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By 2025, letting a flat by the day or week through Airbnb, Booking.com or another channel was no longer something an owner could safely treat as an informal sideline. Türkiye had introduced a specific framework for tourism rentals, with permits, operating requirements and substantial penalties.
Anyone buying a property with holiday letting in mind, or booking an apartment online, should understand how that framework works. The relevant provisions took effect on 1 January 2024, rather than first becoming law at the beginning of 2025. The outline below explains the rules discussed in the original 2025 account, with corrections and a clearly dated later tax clarification.
What does the 100-day threshold mean?
For this legislation, a tourism rental is the letting of a dwelling for 100 days or less at a time, whatever the guest’s purpose. A contract for exactly 100 days is included; the threshold is not “fewer than 100 days”.This can cover daily and weekly rentals, flats or villas advertised through Airbnb, and qualifying short-stay serviced residences. A hotel or apart-hotel already operating under a different tourism accommodation certificate requires its own classification check rather than automatically being treated as an ordinary residential letting.
The contractual period matters, but an extension is not a reliable way to turn an initially short, permit-requiring stay into an exempt one retrospectively. The law provides for the tourism-rental contract to end at its stated expiry. Owners should check a proposed extension or new contract properly instead of assuming that only the number written on the first booking settles every subsequent arrangement.
There is no general 100-days-per-year letting cap established by Law No.7464. Its 100-day threshold concerns an individual letting, not the total number of nights a permitted property may operate annually. The initial account’s suggestion of such an annual restriction should not be relied on without identifying a separate rule actually applicable to that property. Building requirements and other applicable restrictions still need checking.
The legal basis: Law No.7464
Law No.7464, adopted on 25 October 2023 and published on 2 November, introduced the framework for letting residential property for tourism purposes. Its relevant rental provisions came into force on 1 January 2024, with implementing regulations and transitional procedures accompanying the move into operation during 2024.The central requirement is a Tourism Rental Permit, issued under the authority of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. It must be obtained before entering into a covered tourism-rental contract. Listings must also comply with the permit and advertising rules; obtaining a permit after accepting bookings is not a safe substitute for compliance beforehand.
The framework affects Turkish and foreign owners, eligible companies and operators, intermediaries and online platforms. However, owning or managing a flat does not automatically make every individual or company eligible to hold the permit or sublet it. The legal capacity in which the property is offered must also be checked.
What is needed for a permit?
These are the principal practical checks. The national framework applies across Türkiye, while the appropriate provincial directorate can clarify the documents and classification for a particular property.- Apply through the correct process.
Permit applications are made through e-Devlet. Provincial Culture and Tourism Directorates provide guidance and handle the applications within their remit; a paper submission is not a general alternative to the electronic application.
The supporting material includes title or other qualifying property-right records, identity or company documents, and the relevant ownership and consent documents. A foreign applicant needs the applicable passport and foreign-identity or tax-number information. Check whether building, occupancy or planning documents are required for your property; the initial reference to a property plan is not a universal substitute for the prescribed document list.
- Check the building owners’ consent requirement.
For an ordinary dwelling in a building containing multiple independent units, the framework generally requires a notarised unanimous decision of the relevant owners. It is not normally enough to choose whatever lower voting percentage appears convenient in the building’s internal rules.
There are defined exceptions, including qualifying high-standard residences and detached houses under the implementing rules. A block within a larger residential complex also requires the correct consent scope to be identified. The purpose is to regulate the effect on neighbours and prevent ordinary residential accommodation being converted informally into a hotel-like operation. Obtain advice on the precise category rather than assuming that every flat has identical requirements.
- Display the official plaque.
The Ministry’s plaque must be displayed at the entrance to the permitted dwelling as required. It identifies the permit and the property’s regulated status. Holding a permit does not excuse failure to display the plaque; that omission is a separate breach with its own sanction procedure.
- Meet safety, capacity and guest-reporting obligations.
The accommodation must meet the prescribed standards, including fire-safety equipment, the permitted guest capacity and suitable facilities. The rules include fire extinguishers and smoke detectors, alongside other requirements.
Guest-identity reporting is also a legal obligation of the permit holder under the applicable identity-notification legislation, to be fulfilled through the competent police or gendarmerie arrangements. It should not be treated as an optional step merely because the accommodation is a private flat. Personal data must be handled lawfully as well.
What about Airbnb, Booking.com and other platforms?
The law does not leave responsibility solely with the owner. Advertising must include the required permit information, and online intermediaries can face sanctions for facilitating unlawful rentals or failing to remove offending content after the Ministry’s notice. The legislation includes a 24-hour removal requirement following the relevant warning for covered intermediary service providers.These obligations make an online listing traceable and capable of removal or access restrictions. They do not prove that every listing has already passed a complete official check or that every unlicensed property has disappeared from every platform.
