Istanbul, where Jonathan Miller invested in property to gain Turkish citizenship (Image: GETTY)
Jonathan Miller* sees the world as a land of opportunity that is divided into geostrategic spheres.
It is, he told Express.co.uk, an extremely volatile and almost unpredictable place, but knows that his money can be trusted in at least some parts of the world.
According to Mr Miller, who asked to remain anonymous, this includes Turkey, where he recently bought his citizenship. His substantial investment of £300,000 in the Eastern European state means that he is now a legal resident of the country. For millennia, Turkey straddled East and West, a divide that is more present today than ever – a key factor in his decision.
“I see a good and long-term future in Turkey, but because of its geographical position, it’s always going to be a volatile place,” he said. “But the reality is that this sort of volatility has been a constant in Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, and before that. It’s just how things are, and people need to look at the place through a different lens.”
Mr Miller is one of a growing number of individuals looking for and buying a passport from a country that isn’t their own, what is known as a “golden visa”, a one-stop ticket to escape an increasingly tenuous world.
New build residential apartments across Turkey offer prospective citizens an investment avenue (Image: GETTY)
Citizenship through investment is no new phenomenon. Throughout history, investing in something to gain citizenship or protection of another country is well documented, like the Kings and Queens of Europe who often married off their family members to distant kingdoms to curry favour.
Today, it is a far more clinical and clear-cut process, undertaken only by those who can afford the vast sums of money involved.
In layman’s terms, an individual with enough money can invest a certain amount in a country to qualify for citizenship, gaining all the perks that that country may offer, including, perhaps most importantly, a new passport.
Most will have heard about the business because of shady affairs, criminals and questionable figures needed a get-out-of-jail card.
“But the reality of the trade is completely different to that,” Ladislas Maurice, known by his business name of the Wandering Investor, told Express.co.uk.
“Typically, 98 percent of the market is people with relatively weak passports that get their citizenship because it gives them another passport that has better travel rights. It helps them gain more freedom from what could be a tyrannical government back home.
“Often, political opponents or minorities in business — regardless of whether they’re involved in politics — are always at risk. They would be very happy, say, to have a Caribbean passport that would enable them to travel, to have a second life, and actual freedoms they don’t ordinarily have.”
Ladislas Maurice, the Wandering Investor, helps people invest in property all around the world (Image: Youtube/TheWanderingInvestor)
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However, unlike most people, Mr Miller didn’t buy Turkish citizenship for any of these reasons, not strictly anyway.
As a Western passport holder — he wouldn’t say where — Mr Miller wanted “geopolitical diversification” and, more simply, he thinks Turkey a “beautiful country”. It was, he said, a no-brainer.
To do so, he made investments of $400,000 (£314,570) in real estate in Istanbul, the country’s cultural capital, which qualified him for citizenship.
While he is happy with the fact that he now owns property in the city and that he owns an alternative passport, his real contentment comes in what the future entails, much of it political.
“I became Turkish because I hope it will not be part of the EU,” he explained. “In a world that is increasingly bifurcating between East and West, having citizenship of a country in the middle is, I believe, valuable.
“It’s neutral, it’s forging its own path. If we look 100 years into the future, will the West be as powerful as it is right now? Probably not. In this case, I believe that my descendants will be quite happy to have an alternate citizenship.”
It is, compared to most other reasons individuals gain citizenship through investment, a truly unique position. “I want to leave a legacy,” Mr Miller added.
Antigua and Barbuda is relatively cheap to gain citizenship to and offers an array of perks (Image: GETTY)
There are, of course, more immediate reasons. Despite its raging inflation and economic fallout, Mr Miller views Turkey as an increasingly emerging business market.
He now has full access to Turkish banking, with administrative steps far easier for him to complete than if he were a “foreigner”.
Turkey is an outlier in the business, with Caribbean nations far more popular.
Some of the easiest countries to gain citizenship through investment — and so acquire a ‘clean’ passport to travel on — include Malta, St Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St Lucia, Dominica and Vanuatu.
In some of those places, like Antigua and Barbuda, St Lucia, and Dominica, clients can invest as little as $100,000 (£78,598) to gain citizenship.
These countries offer visa-free travel to places in the West like the UK, making them especially sought-after destinations for people to invest.
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