Foreign work permits in Türkiye: demographic, sectoral, and regional distribution.

Foreign labour is now a structural feature of Türkiye's economy rather than a cyclical one. The number of work permits issued to foreign nationals has grown 7.6-fold in twelve years — from 45,823 in 2013 to 349,961 in 2025 — and the 2025 figure is the highest on record. This report reads the official 2025 statistics published by the Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Labour and Social Security to describe who is working in Türkiye, in which sectors, at what skill level, and where.

The more interesting story in 2025 is not the growth rate but the change in composition. The total rose 16.3%, a slower pace than 2024's 25.4%. Underneath that number, the largest single nationality group shrank in absolute terms for the first time in years, the second-largest nearly doubled, and women accounted for close to half of all net new permits. Those three movements matter more for workforce planning than the headline.

This is an interpretive reading of public data, not legal advice. Where the official statistics do not disaggregate a figure, we say so. Year-on-year comparisons for totals and for gender are drawn from the ministry's own multi-year series; comparisons by nationality, sector, and province are made against the figures published in our 2024 edition and are labelled as such.

1. Key findings from the 2025 statistics

Six findings frame the year, each developed below:

A record 349,961 work permits. Issuance rose 16.3% year on year (2024: 300,852 → 2025: 349,961). Growth continued but decelerated from the 25.4% recorded in 2024 — the fourth consecutive year of expansion, at a more moderate pace.

Syrian nationals remain the largest group, but their number fell. Syrians held 105,096 permits, 30.03% of the total. Against our 2024 edition (117,334; 38.99%) that is a decline of roughly 12,200 permits, or −10.4% — even as the national total grew. The Syrian share of the whole dropped by almost nine percentage points in a single year.

Turkmenistan nearly doubled and is now decisively second. Turkmen nationals held 62,412 permits, 17.83% of the total, up from 32,276 in our 2024 edition — a 93.4% increase and the single largest contributor to national growth.

Women's participation rose for a third straight year. Women held 115,244 permits, 32.93% of the total, up from 29.04% in 2024 and 27.19% at the 2022 low. In absolute terms women's permits grew 31.9% against 16.3% overall — women accounted for 56.8% of all net new permits in 2025.

Demand concentrates in hospitality and household services. Accommodation was the largest single activity (43,521; 12.44%), followed by households as employers of domestic personnel (40,664; 11.62%), wholesale trade (20,766), civil engineering (17,609), and the manufacture of wearing apparel (14,011).

Authorisation is geographically concentrated and getting more so. İstanbul alone accounted for 129,341 permits (36.96%) and the Marmara region for 49.08%. Counting every document type, 522,629 foreigners were authorised to work in Türkiye in 2025, up 20.6% on the 433,483 recorded in 2024.

The headline grew 16.3%. The composition changed far more than that — Syrian permits down 10%, Turkmen permits up 93%, and women taking well over half of all net new permits.

2. Annual trend, 2016–2025, and the rhythm of the year

Between 2016 and 2025 work-permit issuance followed a steady upward path, interrupted only by a 14.9% pandemic-era contraction in 2020. The year-on-year sequence reads: +18.5% (2017), +32.9% (2018), +25.4% (2019), −14.9% (2020), +36.0% (2021), +26.5% (2022), +12.8% (2023), +25.4% (2024), and +16.3% (2025). The transition to a fully digital e-Government (e-Devlet) application system across 2016–2019 was the turning point that let the system absorb this scale of demand while improving traceability.

Within the year, issuance built steadily toward the fourth quarter. The quarterly split was 71,510 (Q1), 86,634 (Q2), 86,897 (Q3), and 104,920 (Q4) — nearly 30% of the year's permits were issued in the final quarter. December alone accounted for 39,938 permits, the single highest month in the series, followed by October (33,838) and May (32,741). January was the quietest month at 18,225. Employers planning application timelines should expect the heaviest processing load, and the longest queues, in the last three months of the year.

