No Turkish crypto exchange is riba-free as a whole; what you can do is use a platform on the Sermaye Piyasası Kurulu (SPK) provisional list and switch off every feature that pays or charges a return on money. After Law 7518, published in the Resmî Gazete on 2 July 2024, only providers that declared to the SPK may serve Turkish residents, client cash must sit at a bank, and that cash is outside TMSF deposit insurance. On 14 September 2026 the SPK list carried 52 entries, including Btcturk, Paribu, Binance Turkey, OKX TR and Midas, with Bitexen barred from new customers. Spot purchases and transfers are the plain trades; earn, lending, margin and futures are where riba and gharar enter. Our is crypto halal hub covers the underlying debate; this page is the setup guide.
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What Law 7518 changed for a Turkish crypto holder
Law 7518 amended the Capital Markets Law 6362 and put crypto asset service providers under the SPK for the first time. Provisional article 11 required every platform already operating on the effective date to apply to the SPK within one month, declaring either that it would seek a licence under the secondary rules or that it would wind down within three months without taking new customers. Those declarations are what the SPK publishes as the Faaliyette Bulunanlar Listesi, and the SPK's own heading warns that appearing on the list does not mean the platform has been authorised; it means the platform has declared and is being assessed under the III-35/B.1 and III-35/B.2 communiqués.
Two provisions matter for the riba question. First, the law states that clients' crypto should as a rule be held in their own wallets, and that custody of assets clients choose not to self-hold must be provided by banks approved by the BDDK or by SPK-authorised custodians, while client cash must be kept at banks. Second, those bank-held crypto assets and client cash are explicitly excluded from the deposit and participation fund insurance in article 63 of the Banking Law 5411. Client cash and crypto are also ring-fenced from the platform's own creditors: they cannot be seized, pledged or pulled into a bankruptcy estate for the platform's debts. Foreign platforms that open a Turkish office, run a Turkish website or market to Turkish residents are treated as unlicensed providers.
The SPK list on 14 September 2026
The provisional list ran to 52 numbered entries, in alphabetical order, mixing trading platforms with banks and custodians that have applied for custody licences. The trading platforms a retail reader will recognise include Btcturk (Eliptik Yazılım), Paribu, Binance Turkey (BN Teknoloji), OKX TR, Bybit (Narkasa), Gate, Mexc, KuCoin TR, Midas, Bitlo and Garanti BBVA's crypto platform. Custody applicants include Akbank, Garanti, İş Bankası, Yapı Kredi, Takasbank and Btcturk's and Paribu's custody companies. The footnote on the list records that at its meeting of 23 September 2026 the SPK barred Bitexen from accepting new customers or listing new assets until further notice, limiting it to existing clients' transactions.
- Check the SPK list on the day you open an account, because entries are added and footnoted without a press release
- A listing is a declaration under provisional article 11, not a licence; the SPK says so in the heading of the list
- Platforms carrying a footnote, as Bitexen does, are under a specific SPK restriction and should be avoided for new money
- Banks on the list are custody applicants, not exchanges; they do not run order books
- A platform absent from the list that still serves Turkish residents is operating without declaration and falls under the unlicensed-provider provisions of the law
Which platform features are interest-like and which are plain trades
A spot purchase of a coin for lira, settled immediately into your account, is a sale of an asset for money. A convert function that swaps one coin for another at a quoted rate is the same thing. Everything else on a modern exchange menu involves either a return on money lent, a loan to buy with, or a contract on a price rather than an asset. The table sorts the common features by what they are in fiqh terms, not by what the app calls them.
