How to Open a Bank Account in Turkey (Full Guide)

Bank accounts have become an indispensable necessity for individuals everywhere, because of the services and benefits that help individuals in managing their financial affairs with easiness. The most important things that residents and investors in Turkey is opening a bank account to save their money and facilitate their functions and benefit from Banking services.

Whether you are a student or an employee or a tourist in Turkey, opening a bank account is one of the necessities to meet the demands of modern life. You can benefit from it by paying the fees, such as college fees, rent, all purchases, bill payments, Currency exchange, in addition to the adoption of banks for smart device applications, making it easier to benefit from all the services without a need to visit bank.

 Types of bank accounts in Turkey 

1. Current Account:

This account allows you to deposit and withdraw funds at any time and does not outcome in any profits.

With the current account, you can carry out several banking services such as: money transfer, checkbook transactions, loan repayments, payment of fees and rent, bills and taxes, exchange between currencies and precious metals.

2. Participatory Account

This type of accounts allows the distribution of returns -within the scope of profit and loss partnership- between the account holder and the bank operating under the participatory system.

Funds collected from participating accounts are used to finance the trade, industry, agriculture and services sectors in line with the principles of interest-free Islamic banking.

The most important point in this system is not to set the rate of return initially, but at the end of the term.

3. Current gold account

This type of bank account in Turkey provides an opportunity to evaluate savings in gold, and some banks provide an assessment of savings by the price of other metals.

• Gold account can be used for saving.

• Gold can be bought or sold at any time at the price in its time.

• The minimum transaction usually equals 0.01 grams.

• A certificate is issued against the stored gold (at the banks where real gold buying and selling is available, such as Kuwait Turk Bank).

• You can withdraw gold in grams from some of the branches and ATMs of banks that have real gold buying and selling operations such as Kuwait Turk Bank.

4. Types of other bank accounts

There are other types of bank accounts offered by some banks in Turkey such as insurance account, savings account and others.

 What documents are required to open a bank account in Turkey? 

In order to open a bank account in Turkey the following papers and documents are required:

1. Foreign ID number.

2. passport

3. Tax number from the tax department office.

4. Address paper (residence permit, copy of bills not exceeding 3 months).

 How to open a bank account in Turkey? 

It is done by following these steps:

1. Submitting an address paper.

2. Going to the tax department personally with your passport, for getting a tax number for foreigners for free and the process will take place within minutes

3. After getting the tax number, you can go to any bank you choose and open an account whether in Dollar, Euro or Turkish Lira.

4. A bank account can be opened in Turkey for non-resident, So it is not necessary to be in Turkey to complete the process of opening a bank account, by conducting all transactions on the Internet from outside Turkey, which makes it possible to open a bank account in Turkey for foreigners, but some banks may need a Turkish mobile phone number to send a text message to confirmation

5. Banks' websites in Turkey support English and Turkish language, some of also support Arabic.