Mudarabah Financing and Accounts in Turkey (2026): How the Partnership Works

Mudarabah financing, where a participation bank puts up the capital and a business puts up the work and the two split the profit, is legal in Turkey but almost never done: Ziraat Katılım's audited accounts for 30 September 2025 show 683.8 million TL of profit and loss partnership investments against 312.6 billion TL of standard cash financing, roughly 0.2 percent. Where mudarabah (mudârebe, emek-sermaye ortaklığı) is everywhere is the other side of the balance sheet. Every participation account (katılma hesabı) at Kuveyt Türk, Albaraka Türk, Ziraat Katılım and the rest is a mudarabah in which you are the capital provider and the bank is the working partner. This guide covers both uses, the TKBB rules behind them, and the musharakah product that does exist, starting from how participation accounts work.

What a mudarabah actually is

The Participation Banks Association of Turkey (TKBB) published its Mudârebe Standard, number 5 in its series, on 29 September 2023. It defines mudarabah as a partnership in which one side provides capital and the other undertakes to work it, with the profit shared. The capital side is the sermayedar (rabb al-mal); the working side is the işletmeci (mudarib). Either can be a legal person, which is what lets a bank sit on either side. The standard recognises an unrestricted (mutlak) form, where only the profit ratio is fixed, and a restricted (mukayyet) form, where the capital provider limits the activity by time, place, sector, type of trade or counterparty.

The Diyanet's High Board of Religious Affairs gave the same definition in its ruling of 19 December 2018 on profit share from participation banks. It lists mudarabah with musharakah, murabaha and leasing as the methods whose use makes a bank's distributed profit halal, and describes loss as falling on the capital unless the operator acted with intent, fault or in breach. Three features separate the contract from a loan: the profit share is a percentage of profit, never of capital; an honest loss is the capital provider's; and either side can end it.

Your katılma hesabı is a mudarabah, and the Banking Law says so

Article 3 of the Banking Law No. 5411 defines a participation account as funds whose use results in participation in profit or loss, on which no predetermined return is paid, and whose principal is not guaranteed to be repaid in full. That is a mudarabah written into statute. Kuveyt Türk says so on its participation banking page: the account is a labour and capital partnership, the depositors are the capital owners, the bank is the operator, and the profit from working the pooled funds is shared at the ratio agreed at the start.

That ratio is the mudarabah split. On Kuveyt Türk's participation account page the Klasik tier, opened with 250 TL, pays the customer 87 percent of pool profit at one month, 88 percent at three months and 90 percent from six months; the Platin+ tier, opened with 1,250,000 TL, pays 95 percent at one month and 96 percent beyond. The page prints withholding tax (stopaj) for accounts opened or renewed from 9 July 2025 at 17.5 percent up to six months, 15 percent at one year and 10 percent beyond.

The contract behind the grid is where the mudarabah rules bite. Clause 2.2.2 of Kuveyt Türk's banking services contract distributes profit or loss to each maturity group, by currency, in proportion to its weight, and fixes the sharing ratio from opening to maturity. Clause 2.2.7 states that in a loss every account holder participates at 100 percent of their capital. TOM Bank sets out the same mechanics in its mudarebe customer information form dated 16 December 2025, prepared under the BDDK communiqué of 30 November 2021: the customer's loss participation is 100 percent, the bank loses its labour, and an early withdrawal pays the deposited amount if the maturity group is in profit or the unit account value (birim hesap değeri) if it is in loss. TOM's advisory committee signs a separate icazet confirming the account rests on a mudarabah contract.

The rules the TKBB standard sets for every mudarabah

These clauses apply whether the bank is your working partner or your financier.

• The capital must be money, fixed in amount and currency; goods become capital only once converted to cash at market value (clause 2.2.1).
• The profit share is set at signing as a percentage of profit; a fixed sum or a percentage of capital is not allowed (clause 2.4.1).
• Loss falls on the capital owner; an operator without fault or breach cannot be made liable, and a clause saying otherwise is void (clause 2.4.6).
• Collateral may be taken only against losses caused by fault or breach, not ordinary trading losses (clause 2.5.1).
• The capital owner may not interfere in management but has a right to information and may agree an audit (clause 2.3.10); either party may terminate at any time (clause 2.6.2).

Mudarabah financing: why Turkish banks almost never do it

The BDDK's Regulation on Banks' Credit Transactions (Bankaların Kredi İşlemlerine İlişkin Yönetmelik), reissued in the Resmî Gazete of 21 December 2023, number 32406, lists in Article 16 the only ways a participation bank may extend funds: sale methods (murabaha, selem, istisna and others), leasing, partnership methods, agency (vekâlet) methods and others such as karz-ı hasen. The partnership family names five types: labour and capital partnership (mudarebe), profit and loss partnership (müşareke), investment partnership (girişim sermayesi), ownership partnership (mülkiyet ortaklığı) and agricultural partnerships. Paragraph 3 is the sentence that shapes everything: participation banks may not provide cash financing to customers for the purpose of earning income. Paragraphs 5 to 8 require partnership financing to be set up as a capital company or by a fixed-term partnership contract, with profit and loss ratios and management rights written in, and oblige the bank to dispose of its partnership shares within at most seven years, extendable by the BDDK Board. The scaffolding exists. What is missing is volume.