| Feature | What it is in substance | Position | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spot buy and sell with TL | Sale of an asset for money, delivered now | Permissible if the coin itself is | Keep on |
| Convert or swap | Exchange of one asset for another at a rate | Permissible if both coins are | Keep on |
| Earn, Getiri, flexible or term pools | A return paid for depositing coins with the platform | Resembles interest on a loan | Switch off |
| Lending or borrow to trade | Interest-bearing loan of coins or cash | Riba | Switch off |
| Margin and geared spot | Buying with borrowed funds, interest and liquidation | Riba and gharar | Switch off |
| Futures and perpetuals | Contract on a price, funding payments, no delivery | Gharar; most scholars prohibit | Switch off |
| Staking on a proof-of-stake chain | Locking coins to validate blocks for a protocol reward | Scholars split | Decide with your scholar |
The platforms' own pages confirm how prominent the interest-like features are. Paribu's home page lists Kripto Al/Sat, Hisse, DeFi and a Getiri product described as flexible and term pools with free exit, with an example promising up to 8 per cent annual return on Ethereum. OKX TR's front page, by contrast, describes TL deposits by havale, FAST or EFT from an account in your own name only, more than 440 trading pairs including USDT/TRY, and a zero maker fee; it shows no earn, loan or futures menu on the page we read, though the global OKX site does. Btcturk's and Binance TR's pages sat behind browser verification when we fetched them, so we cannot describe their feature set from the source; open the account, go to the products menu, and apply the table above.
Staking versus lending: where scholars split
Lending is the easy case. A platform that pays you a percentage for leaving coins in a pool, and lends those coins to margin traders, is paying a return on a loan of fungible assets; that is the definition of riba whether the asset is lira or Ether. Staking is harder because the reward comes from the protocol, not from a borrower. On a proof-of-stake chain the staker locks coins to take part in validating blocks and is paid in new coins and fees for that service. One group of scholars treats this as a fee for work performed by the validator and permits it. Another points out that a retail user who clicks "stake" on an exchange does no validating, bears no slashing risk in practice and receives a fixed-looking percentage on a locked balance, which looks like a deposit return. Liquid staking, where the platform gives you a tradable receipt and keeps the coins, adds a further layer.
The Diyanet has not published a staking fatwa. Its DİYK fatwa of 4 December 2017 on crypto gives the principles instead: a medium of exchange may be used if it does not carry serious uncertainty (garar) in how it is created and issued, is not a tool of deception (tağrir) and does not enrich a particular group without cause, and it declares the use of coins that fail those tests impermissible, naming pyramid-type schemes as the example. A reader applying those principles should at least prefer native staking through their own validator or wallet over exchange earn products, avoid anything advertised as a guaranteed percentage, and treat liquid-staking tokens as a separate question. Our halal investing myths piece deals with the claim that all yield is the same.
Stablecoins and what backs them
A dollar stablecoin is a claim on the issuer, redeemable at par, and its reserves are typically held in short-dated government debt and bank deposits that earn interest for the issuer. Holding USDT or USDC to park value between trades is, in substance, holding an unsecured, non-interest-bearing IOU on a company whose own income is largely interest. Most scholars allow holding and transacting in such a coin as a means of payment, because the holder receives no interest, and object to any product that pays the holder a yield on it. OKX TR lists USDT/TRY among its main pairs and Paribu's ticker shows EURC, so both are easy to obtain. Do not rely on a platform's description of reserves; read the issuer's own attestation report, note how much is in bank deposits versus treasury bills, and accept that you cannot verify it independently. A reader who wants a halal cash leg has a cleaner option in a participation account; the investing hub compares the routes.
Custody, records and tax
The law's default is self-custody, and it is also the fiqh-cleaner position: coins in your own wallet are your property with no counterparty. If you keep coins on the platform, they must be held by a BDDK-approved bank or an SPK-authorised custodian, segregated from the platform's assets, and you should know which custodian that is. Your lira balance on the platform sits at a bank in a segregated client account that the bank cannot pledge or block in the platform's favour, but it is not TMSF-insured, so do not treat an exchange balance as a deposit. Move lira back to your own participation account when you are not trading.
On tax, be careful what you assume. GİB's 2026 guides on capital income and on other gains, which we read for this edition, do not name crypto assets in their lists of taxable items or exemptions, and we found no GİB page that does. That silence is not a ruling either way. Keep a dated record of every TL deposit, trade, transfer and withdrawal with the lira value on the day, so that whatever rule applies when you file, you can show the numbers. The is it halal section has verdicts on individual assets, and tax questions on a large balance belong with a mali müşavir.
