The Best Banks in Turkey for Foreigners

Banking is one of our necessities in everyday life, despite where you live or what occupation you have, because of the facilities and benefits it provides for handling our finances. Panorama Property suggests opening an account in Turkey if you are intending to buy a property and relocate to Turkey.

In Panorama Property we have listed the best banks in Turkey where foreigners can open a bank account, we have ranked them by order, starting from the best bank for foreigners in Turkey: 

• Ziraat Bankası
• Garanti BBVA
• İş Bankası
• AKBank
• Yapı Kredi Bankası
• VakıfBank
• DenizBank

During the last decade, the Turkish Banking system has seen many changes and has gone through major regulations that helped develop this sector, which made It easy for foreign investors to open a bank account in Turkey, despite the fact that they might not have a direct relationship with Turkey. 

In Panorama Property we help our customers open a bank account in Turkey, bank accounts can be opened in Turkish Lira, but also in any currency needed or preferred (US Dollars, Euro, … etc.)

It’s a real advantage to open a bank account in Turkey because it will simplify all the payments, money transfers, tax collection, even a property purchase with installment will be easy.

We should consider some factors in order to open a bank account in Turkey as a foreign investor, for instance, the first thing a non-Turkish person would have in mind would be “Does this bank have English speakers?”, that would be in case a person doesn’t speak Turkish. Regarding that matter, mostly all the Turkish banks have English speakers, and also, an English interface in their websites, ATMs, and smartphone applications. Also, one of the most frequently asked questions is “Do I really need to open a bank account in Turkey?”, to answer that question we would say it’s recommendable to open it since it will simplify a lot of processes, and it will help you as an investor to put your money in any Turkish bank without facing any problems or obstacles. 

The Best Banks in Turkey for Foreigners:

As mentioned above, we made a list of some Turkish banks, here we will describe each one of them: 

• Ziraat Bankası

Ziraat Bankası is a public bank, founded by Mehmet Sabit Sağıroğlu in 1863, it’s specialized in selling banking services, as well as insurances (like any other institutional bank). Ziraat Bankası has its headquarters in Ankara, with 1.773 branches throughout Turkey as of 2018, with 268 branches only in Istanbul. According to their website, their revenue represented 24 billion Turkish Lira in 2018 and a number of employees of 24.647 employees in total. 

• Garanti BBVA

Garanti bank was founded in 1946 and has its headquarters in Istanbul. Garanti bank had 49.85% of its share hold by the Spanish bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (known as BBVA). Their partnership has been agreed upon in 2015. According to their website, Garanti BBVA has 872 in Turkey, 282 of them are located in Istanbul. Their revenue in 2020 represented 42.3 billion Turkish Lira. Their number of employees was 18.636 in 2020. 

• İş Bankası

İş Bankası was founded in 1924 by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, it’s the largest private bank by the size of its assets and equity. İş Bankası has its headquarters in Istanbul, specifically in Levent, İş Bank Tower 1. It has a total of 1.271 branches, 1.249 are located in Turkey, and 22 are abroad, İş Bankası’s branches are situated throughout Europe, the Middle East, and some Asian countries (Germany, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Northern Cyprus, Russia, Georgia, Iraq, Bahrain, Egypt, Shanghai…) 

According to their website, İş Bankası’s revenue represented 25,4 Billion Turkish Lira in 2019. And their number of employees is 24.053 employees in 2019.

• AKBank

AKBank was founded in Adana in 1948, its headquarters is located in Istanbul. AKBank has a strategic partnership with Citigroup which was completed in 2007, where the agreement saw Citigroup acquire 20% of equity’s stake. Also, according to their website AKBank has 716 branches throughout Turkey, and 8 of them in Istanbul, their revenue represented 21 billion Turkish Lira in 2019. And they had 2 thousand employees as of 2019. 

• Yapı Kredi Bankası

Yapı Kredi Bankası was founded in 1944, it has its headquarters in Istanbul, it has a little sister company Yapı Kredi Sigorta, which is responsible only for insurances procedures. 

According to Yapı Kredi’s website, their revenue in 2019 was 21.2 billion Turkish Lira and a number of employees 16.631 employees for that same year. 

Yapı Kredi Bankası has 846 branches throughout Turkey.

• VakıfBank

VakıfBank was founded in 1954, it has its headquarters in Istanbul, VakıfBank has 939 branches throughout the whole country, and 236 of them are located in Istanbul. More than that, VakıfBank has 3 international branches located in New York, Bahrain, and Arbil. According to VakıfBank’s website, in 2021 their revenue was 10.9 billion Turkish Lira. 

• DenizBank

Denizbank was founded in 1938 in Istanbul, firstly it was owned by the financial service institution “Dexia”, then from 2012 to 2019 Russian bank “Sberbank” took the reins, afterward, it’s the Emirati group “Emirates NBD” who is fully in charge of the financial services DenizBank provides. Its headquarters is located in Istanbul. DenizBank has 740 branches throughout Turkey, 229 of them are in Istanbul. According to their website, DenizBank had a total asset of 301 million Turkish lire in 2021. 

Now that you learned about the biggest banks in Turkey, you are might be interested in purchasing property with Panorama Property, please contact us immediately, and our expert team will be more than glad to support you with all of your requirements. We are a Turkish professional real estate agency that focuses completely on global investors looking to buy real estate in Istanbul, even if they are new to the market or expanding their investment.