If your requirement is that every lira of your retirement money, including the state's contribution, lives under participation principles with named scholars accountable for it, Katilim Emeklilik is the company built for you. Founded in 2013 with capital from Albaraka Turk and Kuveyt Turk, it is participation-based at the company level, not the plan level: there is no conventional book upstairs, no window architecture, no fund on the shelf you need to avoid. In a market where the regulator made sharia committees universal, this firm competes on how much of the committee's work you can actually see, and nobody shows more.
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The governance file
The advisory committee is named: Prof. Dr. Hamdi Donduren in the chair, Dr. Mustafa Dereci as vice-chairman, Mehmet Odabasi as member. Its authority is written into the operating model: the committee approves fund establishment, portfolio asset selection, fee structures and cash handling. The company publishes product icazet certificates and a signed annual Report on Compliance with Participation Principles, the latest dated December 31, 2025. That is the disclosure benchmark for Turkish pensions, and it is the standard we hold every other provider to in our BES comparison.
The 20-fund shelf
The individual BES plan invests across 20 interest-free funds, the deepest katilim menu in Turkish pensions: lease certificate stability (KEB), katilim equities (KEH), gold (KEF), silver (KGC), precious metals (KJM) and the range between. The 20% state contribution accrues in a katilim state contribution fund, keeping the match interest-free. You get the standard 12 fund allocation changes and 4 plan changes a year, and retirement vests at age 56 with 10 years in the system.
2025 made the shelf famous: KJM, the precious metals fund, returned 139%, first among all 394 pension funds traded on BEFAS, and the KEF gold fund returned 102.45%. Both results were lira metal prices doing the work, a distinction that matters enough that we wrote a whole article about it. The durable point is not the headline number; it is that a fully screened katilim menu topped the entire Turkish pension system, and that BEFAS makes these funds buyable by savers whose contracts sit at other companies.
The decumulation answer nobody else leads with
The product we respect most on this shelf is the least glamorous: the Faizsiz Emeklilik Gelir Plani, the retirement income plan. Most pension systems fail halal savers precisely at retirement, when the standard advice is an interest-based annuity. This plan pays a monthly retirement salary from your accumulated savings, from age 56 with 10 years in the system and at least 15,000 TL saved, while the balance keeps earning in katilim funds. Payment amount and frequency stay adjustable. The trade-off is honest: it is a programmed withdrawal, not a guaranteed lifetime annuity, so longevity risk stays with you. We cover the whole problem in retirement income without riba.
The criticism the company has earned
- Fund fees sit at the regulatory caps (1.09% for lease certificate and money market funds, 1.91% for metals, 2.28% for equity and variable) with no published discounting. Compliance excellence has not extended to price leadership.
- Plan-level deduction schedules take real digging to assemble before signing. A company this good at publishing icazet certificates can publish a one-page fee table.
- The 20-fund menu can overwhelm first-time savers, and the company's guidance tooling is thinner than Garanti's Fund Coach.
- The 2026 state match cut to 20% is not the company's fault, but it raises the weight of every fee line above.
Who should choose it
Choose Katilim Emeklilik when company-level compliance is your requirement, when you want the deepest katilim fund menu in the market, or when the income plan's interest-free decumulation matters to your planning. Distribution runs through Albaraka Turk and Kuveyt Turk branches, and the OKS plan brings the same governance to workplace auto-enrolment. Choose Garanti BBVA's window if published fee tables matter more to you than company-level purity, or Turkiye Hayat's Saglam Temel if deleting the management deduction is worth a 25,000 TL entry. The full market sits on our retirement page.
Frequently asked questions
Can I buy KJM without moving my BES contract here?
Yes, through BEFAS, the pension fund trading platform. Any BES saver can buy other companies' funds cross-platform, subject to plan type: katilim plans may hold only katilim funds, and purchases into katilim plans pass the buying company's committee review. A conventional plan holder can buy KJM freely; the reverse direction, conventional funds into a katilim plan, is blocked by regulation.
Is the 139% return a reason to open a contract here?
No, and the company would be the first to agree. That return was a metals cycle captured by a fund built to hold metals. The reasons to open a contract here are governance depth, menu breadth and the income plan. If you want the metals exposure, size it as a 10% to 25% sleeve and rebalance when it runs; buying last year's table-topper after the fact is how savers convert other people's gains into their own losses.
How do I actually verify the compliance claims?
Compare providers in your region
See side-by-side comparisons of Shariah-compliant products, or let our matcher recommend the best options for your situation.
Three documents, all public: the committee page naming Donduren, Dereci and Odabasi with their roles; the product icazet certificates covering the plans and funds; and the annual Report on Compliance with Participation Principles, signed and dated, latest December 31, 2025. Read the annual report at minimum. A provider that signs its name to a yearly compliance attestation has put something real at stake, and the habit of checking these documents is worth building before you trust any provider in this market, including this one.