Turkey Work Permit for a Japanese Chef: Cost and Rules 2026

Turkey has no chef-specific visa, but a work permit for a Japanese chef turns on published numbers you can check before you recruit: five Turkish employees per foreigner, TRY 500,000 in paid-up capital or TRY 8 million in net sales, and pay of at least twice the minimum wage for a skilled role, TRY 66,060 a month in 2026. Add the government fee, TRY 13,538.90 for a one-year permit, and a 30-day Ministry review once your filing is complete. A restaurant inside a certified hotel with ten or more Turkish staff escapes the five-to-one ratio.

1. Turkey in numbers

• Japan's agriculture ministry (MAFF) counted about 480 Japanese restaurants in Turkey in 2025, up 220 on 2023, nearly doubling in two years. MAFF lists Turkey in its Middle East group.
• 1,754 Japanese nationals were registered in Turkey on 1 October 2025, down 0.1% on the year (MOFA). No Turkish city appears in MOFA's list of the 50 largest Japanese communities abroad, so there is no official Istanbul figure.

Demand for Japanese food is growing fast while the resident Japanese community is small and flat. Most Istanbul operators will be hiring from abroad or training Turkish cooks, not recruiting Japanese residents.

2. How Turkish work permits work

Foreign employment is governed by the International Labour Force Law No. 6735.

• Where to apply. From inside Turkey directly to the Ministry, or from abroad through the Turkish embassy or consulate in the applicant's country of citizenship or legal residence. An authorised intermediary may also file.
• First permit. Up to one year, never longer than the employment contract, tied to a specific job at a specific workplace.
• Extensions. With the same employer, up to two years at the first extension and up to three years at later ones. A new employer means starting again at one year. File in the 60 days before expiry; late applications are rejected.
• Arrival. A worker granted a permit on an application from abroad must enter Turkey within six months of the permit's start date, or it is cancelled.
• Residence. A work permit also serves as a residence permit.

3. The evaluation criteria that decide most cases

Five Turkish employees per foreign employee

The workplace must employ at least five Turkish citizens for each foreigner it applies for. A business with net sales of TRY 50 million or more in the last year is exempt from this ratio for up to five foreigners. The Ministry's published criteria state the five-to-one rule itself but do not spell out exactly how "employed" is measured: whether it means SGK-registered staff, full-time equivalents, or a headcount averaged over a period rather than taken on the filing date. In practice, applications are assessed against SGK (social security) registration data the Ministry can see directly, so the safest working assumption is a full-time-equivalent, SGK-registered headcount current at the time you file, not a part-time or seasonal count. Confirm this with your intermediary before you rely on borderline numbers.

Capital or turnover

A newly established business needs paid-up capital of at least TRY 500,000. An operating business needs paid-up capital of at least TRY 500,000 or net sales of at least TRY 8,000,000 (an export test also exists but rarely applies to restaurants). These thresholds took effect from 2025 and had not changed again as of our September 2026 check.

Salary as a multiple of the minimum wage

A Japanese cook would normally fall under jobs requiring expertise or mastery; a head chef who manages a kitchen team may be assessed as a manager, which raises the floor to three times the minimum wage. Confirm the category with the Ministry or your intermediary before you fix the salary.

4. Fees and a realistic calendar

The Ministry's own published timeline is the clearest official figure available: a duly completed application is reviewed within 30 days once all information and documents are complete, whether that clock starts at submission or from when you upload any additional documents the Ministry requests. Build your calendar around that 30-day review, plus the time to complete the company tests and gather documents before you file, and to translate and legalise the chef's Japanese paperwork; see translating employment certificates for visas.

5. The hotel restaurant exception

The criteria include a tourism sector provision. For skilled jobs requiring expertise or mastery, the five-to-one employment criterion is not applied when the applicant employs at least ten Turkish citizens and is one of the listed establishment types: certified tourism establishments, and restaurants operating under contract inside a certified tourism establishment at the same address. A Japanese restaurant inside a certified hotel, with ten or more Turkish staff, can bring in more foreign cooks than the five-to-one ratio would otherwise allow. A standalone restaurant on the street does not get this exception.

6. What an Istanbul chef actually costs

TRY 66,060 is a regulatory floor, not what an Istanbul restaurant actually pays. We found no official Turkish wage statistic broken out for chefs or cooks. As one private jobs-board data point, not an official figure, a general-purpose cook (aşçı) in Istanbul averaged about TRY 53,900 a month in 2026 according to a large recruitment site, below the regulatory floor for a foreign specialist, which tells you the floor itself, not the local market, will usually set your starting point for a work-permit hire. Build the real offer in three steps: start at the applicable multiple of the minimum wage for a cook you are training; price a head sushi chef or someone running the menu alone against what they currently earn in Japan plus relocation, since Turkey has no domestic benchmark for that skill level; and compare with the small resident Japanese community's alternatives, since a candidate weighing Istanbul against Dubai or a European posting is also weighing housing, flights and schooling, not salary alone.

7. Step by step

1. Count your Turkish employees on an SGK-registered, full-time-equivalent basis, and check the capital or turnover test, before you recruit.
2. Decide whether the role is a skilled job or a management role, and set the salary at or above the matching multiple of the current minimum wage.
3. Agree the contract with the chef; the first permit cannot run longer than it.
4. File through the Turkish embassy or consulate in Japan, or directly with the Ministry if the chef already has legal status inside Turkey. Have Japanese documents translated and legalised in advance.
5. Expect a 30-day Ministry review once your filing is complete; budget extra time for any request for further documents.
6. Once approved, the chef must arrive within six months. Diarise the extension window 60 days before the permit's first-year expiry.

General information checked against official Turkish and Japanese sources in September 2026, not legal or immigration advice. The Ministry updates its evaluation criteria and fees from time to time, and the minimum wage has been revised mid-year in the past. Confirm current requirements with the Ministry of Labour and Social Security or an authorised intermediary before applying.