3. Nationality: a composition that changed

Syria remains the largest source of foreign labour, with 105,096 permits — but 2025 is the year that dominance visibly loosened. Syrian permits fell by roughly 12,200 against our 2024 edition while the national total grew by 49,109. The Syrian share dropped from 38.99% to 30.03%. Turkmenistan absorbed most of that space, rising from 32,276 to 62,412 permits (+93.4%) and now representing nearly one permit in five.

Below the top two, the picture is a broad Central and South Asian expansion. Uzbekistan (18,686), Indonesia (16,098), Kyrgyzstan (12,881), Afghanistan (11,177), Pakistan (8,473), Kazakhstan (8,443), Azerbaijan (7,604), India (7,065), Iraq (6,403), the Philippines (5,217), and Nepal (5,045) all now sit above five thousand permits. Set against our 2024 edition, Uzbekistan rose 19.4% and Iran 24.1%, while Russia moved the other way — down 18.0%, from 17,267 to 14,161 — suggesting the post-2022 relocation wave has passed its peak. Ukraine stood at 3,314.

Two nationalities illustrate how differently these flows behave by gender. Syrian permits were 93.7% male (98,464 of 105,096). Turkmen permits were close to balanced at 51.1% male (31,907) and 48.9% female (30,505). Indonesia (59.9% female), the Philippines (90.0% female), Kyrgyzstan (63.3% female), Uzbekistan (57.5% female), Kazakhstan (64.0% female), and Georgia (85.6% female) are strongly female-weighted, and together they explain most of the rise in women's participation examined in the next section.

4. Gender: a three-year reversal

The share of permits held by women fell almost continuously for a decade — from 61.99% in 2013 to a low of 27.19% in 2022 — as growth concentrated in male-dominated construction and manufacturing work. That trend has now reversed for three consecutive years: 27.64% (2023), 29.04% (2024), and 32.93% (2025). In absolute terms women's permits rose from 87,361 to 115,244, an increase of 27,883 against total growth of 49,109. Women therefore took 56.8% of all net new permits issued in 2025.

5. Age and education profile

The permit-holding population is concentrated in prime working age. Just under 55% of all permits went to people aged 25–39, and the two largest cohorts are almost identical in size: 30–34 (67,503) and 25–29 (66,790). Permits to workers aged 50 and over total 30,776, less than 9% of the whole. The youngest cohort, 15–19, accounts for 8,399 permits.

By education, the profile is decisively non-tertiary. Upper secondary education is the single largest category at 152,817 permits (43.7%), and when primary (62,226) and lower secondary (67,227) are added, 80.7% of all permits went to people educated at upper-secondary level or below. Tertiary qualifications — short-cycle, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral combined — account for 67,691 permits, or 19.3% of the total. Doctorate holders number 2,274.

Education splits sharply by gender at the extremes. Women hold 38.1% of upper-secondary permits and 44.6% of bachelor's-level permits, but only 10.4% of primary-education permits — the category most closely tied to construction and heavy manufacturing. The reverse holds in household and hospitality work, where women's shares are highest.

6. Sectors: where the demand sits

Demand concentrates in services. Accommodation is the largest single economic activity at 43,521 permits, and households acting as employers of domestic personnel follow at 40,664 — together nearly a quarter of all permits issued. Both grew strongly against our 2024 edition: accommodation by 36.9% and domestic personnel by 61.6%. Wholesale trade (20,766) and civil engineering (17,609) follow, with textiles-and-apparel manufacturing forming a substantial block when combined (wearing apparel 14,011 plus textiles 13,501 plus leather 3,651).

One movement runs against the trend. Civil engineering — the non-building construction category that was the third-largest activity in 2024 at 24,433 permits — fell to 17,609, a decline of 27.9%. Read alongside the drop in Syrian permits and in Mersin province, this points to the winding down of the post-earthquake reconstruction surge that shaped the 2023–2024 figures.

Beyond the headline activities, the spread is genuinely multi-sectoral: food products (12,553), fabricated metal products (13,231), retail trade (13,191), food and beverage service (13,334), building construction (10,796), rubber and plastics (9,310), furniture (9,481), office and business support (8,940), personal services (8,509), human health (7,494), machinery (6,778), and education (6,367). Professional and technical fields remain small but present — computer programming and consultancy (1,941), architecture and engineering (2,162), management consultancy (2,060), and scientific R&D (152). Activity was unrecorded for 3,353 permits.

