Add in the investment in airports, roads, golf courses, marinas, and the possibility of joining the EEC, and you can understand why people from around the world are investing in property in Turkey. Year on year property prices have been rising but prices for buying property in Turkey are still considerably lower than buying property for sale in other major tourist areas such as Spain and France making Turkey an ideal overseas property investment.
 

• A foreign national cannot purchase more than 25,000m² (6 acres) of land (constructed or not) in Turkey without special consent from the Turkish Council of Ministers.
• foreign national cannot own more than 5/1000 of land in any designated province.

The principles governing purchase of property by foreign (i.e. non-Turkish) nationals in Turkey is governed by the 1934 Property Act (Law Nr. 2644 dated 22 November 1934). The legal frame work set in 1934 has at first been modified through sections of a by-law with the Law Nr. 4916 dated 3 July 2003. This law is predicated on a reciprocity clause; citizens of countries whose governments allow Turkish nationals to purchase real estate in their country, will be allowed to purchase real estate in Turkey.

However, following steps taken by Turkey's main opposition party CHP, the modifications were declared void by the Turkish Constitution(al court) on 26 April 2005, to enter into effect as of 27 July 2005 and the purchase of real estate by foreign nationals was suspended until a modified law was enacted on January 7th 2006. Law Nr. 5444, now enacted, instead of being a by-law modifying various paragraphs of the 1934 Property Act, is a fully stated legal text (still on the basis of a modification of the 1934 Act). (in Turkish). This current law is retrospective in application to 26 July 2005 and is largely the same as the law of 3 July 2003, with the following notable amendments:
1 A foreign national cannot purchase more than 25,000m² (6 acres) of land (constructed or not) in Turkey without special consent from the Turkish Council of Ministers.
2 foreign national cannot own more than 5/1000 of land in any designated province.
It should be noted that all overseas nationals are subject to a clearance by the Turkish military authorities before being allowed to proceed with any purchase. This is to establish that the land/property is not in a militarily sensitive area, and that the individual is considered as suitable to own real estate in Turkey. The process of designating land suitable for overseas purchasers is soon to be given over to the Land Registry Offices but will be based on information supplied by the military.
The Council of Ministers will determine, in the three months following the promulgation of the law, those areas where reserves on purchase due to considerations stemming from irrigation, energy, agriculture, mining, history, religion and culture issues and for preservation of natural flora and fauna are put in effect. Property acquired through inheritance is not subject to the limitations and reserves stated above.
 

After the annulment of the 2003 Law in July 2005, during the 6-month period of legal uncertainty, the market (focused on foreign buyers) came to a standstill, however, local Land Registry Offices continued to process applications in anticipation of the new law.
Recent news on overseas buyers from the First Economic Counsellor of the Turkish Embassy in London is as follows (unedited):
 

Taken as a whole, during the 69-year period starting in 1934 with the enactment of the Property Law until the first modifications of July 2003, 37342 parcels of property had been acquired by non-Turkish legal entities (companies) or private individuals in Turkey. It is to be noted that 2400 of these were Syrian nationals, who themselves had remained as such but whose properties had become part of the territory of Turkey with the adhesion of the Republic of Hatay to Turkey in 1939, the whole transitional proceedings that took place having been counted, for the purposes of statistics, as re-acquisitions by these Syrians.

The 2-year duration of the validity of the old law (July 2003-July 2005) gave some interesting insights on foreign national property buying trends in Turkey both for property market players and for official bodies.
During the two years for which the July 2003 modification had remained valid, 15842 parcels of property (2931 among these being unbuilt land lots) have been acquired by non-Turkish legal or private persons in Turkey. The purchasers constituted a total of 18959 legal or private owners or co-owners from a total of 58 different countries. In the forefront came British nationals (8625 persons acquiring 6333 parcels), who were followed by Germans (3482 persons for 3210 parcels), with Dutch nationals, Danes, Norwegians, Greeks, Irish nationals, Swedes and Belgians respectively occupying the next places. (Reuters İstanbul - in Turkish)
It is also the case that during this 2-year period that the districts that most favoured by foreign buyers are Alanya, Fethiye, Didim, Bodrum, Kuşadası along the coastline, as well as Ürgüp in Cappadocia. Alanya is a particularly preferred location for Germans and Scandinavians, while the British purchases are at the highest concentration in Fethiye and Didim Reuters İstanbul - in Turkish. Some of these towns have come to include sizable proportions of seasonal or full-time inhabitants made up of foreign homeowners. These homeowners already display a marked tendency to set up associations among themselves to promote their specific areas of interests such as the translation of key texts into their respective languages, contacts with officials, cultural and religious activities such as church-building and to provide guidance to newer purchasers

The following*is a list of countries which have full reciprocal agreements with Turkey on buying property. You should check with your country's embassy for precise details ( we know that there are some conditions applied to some of the countries in the main list below) general terms, if you are a citizen of one of these countries, you can own a Turkish property:
Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cote D'Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus (northern), Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Moritania, Mozambique, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia and Montenegro, Singapore, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Sweden,Tanzania, United Kingdom , Uruguay, USA, Venezuela.
In addition, citizens of the following countries may buy properties but not land: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Chad, China, Egypt, Georgia, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Morocco, Namibia, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan.