The Empty-Months Problem for Danish Feriebolig Owners
Many Danish owners buy a flat on the Turkish coast as a feriebolig, then use it for only a few weeks each year. The obvious idea follows quickly: rent it out short-term to other holidaymakers during the months you are back in Denmark, and let the property cover its own running costs. Since 1 January 2024, that plan runs straight into a licensing regime that did not exist before, and casual Airbnb letting now carries real financial risk.
The rule book is Law No. 7464, formally the Law on the Leasing of Residential Properties for Tourism Purposes. The Turkish Grand National Assembly adopted it on 25 October 2023, and it took effect on 1 January 2024. It created Turkey's first dedicated permit system for short-term tourist rentals of homes, and it applies to you as a foreign owner in exactly the same way it applies to a Turkish citizen down the hall.
This guide walks through what the law calls a short-term rental, why the consent of your neighbours is the hardest single hurdle for a foreign owner, what the Ministry plaque is, and what happens to your wallet if you skip the permit and rent anyway.
What Counts as a Short-Term Rental: the 100-Day Line
Law 7464 does not regulate every lease. It targets tourism rentals, which the regulation defines as leasing a dwelling to the same tenant for a period of 100 days or less. That single number draws the boundary.
If you let your flat to one tenant for 100 days or fewer, you are inside the law and you need a tourism permit. If a single lease to the same tenant runs longer than 100 days, it falls outside Law 7464 and is treated as an ordinary long-term tenancy, which does not require a tourism permit. For a Danish owner who wants to take a string of week-long and fortnight-long holiday bookings, every one of those stays sits firmly inside the regulated short-term category. There is no informal allowance for a handful of bookings a year; the permit obligation attaches to the activity, not to the volume.
The Real Obstacle: Unanimous Flat-Owner Consent
For most foreign owners, the permit application is not blocked by paperwork or identity checks. It is blocked by the neighbours.
The law requires a unanimous decision of all flat owners, the kat malikleri or condominium owners, in your building before the Ministry will issue a tourism permit. Unanimous means exactly that: every single owner in the building has to agree. A single objecting owner can stop your permit. There is one helpful narrowing rule. In a multi-building complex, consent is needed only from the owners of the specific building that contains your unit, not from every owner across the whole site.
Why is this so heavy for a Danish owner in particular? You are often the absent party. You may not know your co-owners, you may not speak Turkish, and you cannot easily knock on doors to negotiate. Meanwhile, resident neighbours frequently dislike the idea of a rotating cast of holiday guests sharing their lift, their pool, and their parking. The consent requirement effectively hands each of those neighbours a veto over your rental plan.
There is a notable exception worth checking before you assume the worst. Buildings whose management plan, the yonetim plani, explicitly permits short-term tourism rentals and that provide reception, security, and daily cleaning services can obtain a permit without the unanimous-consent condition. If you bought into a serviced, hotel-style residence, your path may already be open. If you bought into an ordinary apartment block, plan for a difficult conversation with every neighbour.
Practically, the consent has to be documented, not merely verbal. Owners typically record their agreement through a decision of the building's owners' assembly, so a single absent or unreachable co-owner can stall the process just as effectively as an outright objection. For a Danish owner, this is where a local representative earns their fee: tracking down every title holder, some of whom may themselves be foreign or absent, and securing a signature from each one. Build time into your plans for this step, because it cannot be rushed and it cannot be bought around. If your building has a strong-minded resident who simply does not want holiday traffic, that one person can keep your flat off the short-term market entirely, and the law gives you no appeal against their refusal.
A second numerical limit can also apply. In a building with more than three independent units, a single owner may hold permits for at most 25% of the units, and if more than five units in one building are licensed to the same owner, a workplace business license is required on top. For a typical Danish owner with one holiday flat, this cap will rarely bite, but it matters if you own several units in the same block.
Who Applies, and Through Which Door
Only the property owner, or the holder of a limited real right over the property, may apply for the permit. Tenants cannot apply, and intermediary platforms like Airbnb cannot apply on your behalf.
Applications go through Turkey's e-Devlet, the e-Government portal. You submit identity verification, the property title deed information, the tapu, and the unanimous consent of the building's flat owners. The permit certificate itself, the izin belgesi, is issued by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and it must be in hand before you sign any short-term lease, not after the first guest arrives.
Foreign and non-resident owners carry the same permit, plaque, consent, and guest-reporting duties as residents. Property and advisory sources also report that non-resident owners are commonly required to appoint a local legal representative or proxy in Turkey to manage compliance; treat that as practical guidance rather than a strictly verified statutory clause, but for a Danish owner managing the process from abroad, a local proxy is in any case the realistic way to handle e-Devlet filings and neighbour negotiations.
