Yapı Denetimi: Who Actually Inspects a New Build in Turkey
Every permitted building in Turkey above a certain size has to be supervised by an independent, state-licensed firm that is paid by the owner and liable for structural defects for fifteen years. Knowing who that firm is — and whether your building was even inside the system — is one of the most useful checks a foreign buyer can run.
The developer builds it. Someone else is supposed to check it.
When a foreign buyer looks at a new apartment in Turkey, the names that come up are the developer and the agent. Neither of them is the party whose job it was to verify that the building was actually constructed to its approved drawings. That job belongs to a yapı denetim kuruluşu — a building supervision company — and it is a separate legal creature with its own licence, its own liability and its own file on your building.
The system was created by the Building Supervision Law, Law No. 4708, passed on 29 June 2001 and published in the Official Gazette on 13 July 2001 (issue 24461), and amended many times since — most recently by Law No. 7579 of 7 May 2026. Its stated purpose, in Article 1, is to secure life and property by providing design and construction supervision so that buildings are built to the development plan and to the rules of science, art and health.
What makes this worth a foreign buyer’s attention is Article 3. Supervision firms, their inspecting architects and engineers, the project designers, the laboratory staff and the contractor are all liable — in proportion to their fault — to the building owner and to the permitting authority for defects caused by work that departs from the permit or from proper practice. That liability runs from the date the occupancy permit was issued, and it lasts fifteen years for the load-bearing system and two years for everything else.
This guide covers who the parties are, how the firm is appointed and paid, what it must actually do, which buildings are quietly left outside the system, and what changed in 2026. For the wider purchase sequence see our Turkey property buyer’s guide, and for the permit that starts the liability clock, our guide to the habitation certificate (iskan).
Law 4708 — At A Glance
The building supervision framework, as amended to 2026
Six parties, and why the separation is the point
Law 4708 defines each role deliberately, because the whole design depends on keeping them apart. These are the words you will meet in a project’s paperwork.
- Yapı sahibi — the building owner. If you buy off-plan, the developer is usually the yapı sahibi during construction, not you.
- Yapı müteahhidi — the contractor that undertakes the work, registered with the relevant professional chamber.
- Proje müellifi — the project designer who prepares the building’s studies and drawings.
- Yapı denetim kuruluşu — the supervision company: a ministry-permitted legal entity that does supervision and nothing else, with architects and engineers as its only partners.
- Denetçi mimar ve mühendis — the inspecting architects and engineers, individually certified by the ministry.
- Laboratuvar — a ministry-permitted testing facility for soil and building materials.
Two rules in Article 2 do most of the protective work. First, the supervision contract is signed between the firm and the building owner or the owner’s proxy — and the owner may not appoint the contractor they hired for the construction work as that proxy. The party being checked cannot arrange its own check. Second, a supervision company may not engage in any commercial activity other than supervision, and its inspecting architects and engineers are barred from other professional or construction-related commercial activity while they are supervising.
What the supervision company is actually required to do
These are statutory duties, not service-brochure promises. Each one leaves a document behind, which is what makes them checkable years later.
Review the design before a brick is laid
Examine the soil and foundation reports and the designer’s application drawings, check the drawings and calculations, and report conformity to the permitting authority — without the file passing through any other body’s approval.
Register the undertaking within seven days
File a formal undertaking with the permitting authority confirming it has taken on supervision, and notify the ministry of the building’s details within seven days of the construction permit being issued.
Supervise against the permit
Check that the building is constructed in conformity with the permit, its annexes and the legislation. This is the core duty, and the one a defect claim is usually built on.
Test the materials and document it
Verify that materials and workmanship conform to the drawings, technical specification and standards, have the tests done at permitted laboratories, and certify the results. Where materials fail, report it to the permitting authority and the provincial industry and trade directorates.
Report deviations in three working days
If work departs from the permit or its annexes, notify the permitting authority within three working days — a short, hard deadline, and a useful thing to look for in a building’s file.
How a building passes through the system
Simplified, but in the statutory order. Understanding the order is what lets you spot a step that was skipped.
