Foreign developers and lenders active in Turkish regeneration projects tend to treat the owners' resolution as a settled point. A qualified majority of co-owners resolves to redevelop, a construction agreement follows, and the permit process begins.
The amendment to the Implementation Regulation of Law No. 6306, published in Official Gazette No. 33158 of 4 February 2026 and effective the same day, disturbs that sequence. It does not change the majority threshold. It makes the route to the majority auditable — by an administrative body, at the permit stage.
The threshold is not the news
Under Article 6 of Law No. 6306, decisions concerning buildings identified as carrying seismic risk — reconstruction, sale of shares, redevelopment through construction-in-return-for-land-share or revenue sharing — are taken by a simple majority of co-owners calculated in proportion to their shares. Demolition is not a precondition for such a decision.
That simple majority standard replaced the earlier two-thirds requirement through Law No. 7471 in 2023. Foreign counsel occasionally still work from the two-thirds figure; it has not applied for some years.
What changed in February 2026 is Article 15 of the Implementation Regulation.
The new procedural chain
Convening. Where a decision is to be taken on a parcel containing buildings identified as carrying seismic risk, all co-owners are convened at the request of any one co-owner. The provision is mandatory, not permissive.
The time and place of the meeting are communicated using Form Ek-12, either by announcement at the local headman's office — or, where the buildings have not yet been demolished, at the building entrance or notice board — for fifteen days, or through a notary. Where announcement is used, notice is deemed served on all co-owners on the final day of the announcement period.
The meeting requires attendance of at least a simple majority by shares, and a resolution adopted by at least a simple majority is signed by the parties and recorded in minutes.
Notification of dissenting owners. The resolution and the offer containing the agreed terms — or the location where the offer may be inspected — are notified to those who did not join the resolution. The method differs by the owner's registry status: electronic service for those who have registered an electronic service address with the land registry; for those who have not, service through a notary or announcement at the headman's office for fifteen days using Form Ek-8 for risk-identified buildings and Form Ek-10 for risk areas and reserve areas.
Timing follows the method. Electronic notification is deemed effected at the end of the fifth day following the date it reaches the recipient's electronic address; announcement at the headman's office is deemed effected on the final day of the announcement.
This matters because the fifteen-day period runs from that date. If the offer is not examined, or the majority resolution and the offer are not accepted, within fifteen days, the dissenting owner's land shares are sold by public auction to the consenting co-owners at not less than an appraised market value determined by or on behalf of the Presidency.
Where announcement is used, inspection of the offer is enabled either by delivering the documents to the headman's office, or by the contracting developer, the Presidency, the Administration or TOKİ designating an address within the province where the property is located.
The operative provision
Article 15(4) converts all of the above into a precondition for the construction permit.
Before a permit application is submitted, the resolution and the offer — or the place where the offer may be inspected — must have been served on dissenting owners in the manner described above, and an application must have been filed with the Directorate (or the Administration, where authority has been delegated) for the sale of those owners' shares under Article 15/A.
The second sentence carries the weight. Following a preliminary examination of the sale file, the Directorate or Administration issues a letter to the authority that will grant the permit, stating whether the simple majority was achieved and whether the notification steps were completed.
Article 15/A was amended in parallel: the documents evidencing that owners were invited to the meeting, and the minutes of the meeting, now form part of the sale application file.
The effect is a change in when a procedural defect surfaces. Previously it was litigation risk, arriving later as an annulment claim while the project advanced. It is now identified administratively, before the permit issues.
Drafting implications
Commencement of the delivery period. Where delivery runs from contract signature or demolition, the developer absorbs delay originating entirely on the owners' side. Anchoring commencement to permit issuance, and allocating the risk of non-issuance expressly, addresses this.
Allocation of document duties. Who issues the Ek-12 notice, who retains the announcement records and minutes, who monitors notification of dissenting owners. These documents now sit in the application file; where the contract is silent, the question of which party is in default at the permit stage has no clean answer.
Choice of notification method. The gap between electronic service and announcement shifts the start of the fifteen-day period. Mapping, in advance, which owner receives which method makes the expiry date predictable.
The offer and the inspection address. The regulation permits notification of the place where the offer may be inspected rather than the offer itself. That address must sit within the province and must permit genuine inspection. Where the contract does not say who designates it and how an inspection request is evidenced, whether the period ran at all becomes arguable.
A unanimity exception. Consolidating undeveloped vacant parcels lying between or adjacent to the risk-identified parcels requires unanimity among all owners of the vacant parcels, subject to Article 7(3) of the Zoned Areas Development Regulation. Within a simple-majority regime this is an island of unanimity, and it belongs in feasibility analysis rather than in closing.
Priority offer to public bodies. Where the parcel has become land following demolition and its sale is resolved upon, the sale must first be offered to the Presidency, to bodies affiliated with or related to the Ministry, to the Administration or to TOKİ.
Title register review. Once the seismic-risk annotation is removed, a notation is entered in the declarations section recording that the property falls within the scope of Law No. 6306, and works and transactions on the parcel continue to be carried out under the Law. The notation survives demolition and reclassification as land — a point for acquisition and financing due diligence.
Security. Under Provisional Article 5, security provided in respect of construction permits issued from 1 January 2024 is recalculated at the six per cent rate in Article 13(9)(c) upon the contractor's request. Because recalculation depends on an application rather than operating automatically, existing security provisions warrant review.
Assessment
Read against the 2023 reduction of the decision threshold, the amendment operates as a counterweight: the majority required was lowered, and the process for assembling and evidencing that majority has now been tightened.
For contracting parties the counterweight has a price. Procedural compliance is a condition precedent in substance if not in name, and the permit now depends on a chain of steps largely outside the developer's contractual control. Where the contract does not assign responsibility along that chain, the resulting delay belongs to no one.
This article is a general assessment based on the text of the regulation published in Official Gazette No. 33158 of 4 February 2026 and does not constitute an opinion on any particular matter.