Aplikasyon: Where Your Turkish Property Boundaries Actually Are
Fences lie. Plans do not. If the wall on the ground and the line on the registered plan disagree, Turkish law sides with the plan — and an aplikasyon is the official procedure for finding out which one you have bought.
The land you are buying is a set of coordinates, not a fence line
Most foreign buyers in Turkey form their idea of a property’s boundaries by standing in it. The agent gestures at a wall, a line of trees, the edge of a driveway, and that becomes the mental map of what is being purchased. For an apartment this rarely matters. For a plot of land, a villa with a garden, or anything with a neighbour close by, it is the single most common source of expensive surprise.
Turkey records parcel boundaries as survey data held in the cadastral system, not as whatever happens to be built on site. Aplikasyon is the official procedure for taking those recorded boundaries and physically marking them out on the ground, and the aplikasyon krokisi is the document that results. It is, in effect, the land registry’s own answer to the question of where your boundary runs.
The reason this matters so much is a rule that surprises almost everyone: where the registered plan and the markers on the ground disagree, the plan is what counts. Decades of occupation, a neighbour’s confident account of history, and a wall that has stood since before you were born do not change the registered line. They are facts about the ground, and the ground is not the authority.
This guide explains what the procedure is, how it differs from the cheaper service people often buy by mistake, who is legally permitted to carry it out, and when a foreign buyer should insist on one. For the broader picture, see our guides to buying land in Turkey and checking a parcel online with Parsel Sorgu.
Aplikasyon — Key Facts
What the procedure is and who controls it
If the plan and the ground disagree, the plan is the boundary
Turkey’s regulations on land registry plans state the principle directly: if the tapu plans and the markers on the ground do not match one another, the boundary in the plan is the authoritative one. Where a property’s boundaries on the ground differ from its boundaries in the tapu plan, the boundaries in the registered plan are taken as the basis — the plan having been drawn up and registered in accordance with proper technique, the parcel’s fixed and unchanging ground boundaries, and the supporting documents.
For a buyer, three consequences follow, and they are worth stating bluntly.
A wall is not a boundary. It may coincide with one. It may have been built in the wrong place thirty years ago by someone who has since died, and nobody has ever checked. Until an aplikasyon has been done, you do not know which.
The seller may not know either. Sellers are not generally lying about boundaries. They are usually repeating what they were told when they bought, which was repeated to them in turn. Encroachments are commonly discovered only when somebody finally measures — often the next buyer, often during a dispute, often years too late.
Buying the discrepancy means buying the problem. If the garden you are shown extends two metres into the neighbouring parcel, you are not buying that two metres. You are buying a future argument, and potentially a demolition. The reverse happens too: part of what you are entitled to may be sitting on the wrong side of someone else’s fence.
There is a related trap in how sketch data is produced. Coordinates obtained merely by reading off a plan sheet and its measurement values carry the same margin of error as the sheet itself, and for that reason they do not carry legal weight and cannot be used as digital cadastral data. To count, the values have to be obtained by checking against the actual condition of the ground. That is precisely what an aplikasyon does, and it is why a screenshot from a parcel query tool is not a substitute. Our guide to tapu errors and cadastral corrections covers what happens when the register itself turns out to be wrong.
How an aplikasyon is actually obtained
A short, bounded procedure. The useful part for a buyer is knowing it exists and asking for it before exchange, not after.
Identify the parcel precisely
You need the province, district, neighbourhood, block (ada) and parcel number, which appear on the title deed. If you are at an early stage and do not yet hold the deed, the public parcel query service will confirm that the identifiers you have been given correspond to a real parcel in the right place.
Find an office authorised to do the work
Licensed survey and cadastre offices serving the area can be listed through the land registry authority’s own LİHKAB directory or through Web Tapu. Where no licensed office exists in the area the property sits in, the request can be made to a cadastre directorate outside that province instead.
Submit the request
Applications are made either through the LİHKAB application tab in Web Tapu or in person at the bureau. The request has to come from the owner or someone properly authorised to act for them, so a buyer who is not yet on the deed will usually need the seller to apply, or a power of attorney.
Technical check before any fieldwork
Before the aplikasyon proceeds, the parcel is examined for a technical error. If one is found it must be corrected under the relevant legislation before the work continues, and where a licensed office identifies the error it notifies the cadastre directorate so the correction can be made.
The survey on site
The work is carried out as a controlled measurement based on established control points, and the error tolerances applied when the tapu plan itself was made are taken into account. Satellite positioning using GNSS and Turkey’s national network, TUSAGA-Aktif, is permitted within defined technical limits. If a boundary is in dispute, that has to be pointed out during the work.
The sketch is issued and signed
The aplikasyon krokisi states the measurement values together with the coordinates of the polygon points and the parcel corner points, and the tolerances from the making of the tapu plan. It is signed by the authorised cadastre staff or the licensed office technical personnel and, where there are any, by neighbouring parcel owners and other interested parties.
Six situations where an aplikasyon earns its fee
Not every purchase needs one. These are the cases where skipping it is a false economy.
Buying a plot of land
The clearest case. With no building to anchor the boundary, the only reliable description of what you are buying is the surveyed line. See our guide to land for sale in Turkey.
A villa with a garden or pool
Where outbuildings, pools and walls sit near the edge of the plot, a small error becomes a structure in the wrong place and a demolition risk.
