Asset Protection & Estate Planning

Estate planning for anyone holding assets in Türkiye starts with one rule that overrides most foreign expectations: Turkish law applies to immovable property located in Türkiye, whatever the owner's nationality and whatever their home-country will says. A perfectly valid English or German will does not, by itself, move a Turkish apartment to the person named in it.

Two consequences follow. First, Turkish law reserves fixed shares for certain heirs, and those reserved shares cannot be written out by a will — an estate plan that ignores them creates litigation rather than avoiding it. Second, a foreign will and a foreign grant of probate usually need to be recognised through a Turkish court before the registry will act on them, which takes time the family does not expect to spend.

Asset protection during life raises different questions: how property held personally differs from property held through a company, what happens to Turkish assets on divorce, and which transfers made shortly before a claim can be unwound.

The guides below cover cross-border succession, non-resident estate planning and the protection of assets held in Türkiye. For the matrimonial dimension see divorce law; for the tax dimension see tax and wealth structuring.