A supervision company is appointed
Where the construction area on which the contract fee is based is up to 500 m², the owner chooses the firm. For anything larger the ministry determines up to two firms electronically, ranked first and second, taking into account how many are active in that province, and the owner contracts with one of them. This allocation rule was rewritten by Law 7534 on 5 December 2024.
The contract is signed and filed
The contract sets out the subject, location, construction area and duration of the service, the building’s physical characteristics as agreed between owner and contractor, the fee, and the technical staff who will work on it. A copy goes to the permitting authority with the undertaking, and the contract cannot be terminated except in cases the ministry has defined.
The fee goes into a held account, not to the firm
The owner pays into a trust-type account at the provincial accounting unit, from which the firm is then paid. Of the amounts deposited, 3% goes to the authority that issued the permit and 3% to the ministry’s revolving fund. The firm may not ask the owner for any further payment under another heading.
Design review, then staged site supervision
The firm reviews the reports and drawings, reports conformity, then supervises on a risk-based basis — a principle added to Article 3 in February 2018 — testing materials through licensed laboratories as the structure goes up.
Completion is reported, and the clock starts
The firm reports to the permitting authority that the building has been completed, in whole or in part, in conformity with the permit drawings. The occupancy permit follows, and its date is when the fifteen-year and two-year liability periods start to run.
A building identity certificate is affixed
Buildings supervised and completed under Law 4708 receive a bina kimlik sertifikası — a building identity certificate, introduced in June 2022 and fixed to the building, so that its technical and general information can be reached by the owner, interested citizens and public officials through modules the ministry authorises.
Inside the system, or outside it?
Article 1 lists what Law 4708 does not cover. For a buyer, the exemptions matter more than the inclusions — because an exempt building has no supervision company standing behind it.
| ساختمان | Supervised under Law 4708? | What applies instead |
|---|---|---|
| Apartment block requiring a construction permit, inside or outside municipal boundaries | بله | Licensed supervision company, 15-year structural liability |
| Detached building, max two storeys above basement, total construction area not over 200 m² | نه | Technical responsibility assumed by an architect or engineer under the Development Law |
| Several detached buildings on one parcel with a combined area over 200 m² | بله | The law applies to the parcel even though each building is small |
| Housing in village settlement areas and non-settlement areas outside municipal limits, or in municipalities under 5,000 population: max two storeys, up to 500 m² | نه | Outside the law, together with their coal stores, parking and depots |
| Agricultural and livestock buildings that are not integrated facilities | نه | Excluded by Article 1 |
| Solar power plants and wind power plants | نه | Excluded by the amendment of 5 December 2024 |
| Public buildings and facilities under Article 26, and buildings not subject to a permit under Article 27, of the Development Law | نه | Excluded by Article 1 |
Read that second row again if you are buying a standalone villa. A two-storey house under 200 m² is a very common product on the Turkish coast, and it is exempt. That does not make it badly built — technical responsibility still has to be assumed by a qualified architect or engineer, and the building still needs a permit and an occupancy certificate. But the fifteen-year statutory liability of a licensed supervision company is not part of the package, and a buyer who assumes it is has mispriced the risk. The third row is the counterweight: where one parcel holds several detached buildings whose combined area exceeds 200 m², the law applies anyway.
What supervision costs, and why it is capped
The fee is set in the supervision contract, but Article 5 fixes the rates rather than leaving them to negotiation. They are a percentage of the building’s fee-basis approximate cost — the construction area multiplied by unit costs the ministry publishes by regulation.
Where the fee-basis construction area is up to and including 1,000 m², the fee is 1.75%. From 1,001 m² up to and including 50,000 m² it is 1.5%, and above that 1.25%. Where the work is not subject to electronic allocation the rate may rise to a maximum of 3.50%, and it increases by 5% annually where construction runs beyond one year. For strengthening works the fee may not be less than 25% of the fee for the whole building.
