Well, you are lucky if the deed of the property is actually under his name. If not, he can not sell it to somebody else but of course, not to you, either, and it is impossible to persuade him to register charge on the property, because he is not the owner. If he had the title deed, he'd probably transfer it to you, Your situation is serious, either yell to him or run OK. Joke is enough! My article published in "must a purchase agreement be in Turkish may give you some idea on the procedure of transfer of title on immovable property. Lastly, your being a foreigner is not a legal obstacle in terms of registering charge on property...

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Please be careful !!!

Under Turkish Law:

1 - An agreement regarding transfer of title of an immovable property (i.e. land, flat, house) which has not been signed by the parties or by their attorneys of fact at the land registry does not give any right to claim title on the immovable property even if it contains explicit undertaking of the seller and/or owner towards the buyer for the transfer of title against buyer's fulfilment of certain obligations and payment of the agreed consideration.

2- Such agreement, not signed at the land registry can not be interpreted as seller's covenant to transfer title of the property in the future, either. Such promise would be deemed valid only if it had been declared at the notary public.

3- In other words, you would not be entitled to obtain the title by relying on these documents at the court, irrespective of whether those were prepared in English, in Turkish or both, which is only a matter of choice. Validity of an agreement is not subject to being drawn up in Turkish language.

4- Even if some liquidated damages/penalty fees are stipulated in the contract, applicable in case of non performance or delay by seller/owner, these conditions would not be enforceable, either, within the light of the explanations in paragraphs 1 and 2 above. Only remedy you may have in this case, where the seller fails to transfer the title is, to sue the seller under unjust enrichment provisions of the Turkish Code of Obligations, and claim for the payments you made to the Seller.

5- There is one exception to the above. Where the buyer fulfilled his obligations towards the seller, even partially, under a contract which is deemed invalid under Turkish Law, objecting by seller to transfer the title to buyer by means of claiming that the contract was invalid would be an example of acting against good faith, and therefore, the buyer may be granted with the title by the court. However, this is just an arguement that we, as lawyers perefer to raise if our client has no other remedy, and of course, the most important of all, if the property had not been sold by the owner to a bona fide third party in due course. Therefore, I can not advise you to proceed further by relying on this exception, and yet there is no guarantee that the seller is the owner of the property. I faced many cases in Bodrum area like this, where contractors/sellers do not own the property. There are different systems under Turkish Law where the contractor/developer may agree with owner of a land, who refuses to transfer title of the property to the contractor at the beginning, but the contractor trying to sell the property in advance, although it is not registered to his name. There are systems that the land owner may transfer the title of the contractor's portion in advance but in order to secure completion of the construction, parties create lien on the transferred portion of the land. The issue is rather complex, which may be discussed in the future.

Consequently, I would like to advise you to ask the seller to provide you with a copy of the title deed. I assume you may get several answers from the Seller, which can be evaluated here, if you forward them to this site.

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