposure differs. The dirham is pegged to the US dollar. The Turkish lira is not, and Turkey's threshold is denominated in dollars while the purchase settles in lira - so the lira amount required moves with the exchange rate.

Government costs only, and for Turkey the main transfer tax is unverified, so no total-cost figure is published for it here.

Basis and sources

Figures come from the two programme profiles, each carrying its own primary source, access date and status: UAE - Dubai (DLD Golden Visa (Investor) service page and GDRFA Dubai's investor service card) and Turkey, where the USD 200,000 minimum is confirmed against the Göç İdaresi e-ikamet required-documents list, which states that the dwelling's value as of the acquisition date must be at least the Turkish lira equivalent of USD 200,000.

Scores and ranks are from Edition 1, Q3 2026. The Property Residency Index is an independent research publication; index data and rankings are never for sale. This is general information, not legal, tax or immigration advice - confirm the current position with the relevant authority before acting on any figure here.