Buildings inside the approved boundaries of industrial zones, technology development zones, organised industrial zones, free zones and industrial sites get a discount of up to 50%. The fee covers ministry-specified laboratory tests on the load-bearing system, but excludes VAT and non-structural tests, which the contractor arranges.
We have deliberately not quoted the ministry’s per-square-metre unit costs. They are revised annually and we could not verify the current figures against an official publication while writing, so the percentages above are the reliable part. Ask your lawyer or the supervision firm for the unit cost actually applied to your building.
What Law 7579 changed in May 2026
The most recent amendment, Law No. 7579 of 7 May 2026, extended the regime into two areas that had sat outside it. Both matter if you are buying off-plan.
First, it created the zemin ve temel etüt kuruluşu — the soil and foundation survey organisation. Under the new Additional Article 2, such surveys for buildings within the law’s scope must be carried out by organisations holding a ministry permit, with at least one partner who is a geology, geophysics or civil engineer. Contracts are signed with the project designer or the owner, and the fee goes into a trust-type account on the supervision model, with 2% to the permitting authority, 2% to the ministry’s revolving fund and a ministry-set share of up to 10% to a designated body.
The enforcement is sharp. An administrative fine of 200,000 Turkish lira applies where such an organisation fails to follow the standards in its field or borehole work, sampling, storage, transport, laboratory delivery and reporting, or uses a laboratory without a ministry permit. If it issues a soil report contrary to the facts, or one that causes the static calculations to be made incorrectly, its permit is cancelled, its activity ended and its security forfeited — and its partners are barred from a technical role in any survey, supervision or laboratory organisation for three years. Implementation begins in a pilot province the ministry designates.
Second, the same law brought the beton üreticisi — the concrete producer, defined as the party that mixes concrete’s components and arranges its delivery — into the law’s definitions and into its monitoring and penalty provisions.
Turning all of this into five questions
You are not going to audit a construction file from abroad, and you do not need to. The value of understanding the system is that it tells you which five questions separate a building with a documented chain of responsibility from one without.
- Was this building inside Law 4708 at all? Check the storey count and total construction area against the 200 m² and two-storey thresholds, and whether other buildings share the parcel.
- Which firm supervised it, and is it still licensed? It is named in the supervision contract and in the permitting authority’s file. A firm whose permit was later cancelled is a materially different counterparty from one still trading.
- Does an occupancy permit exist, and what is its date? That date starts both liability periods, and separately it is what makes the building lawfully habitable.
- Is there a building identity certificate? For buildings completed since the 2022 amendment it should be affixed to the building.
- Were any substantial alterations since the permit authorised? Unauthorised structural alteration shifts liability onto whoever did it, and is common in older resales.
Buying before completion shifts the questions: the supervision company is being appointed during your purchase rather than years before it, so the contract, the fee deposit and the undertaking are all live documents you can ask to see. See buying off-plan property in Turkey و new build versus resale for that timing, and kat irtifakı versus kat mülkiyeti for the ownership form you hold at each stage.
Want the build quality checked, not just the title?
We pull the supervision record, the occupancy permit and the parcel file before you commit to a new build.
Yapı denetimi — frequently asked questions
What foreign buyers ask about building supervision, liability and which buildings are covered.
Where to go next
The rest of our foreign-buyer library, from the title deed itself to the build quality behind it.
- Zemin etüdü — the soil survey — what the ground report says and why 2026 changed who may write it.
- The habitation certificate (iskan) — the permit that starts the liability clock.
- Building age and earthquake codes — how the year of construction maps onto seismic standards.
- How to check a Turkish property developer — the counterparty behind the build.
- Buying off-plan property in Turkey — where supervision documents are still live.
- Yapı kayıt belgesi — the registration certificate for unpermitted building work.
- DASK earthquake insurance — the cover required before a transfer completes.
- All Turkey property guides — the full foreign-buyer library.
Have the supervision record checked before you commit
Tell us the building you are considering and we will establish whether it was supervised under Law 4708, which firm held the file, when the occupancy permit was issued and what remains of the statutory liability period. We work with licensed Turkish conveyancers and surveyors.
