Visa information

Turkey's 2026 guide names three residence routes — a renewable short-term residence permit (ikamet), citizenship by investment through a $400k property purchase, and a work permit, with a Turquoise Card for high-skilled talent — plus a separate Digital Nomad visa. The guide scores Turkey 66/100 for visa and bureaucracy, and its plans measure the paperwork stage in weeks on every tier.

The routes the guide names

Short-term residence permit (ikamet) — the guide describes it as held on tourism or property ownership, and renewable. A property-based residence permit is also listed among the schemes that attract expats.

Citizenship by investment — via a $400k property purchase; the schemes list repeats it as “Citizenship by $400k property investment.”

Work permit via employer — with a Turquoise Card for high-skilled talent.

Digital Nomad visa — named in the schemes list and detailed in the remote-work section (see the income test below).

The Digital Nomad test — what the sources actually say

For remote workers the guide states the test in full: a Digital Nomad visa (2024) for under-55s on ~$3,000/mo, and it adds that tourist-residence permits are also common for this group. The site data carries the identical line.

For the other routes the guide prints no income thresholds at all — no salary floor for the work permit, no income figure for the ikamet beyond the retiree wording on the Retirement page, and no Turquoise Card criteria. This page does not invent them. At the guide's exchange rate of $1 ≈ ₺41 (Turkish lira), dollar figures convert at roughly that rate for planning.

What the paperwork costs — plan budgets, not government fees

The guide does not list individual government visa fees. What it gives is a bundled “Visa, permits & translations” budget line in each move plan — described in the plans themselves as covering government fees, apostilles and translations — and those lines are the only sourced cost figures for the application itself:

• $750 — Affordable plan (you file yourself)
• $1,050 — Mid-range and Retirement plans
• $2,550 — Luxury plan (the plan notes the luxury tier adds an immigration lawyer)

The Retirement plan carries one further, separate line: $2,000 for “Retirement visa, lawyer & pension certification”, covering an immigration lawyer, apostilled pension letters, medicals and translations.

Application steps and timelines, by tier

The guide builds the application into each plan's timeline rather than printing a single step list. The common sequence across the plans and checklists is:

• Choose the route first and print its requirements; the Affordable checklist starts with “Visa route chosen and requirements printed.”
• Gather and legalise documents — apostilles and translations are named in every tier; the Retirement paperwork stage adds pension or income letters certified and apostilled, a police certificate, a medical, and birth and marriage certificates translated.
• Check your passport — the Affordable checklist requires a passport valid 18+ months.
• Arrange health insurance before you file (see the Hospitals page for the guide's first-year insurance budgets).
• File — yourself on the Affordable tier, or with a lawyer or agent on the Mid-range, Luxury and Retirement tiers.

Paperwork-stage durations in the guide: ~10 weeks filing yourself (Affordable), ~8 weeks with a lawyer or agent filing (Mid-range), ~6 weeks with a lawyer filing everything (Luxury), and ~14 weeks for the Retirement paperwork stage. After the move, the settle stage includes registering your address and opening a bank account.

Renewals and longer stays — the honest limit of the guide

The guide calls the ikamet renewable, and in the retiree context it says the property-based or self-sufficient permit renews yearly (see the Retirement page). Beyond that, neither the guide nor the site data gives renewal intervals for the other routes, years to permanent residence, or absence limits — the only citizenship route either source names is the $400k property investment route itself. Treat renewal mechanics and any longer-term pathway as things to confirm with an immigration lawyer or the authorities before you rely on them.

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