Inheritance in Turkey for Foreigners: Heirs, Reserved Shares and a Turkish Will

Turkish private international law starts from nationality: succession is governed by the national law of the person who died. The same sentence then makes the exception that matters to every foreign owner: Turkish law applies to immovable property located in Turkey.

Provisions on opening the succession, its acquisition and its division follow the law of the country where the estate is located, and an estate in Turkey with no heirs passes to the State. As the Court of Cassation has put it, where the estate includes immovable property in Turkey, both connecting factors lead to Turkish law.

The estate is therefore split. The deceased's movables and their immovables abroad follow their national law, while the flat or villa in Turkey follows the Turkish Civil Code (No. 4721): its legal heirs, its reserved shares and its procedures. Inheritance disputes are heard by the court of the deceased's last domicile in Turkey or, if that domicile was not in Turkey, by the court where the estate property is located.

Relatives inherit in classes. First come the descendants: children inherit equally, and a child who died earlier is replaced by their own descendants. Only where there are no descendants do the parents inherit, a parent who died earlier being replaced by their descendants, that is, the deceased's brothers and sisters. The third class is the grandparents and their descendants.

A child born outside marriage inherits on the father's side like a child born within marriage once paternity is established by recognition or judgment. An adopted child inherits from the adopter like a blood relative and keeps their rights in their birth family. If there are no heirs at all, the estate passes to the State.

The surviving spouse inherits alongside whichever class is present. These are inheritance shares only; what a spouse receives on the liquidation of the matrimonial property regime is a separate question.

A person whose heirs include descendants, parents or a spouse can dispose by will only of the part of the estate outside the reserved shares. If none of these heirs exists, the whole estate can be left freely; brothers, sisters and grandparents have no reserved share.

Each reserved share is a fraction of the heir's legal share: half for a descendant; a quarter for each parent; and for the spouse, the whole legal share alongside descendants or the parents' class, three quarters of it in other cases.

A common case worked through: the deceased leaves a spouse and two children. The spouse's legal share is one quarter, all of it reserved. Each child's legal share is three eighths and their reserved share three sixteenths. Reserved shares total five eighths; the other three eighths can be left to anyone.

Disinheritance (mirasçılıktan çıkarma) is possible on two grounds only: a serious crime by the heir against the deceased or someone close to them, or a serious failure in the heir's duties under family law towards the deceased or their family. The will must state the ground, and if the heir objects, the person who benefits must prove it. Otherwise the will is carried out only beyond the heir's reserved share. A validly disinherited heir receives nothing, but their own descendants can claim the reserved share.

Where a will or a lifetime gift encroaches on a reserved share, the heir can sue for reduction (tenkis). Gifts made in the year before death other than customary presents, and transfers evidently made to defeat the reserved share rules, are subject to reduction. The right lapses one year after the heir learns of the infringement, and in any event ten years after a will is opened or, for other dispositions, after the succession opens.

A will under Turkish law is official, handwritten or oral. The official will (resmî vasiyetname) is drawn up by an official, who may be a civil judge of peace or a notary, with two witnesses, before whom the testator declares that they have read it and that it contains their last wishes. The witnesses need not be told what it says.

The handwritten will (el yazılı vasiyetname) must be written from beginning to end in the testator's own hand, dated with the year, month and day, and signed. It may be deposited, open or sealed, with a notary or a civil judge of peace. The oral will is available only in extraordinary circumstances, such as imminent danger of death, illness or war, that make the other forms impossible.

For a foreigner, the conflict rules matter as much as the forms. A will is valid in form if it follows the law of the country where it was made or the law governing its substance, and a will made in accordance with the deceased's national law is also valid. Capacity is governed by the testator's national law at the time of making. A will validly made in England can therefore be valid in form in Turkey, but it does not displace Turkish law, reserved shares included, on the Turkish property.

Validity is one question; use is another. After a death, a will must be delivered at once to the civil judge of peace, who opens and reads it to those concerned within one month. In a 2023 ruling in the interest of the law, which did not affect the outcome of that case, the Court of Cassation held that a certificate of inheritance should not have been issued on wills opened and read by notarial deed without a final recognition and enforcement decision of a Turkish court.

Heirs acquire the estate as a whole, by operation of law, at the moment of death. Ownership of inherited land passes before registration, but the heirs cannot deal with it on the land register until it is registered in their names. The document that opens that door is the certificate of inheritance.

The certificate is issued on application by a civil court of peace (sulh hukuk mahkemesi) or a notary. For foreign heirs the route is the court: a notary cannot issue the certificate where it is requested by foreigners, where civil registry records are insufficient, or where the matter requires a hearing. Heirs appointed by will receive their certificate from the court only if no objection is raised within one month of notification. The invalidity of a certificate can be raised at any time.

A grant of probate or a certificate of succession issued abroad does not replace it. A foreign court decision can serve as conclusive evidence, or as the basis for an administrative act in Turkey, only once a Turkish court has found that it meets the conditions for enforcement, and this applies to non-contentious decisions as well. One condition is that the decision does not concern a matter within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Turkish courts.