A spot-only setup, step by step
- Confirm the platform appears on the SPK's Faaliyette Bulunanlar Listesi without a restricting footnote on the day you sign up
- Complete identity verification and deposit lira only from a bank account in your own name, which is the only route the licensed platforms accept
- Buy on the spot market or through convert; place limit or market orders and let them settle into your balance
- Open the products or earn menu and decline every opt-in for earn, getiri, savings, lending, auto-invest-with-yield, margin and futures
- Decide on staking with your scholar before touching it, and if you proceed prefer native staking through your own wallet over exchange earn products
- Withdraw coins you intend to hold to a wallet you control, and move idle lira back to a participation account
- Keep a spreadsheet of every transaction with the TL value on the day
Purifying yield you have already taken
If an earn or lending product has already paid you, the Diyanet's position on impermissible income is clear and recent. DİYK decision 118 of 11 December 2024 says income from sources that are not religiously legitimate, which it lists as including interest, is haram to earn and haram to use; where the rightful owner is known it is returned to them, otherwise it is given for public benefit or to the poor on the owner's behalf, without expectation of reward, and it may not be spent on mosques. The person must also stop and repent. In practice that means separating the yield from the principal in your records, giving the yield away, and keeping the coins you bought with your own money.
Earlier DİYK fatwas of 12 July 2017 add that no zakat is due on such income, because the whole amount leaves your hands anyway. Record the date, the amount and the recipient so the purification can be shown later. Our is crypto halal in Turkey article covers the prior question of whether the coin itself was permissible to hold; this page assumes you have answered it.
Our view: the setup that stays inside the lines
A holder who has decided crypto is permissible for them should use an SPK-listed platform with no footnote, trade spot only, leave every earn, lending, margin and futures switch off, self-custody what they intend to hold, and keep lira in a participation account rather than on the exchange. Staking is a separate decision to make with a scholar, not a default. Someone who wants a return on idle balances should look at a participation account, not a crypto earn pool, because the first is a profit share on real financing and the second is a return on a loan. Facts checked against spk.gov.tr, resmigazete.gov.tr, kurul.diyanet.gov.tr, paribu.com, tr.okx.com, gib.gov.tr on 14 September 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Which crypto exchanges in Turkey avoid riba?
None avoids it as a whole, because every major platform offers an earn, lending or futures product somewhere in the menu. What you can do is pick a platform on the SPK's provisional list, such as Btcturk, Paribu, Binance Turkey or OKX TR, use only the spot and convert functions, and leave every yield and margin feature switched off. The platform is neutral; the configuration is what avoids riba.
Is Btcturk halal?
Btcturk is on the SPK's list as Btcturk Kripto Varlık Alım Satım Platformu AŞ, so it is a declared provider under Law 7518. Whether your use of it is halal depends on which products you use: spot trading of a permissible coin is the plain case, while any staking, earn or margin product needs the analysis above. Its product pages sat behind a browser check when we fetched them, so review the menu yourself.
Is staking haram?
Scholars split. Those who permit it see the protocol reward as payment for validation work; those who object note that exchange staking gives a retail user a near-fixed percentage on a locked balance with no work done, which resembles a deposit return. The Diyanet has not issued a staking fatwa. If you proceed, prefer native staking through your own wallet and avoid products advertised as guaranteed yields.
Are stablecoins like USDT permissible to hold?
Most scholars allow holding a dollar stablecoin as a means of payment, because the holder earns no interest, while objecting to any product that pays a yield on it. The issuer's reserves are largely interest-earning, which is a concern about the issuer's income rather than yours. Read the issuer's reserve attestation yourself rather than trusting a platform's summary.
Is my lira balance on an exchange protected by the TMSF?
No. Law 7518 requires client cash to be held at a bank in a segregated account that the platform cannot pledge, and it states that this cash and bank-held crypto are not covered by the deposit and participation fund insurance in article 63 of the Banking Law. The segregation protects you from the platform's creditors, not from a bank failure. Keep idle lira in your own participation account.
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What do I do with earn income I already received?
Separate it from your principal and give it away for public benefit or to the poor without expecting reward, following DİYK decision 118 of 11 December 2024, which also says such money may not go to mosques. No zakat is due on it because the whole sum is disposed of. Keep a record of the amount and recipient, and switch the product off.