A neighbour disagrees
If a boundary is already contested, the dispute must be raised during the survey. An aplikasyon establishes the registered line as a starting point for resolving it.
Before you build anything
Walls, extensions, pools and landscaping all need to sit inside your line. Building first and measuring later is how encroachment claims begin.
Trees, crops or structures on the land
Ownership of what stands on a parcel can be separate from the land itself. Our guide to muhdesat explains when that happens.
After a split or merger
Where a parcel has recently been divided or combined, the new lines may exist only on paper. See ifraz and tevhit.
Aplikasyon compared with the services people confuse it for
Several of these are cheaper, faster and widely offered. Only one of them actually establishes where the boundary is on the ground.
| Service | Involves measurement? | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Aplikasyon | Yes — controlled survey | Boundary points marked on the ground from the registered plan, plus a sketch with corner coordinates and tolerances. |
| Yer gösterme | No | Someone shows you on site roughly where the parcel or unit is, using the plan sheet and site plan figures. No measurement is performed. |
| Plan (harita) örneği | No | A copy of the plan showing the parcel. A paper record, not a determination of anything on the ground. |
| Parsel sorgu | No | An online lookup confirming a parcel exists and roughly where it sits. Useful for orientation, not evidence of a boundary. |
| İmar durumu | No | A municipal statement of what may be built on the parcel. Answers a zoning question, not a boundary question. |
| A developer’s site plan | Not official | May be accurate and useful, but it is not issued by the cadastre directorate or a licensed office and has no equivalent standing. |
What is on the sketch, and who signs it
An aplikasyon krokisi is a technical document, and a buyer is not expected to interpret every figure on it. But knowing what it should contain is a useful check that you have been given the real thing rather than something less.
The sketch sets out the aplikasyon measurement values together with the coordinate values of the polygon points and the parcel corner points, and the error tolerances that applied when the tapu plan was produced. Those tolerances matter: surveying is never exact, and the document is honest about the margin within which the registered line is known. The definition of the document also refers to the tie measurements taken on the ground from the boundary points to fixed installations and control points — the measurements that allow the same corners to be re-established later if the markers are lost.
Signatures
The sketch is signed by the authorised cadastre staff or the licensed office technical personnel, and by neighbouring parcel owners and other interested parties where there are any. There is an exception for development parcels: in the aplikasyon of imar parcels, the signatures of the neighbouring parcel owners are not required.
That distinction is worth noticing. On a rural or cadastral parcel, the involvement of neighbours is part of what gives the exercise its weight, because the people most likely to contest the line are present while it is being marked. On a development parcel inside an approved scheme, the geometry comes from the approved layout, and the process does not depend on the neighbours turning up.
Disputed boundaries
Where there is a dispute about a particular boundary, the procedure requires that the disputed boundary be pointed out during the work. An aplikasyon does not resolve a dispute — that is a matter for the courts — but it does establish, on the record, what the registered position is, which is usually the first thing any resolution needs.
Shared ownership
One rule catches buyers of fractional interests. Where a property is held in shares, an aplikasyon is not carried out in proportion to the shares. A share in a parcel is an undivided interest in the whole, not a marked-out piece of ground, and no amount of surveying will turn it into one. If you are being offered a defined corner of a plot on a shared deed, that should stop the transaction while you take advice. Our guide to hisseli tapu sets out what a shared title actually gives you, and ifraz and tevhit explains the proper route to dividing land.
Access
An aplikasyon tells you where your boundary is. It does not tell you whether you have a legal right to reach it. Plots with no registered road access are a recurring problem in rural Turkey, and the two checks belong together — see geçit hakkı on rights of way.
How to use this in a live purchase
The practical difficulty for a foreign buyer is timing. The owner, or someone authorised by them, is the person who can apply — and at the point you most want the information, you are not the owner. There are a few ways round it.
Ask the seller to obtain one. On a land purchase this is a reasonable request and a cooperative seller will agree, particularly if you offer to meet the cost. A refusal on a plot where boundaries are unclear is itself informative.
Ask whether one already exists. Aplikasyon is commonly carried out for building permit applications and after parcel divisions, so a recent sketch may already be in the file. Check the date and check that nothing has changed on the ground since.
Use a power of attorney carefully. Many foreign buyers grant a Turkish power of attorney to handle the purchase, which can cover applications of this kind. Scope it deliberately rather than signing something broad — our guide to power of attorney for Turkish property covers what to watch.
Pair it with the register checks. A boundary survey answers one question. What is registered against the property answers another, and the two together are most of the land due diligence a buyer needs. See takyidat on reading encumbrances, Web Tapu on the online registry, and imar durumu on what can legally be built.
Do not let it slide to after completion. Everything about this is easier before money moves. Afterwards you still get the same answer, but you own the problem it describes. The wider sequence is set out in our guide to the pitfalls foreign buyers still fall into, and the full library sits in our Turkey property guides.
Buying land or a villa with a plot in Turkey?
We arrange boundary and register checks through licensed offices before you commit, not after.
Aplikasyon and the aplikasyon krokisi — frequently asked questions
The questions foreign buyers ask most often about boundaries, sketches and who is allowed to produce them.
Know where the boundary is before you buy the land
Tell us the parcel you are considering and we will arrange the register and boundary checks through licensed Turkish professionals, and tell you plainly whether what is on the ground matches what is on the plan.
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