IT’S been a long time in coming – but new foreign buyers in certain Turkish provinces will now be able to get their property deeds (TAPUs) in Turkey on the same day of purchase.

It puts the foreign property buyer on the same standing as that of a Turk – meaning that they can finally buy a property in a day – by getting their names on the property deeds.

What has happened?

The dreaded military search on foreign property buyers has been lifted.

This military search – which has been in since 2004, the year foreigners were allowed to buy property in Turkey – took anything from a couple of weeks to three months to be completed at a cost of an average £300.

This window of opportunity enabled all manner of scams – flipping the property several times, allowing unwitting Turks to buy the property while the search was on, or criminally placing the TAPU name in a name of a willing friend, while the ‘seller’ disappeared with the buyer’s proceeds of thousands of pounds.

The law was modified in May 2011 when it was declared that a military search wasn’t required on a foreign buyer if the property they were buying had already received a military search in the past.

Now the military search has all but been lifted. However, you still have to pay around a 425TL administration fee.

A protocol was signed between the General Staff, the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Environment and Urban Planning and the General Directorate of Land Registry Cadastre.

According to the protocol, military searches will, for now, not be demanded on foreign property sales in Aydın, Aksaray, Adıyaman, Çankırı, Çorum, Isparta, Kahramanmaraş, Karabük, Kastamonu, Kırşehir, Nevşehir, Niğde, Samsun, Sinop, Usak and Yozgat.

The exemption in Aydın will not cover real estate with land in Dilek Peninsula.

Foreign nationals may purchase immovable property for use as workplace or residence in Turkey provided that they comply with legal restrictions.

However, even in different cities, the total area of ​​immovables that a foreign person can buy in Turkey can not exceed 30 hectares.

Deniz Demir, a member of the Didim Chamber of Commerce, said the decision on the removal of the special security allowance on the sale of real estate for foreigners was good news.