Airbnb’s own guidance explains that covered short stays require the appropriate permit, while exclusively longer bookings of more than 100 days may fall outside this particular permit regime. Offering short stays as well as longer ones still requires compliance for the short-stay activity. Simply describing a listing as “long-term” does not resolve an inconsistent booking pattern.
Later platform update, checked on 15 October 2026: Airbnb states that from 1 April 2026 it requires the relevant certificate number, the document holder’s name and the listing address for government verification in Türkiye. This is a dated later development, not a verification process that should be backdated to the original 2025 article. Other platforms’ current procedures should be checked separately.
Penalties and enforcement
This is an enforceable licensing system, not voluntary guidance. Breaches can include letting without a permit, failing to meet permit conditions, omitting the required plaque, unlawful intermediary activity and misleading advertising.The original description of fines as potentially reaching only “tens of thousands of lira” understates the exposure. In the law’s original monetary amounts, letting without a permit attracted TRY100,000 per dwelling, followed by a period to obtain the permit. Continuing without it could lead to TRY500,000 and ultimately TRY1 million under the specified escalation procedure. These are the statutory base amounts, not a quotation of the fine payable for an offence in 2025 or today; administrative fines are subject to annual revaluation and the applicable date must be checked.
There are separate sanctions for permit holders, including failure to display the plaque, and grounds for cancellation where the statutory conditions are met. An owner cannot assume that paying one fine authorises continued operation.
Nor is a nominal “101-day” contract a dependable workaround for repeated short accommodation. The law specifically addresses letting the same dwelling more than four times within one year from the first contract even where each contract purports to exceed 100 days. Actual arrangements, advertising and compliance matter, not merely a number inserted on paper.
What if the owner is a foreign national?
A foreign owner is not exempt from the permit regime. A covered letting of 100 days or less needs the required permit, and non-compliance can attract the same applicable rental sanctions. Separate tax failures can create additional liabilities; nationality does not itself establish a higher rental fine.Income-tax obligations also require attention. It is unsafe to assume that every tourism letting is taxed simply as ordinary passive residential rental income.
Tax clarification checked on 15 October 2026: in a ruling dated 23 January 2026, the Revenue Administration treated letting under a tourism-rental permit as commercial activity, including where an intermediary organises the short stays. The ruling explains the significance of the permit and the organised nature of the activity. Its relevance to your registration, accounting and tax obligations should be reviewed with a qualified adviser; this later clarification should not be presented as a new provision that first took effect in early 2025.
The costly mistake is to buy a flat in Istanbul, Antalya, Trabzon or another visitor destination and advertise it informally because “everyone does it”. Other owners’ practices do not prove that the property is eligible, licensed or tax-compliant, and inspections can expose a business plan built on that assumption.
Tourism letting versus ordinary longer-term letting
Tourism letting within this framework- Covers individual lettings of 100 days or less.
- Requires the appropriate tourism-rental permit.
- Is subject to Ministry supervision and the associated operating requirements.
- A genuine six-month, one-year or longer residential tenancy is generally outside this short-stay permit regime because it exceeds 100 days at a time.
- Ordinary tenancy law and contractual obligations still apply.
- Any applicable documentation, reporting and tax requirements remain; an exemption from this particular permit is not an exemption from all regulation.
What should an Arab visitor check before booking?
- Look for the permit or appropriate accommodation certificate.
Check the information displayed in the listing and ask the host to clarify anything missing. An absent number is a reason to investigate, not proof by itself that every type of accommodation is unlawful: a hotel or another properly classified tourism facility may hold a different certificate. Conversely, a number displayed online is not sufficient if it belongs to a different address or operator. - Consider the risk of disruption.
An unlicensed or otherwise non-compliant property may face enforcement, removal from a platform or interruption to its operation, which could disrupt a reservation or arrival. Do not assume, however, that every enforcement measure automatically extinguishes all guest rights: the law expressly preserves users’ contractual rights in specified permit-cancellation circumstances. - Treat licensing as an important check, not an absolute guarantee.
A permit places the property within a system of standards and supervision, but cannot guarantee that fraud, a dispute or an unexpected move will never occur. Review the address, host details, accommodation conditions, cancellation terms and payment protection as well.
Key points
- Covered residential lettings of 100 days or less require the tourism permit; exactly 100 days is included.
- The relevant Law No.7464 provisions have applied since 1 January 2024. There is no general 100-night annual cap in that law.
- Advertising and intermediary obligations apply, and platform verification arrangements must be understood for the relevant date rather than assumed to have always been identical.
- Turkish and foreign owners can face substantial penalties and, where the legal conditions apply, loss of the permit or inability to continue lawful operation.
- Before investing, check eligibility and the likely tax and operating obligations with a lawyer or appropriately qualified adviser instead of relying on a sales pitch about holiday income.
- Before booking, verify the appropriate certificate and the actual accommodation and payment terms. A licensed property offers an important regulatory safeguard, while sound booking checks remain necessary.
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