Turkey wants a slice of the wealth migration that built Dubai, here is its opening pitch

The past two years have moved more private wealth across borders than almost any period in modern memory, and Dubai has been the destination of choice for most of it. Turkey has watched that flow from the sidelines for a long time. It is now trying to step into it, pitching the Istanbul Financial Centre as a serious base for the same mobile capital that has been filling towers on Sheikh Zayed Road. The pitch deserves a look, not because Istanbul is about to overtake Dubai, but because the scale of wealth currently in motion is large enough that even a modest share of it would matter.

The scale of the money already moving

London supplies the clearest picture of what triggered this. The UK scrapped its two centuries old non domiciled tax regime in April 2025, and the exodus that followed was immediate. Roughly 16,500 millionaires left Britain on a net basis in 2025, taking an estimated 92 billion dollars in wealth with them, up sharply from about 9,500 departures the year before. The UAE was the single largest beneficiary, absorbing a net inflow of 9,800 millionaires in 2025, more than any other country on earth. Surveys of the ultra wealthy point to the same restlessness: among a group of 87 high net worth UBS clients, 36 percent had relocated at least once during the year, and among billionaires under 54 the figure was 44 percent. Applications for residency and citizenship by investment programmes rose 28 percent year on year, according to Henley and Partners.

• About 16,500 millionaires left the UK on a net basis in 2025, taking roughly 92 billion dollars with them.
• That compares with about 9,500 net departures in 2024, before the non dom regime was scrapped.
• The UAE recorded a net inflow of 9,800 millionaires in 2025, the highest of any country.
• 36 percent of 87 surveyed UBS ultra high net worth clients relocated at least once in 2025.
• 44 percent of billionaires under 54 shifted their residence during the year.
• Residency and citizenship by investment applications rose 28 percent year on year, per Henley and Partners.

What Istanbul is offering

The Istanbul Financial Centre is building an incentive package aimed squarely at this pool of capital. Income from financial services exports is fully deductible from corporate tax, and banks operating there pay an effectively zero corporate tax rate on those exports through 2031. Firms can claim a payroll tax exemption of 60 to 80 percent on the wages of internationally experienced staff, and a proposed extension would add a 50 percent deduction on income earned intermediating foreign sourced goods. Individuals relocating can access a new 20 year exemption on foreign sourced income. Turkey has also been putting a face to the pitch: an April 2026 gathering in Istanbul tied to the World Economic Forum drew about 40 global chief executives, and separate meetings at the centre reportedly drew interest from around 40 companies across East Asia and the Gulf.

“On paper, that is actually better than Dubai, because DIFC and ADGM offer zero tax on most activities but carve out banks and insurers, which pay the standard nine percent.”

The part the tax code cannot fix

The obstacle for Turkey is not the incentive structure, which by some measures is genuinely more generous than what Dubai offers. It is everything sitting underneath it. Turkey is expected to run inflation near 25 percent in 2026, the lira carries persistent depreciation risk, and the sovereign credit rating remains low by the standards of the money this pitch is aimed at. Wealthy families do not just price a tax rate, they price the currency it is denominated in and the courts that would enforce a contract if something went wrong, and on both counts Turkey is working from a weaker position than the jurisdictions it is competing against. One international banker summed up the concern about as bluntly as it gets: confidence in Turkish courts is thin. Dubai's advantage was never only its tax rate either, it was pairing that rate with the DIFC and ADGM, common law courts sitting inside civil law jurisdictions, built specifically to give foreign capital a legal environment it recognises. Turkey has no equivalent yet, and building one takes years, not a WEF afternoon.

Our reading

Three points matter here. First, Turkey's move is less a threat to Dubai than a sign of how large the addressable pool of mobile wealth has become, large enough that a country with real macro headwinds still sees a rational case for competing over it. Second, the comparison on paper favours Istanbul in places, but wealthy capital has shown repeatedly that it pays a premium for legal certainty over a marginally better tax line, which is precisely the premium the DIFC and ADGM were built to capture. Third, Dubai's edge was never really about the incentive at all, it was about pairing the incentive with institutions that took a decade or more to earn credibility, and that is not a gap Istanbul closes with a new exemption. We read this as validation of the model Dubai already built rather than a genuine rival to it, at least for now.