Turkish taxes for Brits: leaving HMRC behind, the 1986 treaty and your State Pension

Move to Fethiye for good and Turkey can tax your worldwide income, while HMRC only lets go when the UK rules say so. The good news: the UK–Turkey treaty is kind to pensioners, and your State Pension keeps rising.

The short version

• Turkey treats you as resident if you're domiciled there or stay more than six months in a calendar year; short trips away don't break the count. Residents are taxed on worldwide income [7].
• There's a catch in your favour: foreigners in Turkey for rest, travel, treatment or study aren't resident under the six-month rule, though settling with a home here can still make you resident [7].
• Leaving the UK tax system is down to the Statutory Residence Test, not your ikamet. Tell HMRC with a P85 or the SA109 pages of a return [2].
• Under the UK–Turkey double taxation agreement (signed 1986, in force 1988), private pensions and social security payments are taxable only where you live. UK government pensions stay with the UK [1].
• Turkey is on the DWP's list of countries where the State Pension is uprated every April [4].

How Turkey taxes residents

Turkish income tax runs on the calendar year. Employees have tax taken from their pay each month by the employer, and people with other taxable income (rent from a flat in Çalış, say) file an annual return in March after the tax year. You'll need a tax number (vergi numarası), which a foreign resident can get from the tax office or online with a foreigner ID number. Our guide to e-Devlet, the tax number and your first month in Turkey walks through it.

The 2026 rates were set by Income Tax General Communiqué No. 332, published in the Resmî Gazete on 31 December 2025 [6]. The bands rise each year with a revaluation rate (25.49% for 2026), because inflation would otherwise drag everyone into the top band.

Source: Communiqué No. 332 [6].

Notice there's no tax-free Personal Allowance like the £12,570 you're used to back home: the 15% band starts with the first lira. Other 2026 figures from the same communiqué: the first TRY 58,000 (about £860) of residential rent income from a Turkish property is exempt, and untaxed investment or rental income above TRY 22,000 (about £330) has to be declared [6].

What's different from life back home in the UK:

Foreign income and the tax credit

As a full taxpayer, you're taxed on income from inside and outside Turkey. Where you've already paid tax abroad on foreign income, Article 123 of the Income Tax Law lets you deduct it from the Turkish tax on that same income, capped at the Turkish tax due, with no refund of any excess [7].

Leaving the UK tax system properly

The UK taxes by residence, not citizenship. An ikamet card in your wallet doesn't end UK residence; the Statutory Residence Test does, one tax year at a time.

1. Check the automatic overseas tests. Retiring to Fethiye? Look at the day limits in the Statutory Residence Test explained. Moving for full-time work abroad has its own test.
2. Look at split-year treatment for the year you go, so income from your move date is outside UK tax. See split-year treatment.
3. Tell HMRC. Use form P85 if you don't normally file a Self Assessment return; otherwise post the SA109 residence pages with your return. You can't report leaving through HMRC's online services, and the paper deadline is 31 October [2]. Our guide to the P85 and your last tax year covers both.
4. Mind the summer visits. Dalaman is a four-hour hop from Gatwick or Manchester, so it's easy to pop home. Long stays with the grandchildren can add up towards the UK day limits.

The UK–Turkey double taxation agreement

The agreement was signed in London on 19 February 1986, came into force on 26 October 1988 and applies in the UK from 6 April 1989 for income tax [1]. The FCDO's Living in Turkey guide says its aim is that you don't pay tax on the same income in both countries [3].

Source: the UK–Turkey agreement [1].

Residence tie-breaker. If both countries treat you as resident, Article 4 looks first at where you have a permanent home, then your centre of vital interests, then habitual abode, then nationality [1]. Keeping a furnished house in Kent "just in case" can count against you.

How the relief works. Where both can tax, Turkey deducts UK tax on UK-source income from its own tax, capped at the Turkish tax on that income; the UK gives credit the other way [1].

Getting the UK to stop deducting tax. Because Article 18 gives private pensions to Turkey, you can ask HMRC for relief at source on your workplace or personal pension using form DT-Individual [5]. HMRC usually wants proof that Turkey treats you as resident.

What Turkey does with your UK pensions

Here's where it gets interesting. Turkish tax writers point out that Article 23 of the Income Tax Law exempts retirement, disability, widow's and orphan's pensions paid by foreign social security institutions [8][9]. That's generally read as covering the UK State Pension. Private pension income from abroad isn't covered by that exemption, and a 2016 Turkish analysis treats it as investment income or wages depending on its nature [9]. The rules are untested for many British schemes, so a tax adviser who knows both countries can check your situation before you draw a big lump sum.

Never move a UK pension to an overseas scheme without regulated financial advice; our guide to UK pensions abroad and the transfer warnings explains why.

Your UK State Pension in Turkey: uprated

Unlike Brits in Thailand or Australia, you keep the annual increase. The DWP lists Turkey among the countries with a social security agreement under which "you will usually get an increase in your pension every year" [4].

The full new State Pension is £241.30 a week in 2026/27, up from £230.25 in 2025/26 [10]. That's about £1,045 a month, or roughly TRY 70,500 at our rate, though the lira figure moves with the exchange rate. Non-residents usually don't pay UK tax on the State Pension [2]. Our guide to living on UK pensions in Turkey covers budgeting with the lira.

Other UK income that follows you

• UK rent. Still taxable in the UK. Register for the Non-Resident Landlord Scheme (form NRL1) and usually file a UK Self Assessment return [5].
• Savings and ISAs. You can keep an ISA but can't pay in once non-resident. See ISAs when you move abroad.
• Personal Allowance. British citizens can normally keep the UK Personal Allowance as non-residents, which can cover modest UK rent.

Tax talk peaks in our community group for Brits in Turkey every March, when the first-year residents compare notes on the tax office queue.

Pound conversions use the Bank of England spot rate of 5 November 2026 (£1 = TRY 67.4414). Tax is general information, not advice.

Sources

1. GOV.UK (HMRC): 1988 UK–Turkey Double Taxation Agreement, in force
2. GOV.UK: Tax if you leave the UK to live abroad and Tax on your UK income if you live abroad (both updated 30 September 2026)
3. GOV.UK (FCDO): Living in Turkey (updated 31 December 2025)
4. GOV.UK (DWP): Countries where we pay an annual increase in the State Pension
5. GOV.UK (HMRC): Double Taxation Treaty Relief, form DT-Individual
6. Resmî Gazete: Gelir Vergisi Genel Tebliği (Seri No: 332) (31 December 2025, 5th supplement), with the tariff as set out by Alomaliye
7. Hukukçular Evi: foreign income and double taxation, residence under Income Tax Law articles 3–6 and 123 (updated October 2026)
8. Muhasebe News: taxation of Swiss pension payments in Turkey, citing Income Tax Law article 23 (August 2025)
9. Vergide Gündem: taxation of pensions from abroad (January 2016)
10. GOV.UK (DWP): Benefit and pension rates 2026 to 2027

Keep reading

• Living on UK pensions in Turkey: inflation and the lira
• Banking in Turkey as a Brit
• Turkish residence permits for Brits: the ikamet
• Double taxation agreements and reliefs