The Court of Cassation, following an earlier decision of its General Assembly of Civil Chambers, has stated that because Turkish courts have exclusive jurisdiction over succession to immovables in Turkey, a foreign court's certificate of inheritance for those immovables cannot be recognised in Turkey and does not bind Turkish courts or authorities as regards those immovables. It may still be used as discretionary evidence in Turkish proceedings for a certificate.

Where there are several heirs, a community of heirs (miras ortaklığı) arises on death and lasts until division. The heirs own the estate jointly (elbirliği mülkiyeti) and deal with it together; one heir cannot sell the inherited villa alone. At an heir's request, the civil court of peace can appoint a representative of the community.

The community ends by agreement or by court. A partition agreement is valid only in writing and may convert joint ownership into shared ownership (paylı mülkiyet) in proportion to the shares. Any heir can ask the civil judge of peace for that conversion, which is ordered if no justified objection is raised and no partition action is brought within the time set, and any heir can at any time sue for division, in kind or, failing that, by sale. Once ownership is shared, each co-owner can transfer their own share. Before division an heir can also assign their inheritance share, to a third party only by a contract drawn up by a notary; the assignee does not take part in the division and can only claim what is allotted to the heir at its end.

Two statutory brakes apply on top of this. Inherited immovables are registered in the heirs' names without waiting for the tax assessment, but they cannot be transferred until the inheritance tax on them is paid in full; the land registry needs a clearance certificate from the tax office. If security of a kind listed in Law No. 6183 is given against the assessed tax, the transfer of some or all of the property may be permitted.

And the Land Registry Law (No. 2644) lets natural persons who are nationals of countries designated by the President acquire immovables, within ten per cent of the privately owned area of the district and thirty hectares per person nationally. Immovables acquired by inheritance outside these conditions, including where the heir's country is not designated, must be liquidated by the owner within a period of up to one year set by the Ministry of Finance; otherwise they are liquidated and the proceeds paid to the owner. The heir keeps the value, not the property.

This designated-country rule dates from 18 May 2012, when Law No. 6302 replaced an earlier requirement of reciprocity. For an estate opened before that date, the Court of Cassation looks for legal or de facto reciprocity between Turkey and the foreign country concerned, as regards the acquisition of immovables by inheritance, at the date of death; its decisions refer to the heir's nationality and, in one case, to the deceased's. In a 2021 case concerning a Greek national who died in 1942, it reversed a judgment granting a certificate of inheritance that had allotted a share to the Treasury: such reciprocity existed, so the certificate should have been issued for the immovables as well.

Heirs inherit debts as well as assets: they become personally liable for the deceased's debts. Legal heirs and heirs appointed by will can avoid this by renouncing (mirasın reddi). Where the deceased's insolvency was evident or officially established at death, the inheritance is deemed renounced.

The period is three months. For legal heirs it runs from the date they learned of the death, unless they prove they learned only later that they were heirs; for heirs appointed by will, from official notification of the will. An heir abroad is timed from the day they learned of the death, not from the death itself. For important reasons the civil judge of peace can extend the period or grant a new one.

Renunciation is an oral or written declaration to the civil court of peace and must be unconditional. A renunciation made in time is entered in the special register of the court of the place where the succession opened, and the heir can ask for a document showing it.

The right is lost by conduct as well as by time. An heir who has not renounced within the period acquires the inheritance unconditionally, and so does one who, before it ends, deals with the estate beyond ordinary administration or conceals or appropriates estate assets. If all the nearest legal heirs renounce, the court liquidates the estate under bankruptcy rules.

Inheritance and transfer tax (veraset ve intikal vergisi) applies to the transfer by inheritance of property located in Turkey and of property belonging to Turkish citizens; the heir's nationality does not take Turkish property outside it. One case is excluded: a foreign national with no residence in Turkey who inherits a Turkish citizen's property outside Turkey is not liable.

Household goods and the deceased's personal effects are exempt, and each descendant and the spouse has an exempt amount on their share. Above it, inheritance is taxed at progressive rates of 1, 3, 5, 7 and 10 per cent. The exempt amounts and the bracket limits are revalued every year, so confirm the current figures before relying on them.

Law No. 7582 added a further rule in 2026. For persons who benefit from the income tax exemption in repeated art. 20/D of the Income Tax Law (No. 193), a transfer by inheritance taking place within the period of that exemption is taxed at a single rate of 1 per cent. The exemption covers individuals deemed settled in Turkey who had no residence and no tax liability in Turkey in the three calendar years before being deemed settled, exempts their income earned outside Turkey for twenty years, and applies to those deemed settled in Turkey from 1 January 2026. Under Income Tax General Communiqué No. 333, a person who wants to benefit from the exemption must obtain an exemption certificate from the tax office, applying by the end of the calendar year in which they are treated as resident (by the end of February of the next year if they became resident in November or December); a late application is refused. The provision does not say in terms whether it is the heir or the deceased who must hold the exemption, so confirm how it applies to a particular estate before relying on it.

Taxpayers abroad file their returns with Turkish consulates, separately or jointly. The tax is payable over three years from assessment, in two equal instalments each year, in May and November. Unlike the renunciation period, the return deadlines run from the date of death itself:

I advise foreign heirs and owners on the Turkish side of an estate; the succession and tax law of the heir's own country is a question for an adviser there. This page is general information and does not replace advice on your own situation.