The Ministry Plaque
A tourism permit is not invisible. Once licensed, you must display a Ministry-issued plaque, the levha, bearing the phrase Tourism Purpose Residence at the entrance of the rented property. The Ministry marks the plaque, and it has to be shown, not filed in a drawer.
This matters for two reasons. First, it makes compliance, or the lack of it, visible to inspectors and to your own neighbours. Second, the plaque carries its own penalty track. Failing to display it is fined TRY 100,000, with an additional TRY 500,000 if the plaque is still absent after a 15-day cure period. So even an owner who obtained a permit can be fined for the simple omission of hanging the plate.
What Happens If You Just List It on Airbnb
The quiet assumption behind casual letting is that a few bookings a year will slip under the radar. As of 2026, that assumption is dangerous. Law 7464 is being actively enforced through field inspections, fines, and license revocations across Turkey, rather than sitting on the books as a paper requirement.
The penalties escalate. The table below summarises the main administrative fines reported for unlicensed short-term rental activity. Figures are in Turkish lira and reflect commentary on the regulation; one caveat follows the table.
| Violation | Administrative fine |
|---|---|
| Renting short-term without a permit (first violation) | TRY 100,000 per residence, plus a 15-day window to obtain the permit |
| Continuing to rent after the 15-day notice | TRY 500,000 |
| Continued unlicensed activity thereafter | TRY 1,000,000 |
| Failing to display the Ministry plaque | TRY 100,000 (plus TRY 500,000 if still absent after 15 days) |
| Advertising or promoting an unlicensed rental | TRY 100,000 to TRY 500,000 |
| Platform failing to remove an unlicensed listing within 24 hours | TRY 100,000 per residence (charged to the platform) |
| Subletting a permitted unit without authorisation | TRY 100,000 per contract |
The overall statutory range for conducting tourism rentals without a permit runs from TRY 100,000 to TRY 1,000,000. One point deserves hedging: the three-step ladder of 100,000, then 500,000, then 1,000,000 is consistently reported, but at least one legal commentary frames the top TRY 1,000,000 figure differently, tying it to repeated use of the residence rather than a clean third strike. Confirm the exact escalation against the official Regulation text before you rely on a precise sequence.
Notice the advertising line. You do not even have to complete a booking to be exposed. Listing an unlicensed flat publicly carries a fine of TRY 100,000 to TRY 500,000 on its own. And the platform itself is on the hook: Airbnb and similar intermediaries must remove an unlicensed listing within 24 hours of a Ministry request, or face TRY 100,000 per residence. In practice that means a listing the Ministry flags does not just expose you; it gets pulled.
After the Permit: Guests and Tax
The permit is the start of compliance, not the end. Once licensed, you gain access to the Kimlik Bildirim Sistemi, the identity notification system, and you must report every guest's identity details to law enforcement within 24 hours of check-in. Failure to report guests can be fined up to TRY 500,000. For a remote Danish owner, this is another task that effectively requires a local manager or a cooperative cleaning service to handle each arrival.
Tax follows the income. Short-term tourism rentals are subject to a 2% accommodation tax, the konaklama vergisi, and the rental income is taxed under Turkish income tax at progressive rates of roughly 15% to 40%. A 2024 Council of State, Danistay, ruling treats frequent Airbnb-style letting as commercial income rather than passive rental income, which can change how your earnings are classified and taxed. Speak to a Turkish accountant about how that classification affects your specific letting pattern.
This matters more than it first appears for a Danish owner. A commercial classification can pull you into bookkeeping, invoicing, and value-added-tax obligations that a simple rental return would not trigger, and it interacts with how Denmark taxes your foreign-property income under the Denmark-Turkey double-taxation arrangement. The short version: do not assume that declaring the income only in Turkey, or only in Denmark, settles the matter. Map both sides before your first booking so the rental does not turn a modest holiday income into a tax headache spanning two countries.
A Practical Order of Operations
For a Danish feriebolig owner weighing all this, the sequence is clear. First, check if your building is a serviced residence whose management plan already allows tourism rentals; if it does, the hardest hurdle disappears. If not, sound out every flat owner in your building before you spend money on anything else, because without unanimous consent there is no permit and no legal short-term rental. Only once consent is realistic should you move to the e-Devlet application, the title-deed and identity documents, the plaque, and a local representative to handle guest reporting and tax filings.
The upside is genuine: with a permit on the wall and the plaque at the door, you can let your Turkish holiday home legally during the long months you are home in Denmark, with the income properly declared and the risk of a six-figure lira fine taken off the table. The cost is the up-front compliance work, and for an absent foreign owner the single biggest variable in that work is the answer your neighbours give.