7. Regional distribution across Türkiye

Issuance is heavily concentrated in the west and south, and concentration increased in 2025. Marmara took 49.08% of all permits, up from 46.66% in 2024, driven almost entirely by İstanbul. The Mediterranean region moved the other way, from 26.51% to 23.18%, as Mersin's numbers fell.

At province level İstanbul recorded 129,341 permits, 36.96% of the national total and 25.5% more than in 2024. Antalya followed with 46,465 (13.28%), up 29.2% and reflecting a strong tourism season. Mersin fell to 21,453 (6.13%) from 30,079, a decline of 28.7%. Ankara rose 31.4% to 19,869 and Bursa 5.8% to 19,352. Completing the top ten: Gaziantep (12,513), İzmir (10,880), Kocaeli (9,969), Muğla (9,579), and Konya (8,639). The top five provinces alone account for 67.6% of all permits issued nationally.

Gender composition varies sharply by province, and tracks the local industry mix. Antalya is the only major province where women outnumber men (25,339 against 21,126), a function of hospitality employment; Muğla is close to parity (4,712 women against 4,867 men). At the other end, Bursa (13.5% women), Kahramanmaraş (5.4%), Konya (7.5%), and Kayseri (6.2%) are heavily male, reflecting manufacturing and construction bases.

8. Permit types and total work authorisation

Work permits are only part of the authorisation picture. In 2025 the ministry processed 612,029 applications across all document types and issued 522,629 — an overall approval rate of 85.4%. Work permits specifically ran at 80.05% (437,170 applications against 349,961 issued), so roughly one work-permit application in five was not granted.

The Work Permit Exemption Information Form remains the second pillar of the system. Extended in October 2024 to cover individuals under Temporary Protection and holders of Humanitarian Residence Permits, it accounted for 157,288 authorisations in 2025 — up from 120,284 in 2024, a 30.8% increase — and every application under it was approved. It is now the primary formal route into the labour market for people under protection status, and it is the main reason total authorisations grew faster (+20.6%) than work permits alone (+16.3%).

9. What this means for employers and institutions

The 2025 data describes a foreign-labour market that is still growing but no longer growing in the same shape. Three shifts deserve attention in planning.

Source-country concentration is falling, and that is a resilience gain. A year ago two nationalities accounted for roughly half of all permits and one of them for nearly 39%. Syria is still the largest group, but at 30.03% its dominance has narrowed materially, and the growth is spread across Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Iran, and a widening Central and South Asian field. Organisations whose foreign workforce is concentrated in a single nationality are now more exposed to policy or corridor-specific disruption than the national average.

The demand mix is moving from construction toward services. Civil engineering fell 27.9% while accommodation rose 36.9% and domestic personnel 61.6%. This is a different labour profile — more seasonal, more female, more geographically tied to tourism regions and large households than to project sites. Recruitment, housing, and compliance models designed around construction crews do not transfer cleanly.

Women are the growth story, and the systems around them lag. Women took 56.8% of net new permits and their share is at a seven-year high, concentrated in nationalities and sectors with distinct needs around accommodation, childcare, and protection from informal arrangements. Employers expanding in hospitality and household services should expect this composition and plan support accordingly.

This report is a starting point, and a deliberately conservative one: it describes what the official statistics record, not what the informal market may contain. Kaya Development's public-sector and project-management practices support employers and institutions with foreign-labour strategy, compliance reviews, and workforce planning — please get in touch with specific questions.

A note on comparisons. Year-on-year figures for national totals and for gender are taken from the ministry's own multi-year series (Tables 4.2 and 4.3). Comparisons by nationality, economic activity, and province are made against the figures published in our 2024 edition, since the 2025 release reports those breakdowns for the current year only. Percentages are calculated on the 349,961 work permits issued unless stated otherwise, and may not sum to 100 because of rounding. The previous edition remains available: Foreign work permits in Türkiye, 2024.