How to establish a company in Turkey as a foreigner: the procedure, rules, and sorts

it’s not easy to establish a commercial registry in a foreign country, where everything might
be beyond or even out of your comprehensive boundaries, the language would also be such a huge bummer to come over, which mostly will expose the foreigner investors to uncountable legal gaps later.
However, in Turkey, the situation is totally different, yeah the Turkish language is not considered a piece of cake, but the following procedure itself has flexible accessibility and protects you from any potential fraud issues, meanwhile in this article we’re telling you every single details about establishing a company in Turkey, plus the procedure, rules, and companies’ sorts:


In 2008 the Turkish government worked to modernize the state of Turkey, by creating a new online system that connects the citizens with the administrative institutions, the system gathers all the official services that can be done online, without any need to attend the early morning appointment in front of the governmental department, the online system called (E-Devlet Kapisi) in Turkish, and E-Government gate in English, progressively the Turkish state worked on expanding the services to involve all the ministries and department.

And one of the essential sections in our article today is the branched website that was established by the Ministry of Trade and Labor, under the name (MERSIS) Central Commercial Register, the system that enables you to create your commercial registry even if you are not in Turkey, and also minimizing the time to one hour, only in sixteen minutes both of the foreigner and local investors would have done the legal procedure that would take days and weeks in different countries.

However, let’s make the long story short, and tell you about companies sorts in Turkey, which one you should determine in order to move to the next step, which is the preparing the legal papers that you have to submit throughout the (MERSIS) Central Commercial Register, depending on the type of company selected.


Types of commercial companies in Turkey:
According to the Turkish legislative regulations of the Turkish Ministry of Trade, through which the types of companies in Turkey were imposed and determined, are divided into five various types, which are as follows:

1-Joint-Stock Companies: to establish a joint-stock company in Turkey, 500,000 Turkish liras must be deposited to establish the commercial registry, the deposited money is divided in the form of shares for the shareholders in the company later.
As for the commercial activity, it is unrestricted, the owners can carry out any commercial activity, provided that it complies with Turkish laws and legislation.

2- Limited Liability Companies: The maximum value of the registered capital in the commercial register does not exceed 100,000 Turkish liras, which does not have to be paid or registered instantly, but unlike joint-stock companies, there are 24 months as time limit to pay the full amount, which is also divided later to shares, to be distributed to associates.

3- Collective companies: Collective companies are considered the easiest in terms of incorporation conditions, as there is no required capital, or even a limited number of partners who own the company’s shares, and therefore the percentage of the total number of collective companies in Turkey does not exceed 1% only.

4- Limited Partnership Companies: For the existing partners of a limited partnership company, tasks are distributed among them based on their shares within the company, divided between administrators and the board of directors.

The administrators have the right to make decisions that would bring about any changes without going back to the board of directors that owns the largest shares.

5- Cooperative Company: Cooperative companies are created with at least seven partners, and as for commercial activity, it is also unobstructed, but one of the most basic conditions for establishing a cooperative company is to pay no less than the value of one thousand shares, and the value of one share is 100 Turkish lira.


Legal procedures for founding a company in Turkey:

The first step towards establishing your commercial register in Turkey is to visit the governmental website of the Ministry of Commerce (MERSIS.), register a personal enrollment, which includes the information of the owner partners, but before starting the registration process, you must extract a tax number from the Tax Department in Turkey, a process that does not take much time, it's possible to do it online through the website, in addition to the necessity of obtaining the residence card in Turkey, which contains the national number of the foreign resident, and it is possible to replace the residence permit card with the passport, provided that the validity period of the passport is not less than six months minimum, otherwise, it the application will completely be rejected.

After making sure that both the tax number and the national number are ready, you can start establishing your commercial registry online, a process that does not take more than one hour only, but there is one obstacle that a foreign investor may face through the journey of creating his commercial registry online, which is the Turkish language or some Influential legal issues that you need a legal representative or a Turkish lawyer to help you avoid it.

It is worth noting that Turkey Advisors has an integrated legal team that speaks several languages ​, which can answer all your considerations and support you with all steps from A to Z


The legally required papers to establish a company in Turkey:
Within the step of establishing a commercial registry in Turkey, there are multiple articles that you must specify, and based on them, legal papers will be requested from you to complete the process of setting a commercial registry, for example:

If the establishment of a joint-stock company is chosen, the legal documents will differ from the documents if the establishment of a limited partnership company was chosen.

But generally speaking, several essential legal papers will be needed from the foreign investor in Turkey, and they are as follows:

1- Memorandum of Association signed by the founders
2- A document showing that at least 25% of the pledged capital in cash
has been invested in the bank.
3- Payment proof indicating that the competition authority’s share has been paid.
4- A document proving that the real property, intellectual property rights, and other values ​​in kind as capital in kind are annotated in the records in which they were registered.
5- Contracts with the company being incorporated, its founders, and other investors.
6- Permit letter for companies whose establishment is subject to the approval
 of the ministry or official institutions.
7- Written statements of members of the Board of Directors who are not shareholders.
8 - Signing and obligating the declarations of investors authorized to represent the company.

Eventually, there’re loads of more crucial and necessary knowledge to gain about the entire process of establishing a company in Turkey, such as the taxes, the exemptions, and much more essentials that would facilitate your route or make it an arduous road, so our team in Turkey Advisors is fully equipped and ready to afford you all the knowledge you deserve to gain, not only in the real estate market, but also about the legal prose of gain the Turkish citizenship for foreigner investors by establishing a commercial registry, or by buying a real estate property in Turkey, and even more, give us a call, to serve you the way you deserve.