TURKEY Law and Practice Contributed by: Caghan Tansel, TANSEL
How Stablecoins Are Regulated Stablecoins are not retrofitted into Türkiye’s ordinary payments/e-money framework as permitted payment instruments; instead, crypto-assets are expressly kept out of payment use. The Central Bank’s 2021 regu- lation prohibits the direct or indirect use of crypto- assets in payments, prevents their use in payment ser- vices and e-money issuance, and restricts payment and e-money institutions from intermediating fund transfers to or from platforms providing crypto-asset trading, custody, transfer or issuance services. Accordingly, stablecoins may be relevant in Türkiye as crypto-market instruments for trading, custody, transfer, liquidity and portfolio-management purposes through compliant crypto-asset service providers, but they should not be structured or marketed as mer- chant payment, checkout, settlement or e-money- like products. Depending on the design, fiat-backed stablecoins may still raise additional legal questions around redemption claims, reserves, issuer disclo- sures, custody, AML and whether the structure resem- bles regulated payment or e-money activity, but these issues are handled through the general crypto-asset, payments, AML and conduct frameworks rather than through a standalone stablecoin law. 6.2.3 Backing Assets This topic is not applicable – please refer to the responses in the previous sections. 6.2.4 Special Considerations This topic is not applicable – please refer to the responses in the previous sections. 7. Tokenisation and Real-World Assets 7.1 Treatment In Türkiye, tokenised assets and real-world assets (RWAs) tokens are not regulated by treating the blockchain wrapper as replacing the legal nature of the underlying asset. The starting point is substance
over form: if a token represents a share, debt instru- ment, fund unit, derivative, receivable, commodity, real estate interest or other regulated right, the ordi- nary rules applicable to that underlying asset must still be considered, and the crypto-asset layer may add CMB CASP rules on listing, trading, custody, trans- fer, initial sale/distribution, disclosure, market integrity and AML. Turkish law defines crypto-assets broadly as intan- gible assets that may represent value or rights and that are created, stored and distributed electronically through distributed-ledger or similar technology; how- ever, it does not create a separate, fully developed RWA regime. The 2024 amendments to the Capital Markets Law also empower the CMB to determine principles for issuing capital markets instruments as crypto-assets and, where necessary, to require inte- gration between crypto-asset electronic records and the Central Securities Depository of Türkiye system. Accordingly, tokenised securities are expected to remain closest to their non-blockchain equivalents: if the token gives rights comparable to a capital markets instrument, securities-law rules on issuance, offer- ing, prospectus/disclosure, custody, trading venue, investor protection and record-keeping may apply, in addition to any crypto platform requirements. The CMB has also taken a cautious approach pending further secondary rules: commentary on the CMB’s 2024 principle decision notes that, before specific CMB rules on capital-markets-instrument tokenisa- tion are issued, crypto-assets based on capital mar- kets instruments, indices, baskets, precious metals or similar underlying assets cannot simply be issued and listed on platforms as if they were ordinary exchange- traded crypto-assets. For non-security RWAs, such as commodities, agricultural products, real estate-linked rights or other contractual claims, tokenisation does not remove the need to comply with property, con- tract, consumer, tax, commodity-market, land registry, warehouse receipt, licensing or sector-specific rules that would apply to the non-tokenised asset.
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