Ziraat Katılım is the one bank whose accounts let us measure it. Its unconsolidated audit report for 30 September 2025 lists 683,843 thousand TL of profit and loss partnership investments (kâr zarar ortaklığı yatırımları), unchanged since 31 December 2024, against 312,645,511 thousand TL of standard cash financing. The note explains how such a deal pays: income is shared at project completion or at stage ends, after net profit is calculated under a signed partnership agreement. That is a project-by-project book, not a retail product. The other banks do not break the figure out, so treat their partnership books as unpublished rather than zero.

The reason is the shape of the risk. In a murabaha the bank holds a fixed receivable it can secure and provision. In a mudarabah it holds a share of someone else's profit, measured from someone else's accounts, with no recourse for an honest loss, no right to manage, collateral only against fault, and a seven-year clock on the exit. Those are awkward rules for a deposit-taker reporting a capital ratio to the BDDK every month, so partnership financing stays with projects that have auditable accounts and a defined end.

Musharakah: the partnership product that does exist

Musharakah (müşâreke, kâr-zarar ortaklığı) differs from mudarabah on one point: all partners contribute capital. The TKBB's Müşâreke Standard, number 7, published 23 June 2025, says capital shares need not be equal (Article 10), profit may be split by agreement but loss must follow capital shares and a clause saying otherwise is void (Articles 12 and 19), and no partner may be guaranteed a profit (Article 17). Its opening note states that diminishing musharakah, which has special rules, is not covered.

Albaraka Türk sells this contract as Kâr-Zarar Ortaklığı in its commercial cash financing menu. The product page invites you to prepare an investment project; if the bank accepts it, you receive fund support in a partnership of labour, experience and capital, with profit and loss shared at ratios set in advance, covering all or part of the project cost. The customer information form (FRM-501-05, revision 2, 7 April 2022) adds the operating terms: bank and customer are both capital owners; the contract cannot be abandoned unilaterally; the bank may appoint the customer as its agent to run the partnership; and it may ask for a pledge against losses caused by the customer's intent, fault or breach. No ratio, ticket size or sector list is printed. The product is quote-only; ask about the profit ratio, the exit valuation inside the seven-year rule, and what counts as project cost. Our guide to halal business financing in Turkey covers the murabaha routes you will be offered first.

Diminishing musharakah: the home financing Turkey does not have

Searchers from Turkey keep landing on our pages for diminishing musharakah (azalan müşâreke), the structure used in the United Kingdom and Malaysia in which the bank and the buyer own the house together, the buyer pays rent on the bank's share and buys it out over time. The TKBB's June 2025 standard leaves it outside its scope, while the BDDK's Article 16 includes ownership partnership (mülkiyet ortaklığı) as a permitted method, so the legal category exists. What does not exist is a product. No participation bank home financing page we read in 2026 offers co-ownership with the bank; each describes the bank buying the home and selling it to you on instalments, which is murabaha. Emlak Katılım's Birlikte Konut Finansmanı is co-ownership between two customers, a friend, sibling, relative or spouse who take the title deed jointly, not with the bank. There is no diminishing musharakah calculator for Turkey because there is nothing to calculate.

Where partnership capital actually flows: venture funds

The investment partnership type in Article 16 is the one Turkish participation banks use with some energy, through funds rather than their own balance sheets. KT Portföy runs the Teknogirişim venture capital investment fund (girişim sermayesi yatırım fonu), established by the joint investment of Kuveyt Türk and Vakıf Katılım to back early-stage technology companies. The fund's page sets the terms: each investment is between 250,000 TL and 1,000,000 TL for shares in proportion to the valuation; it invests only in joint-stock companies (anonim şirket); and it wants a product that is ready and has customers. That is musharakah logic in corporate form: capital in, shares out, loss limited to the capital, profit from the exit.

Wakala: the other contract that can sit behind an account

Mudarabah is not the only contract a Turkish participation account can rest on. Article 16 lists agency methods, including investment agency (yatırım vekâleti), and Ziraat Katılım's accounts show the practice: the bank keeps agency-based participation accounts separate and notes they can be opened at any maturity, including under one month, while mudarabah accounts sit in five fixed maturity groups. In an agency account the bank is your investment agent rather than your partner, and its fee is set in that contract rather than by a split. The customer information form required by the BDDK's 2021 communiqué names the contract type in its first line, so ask for it before you open the account. Our is it halal hub lists the verdict pages for the products built on these contracts.

Who should choose what

If you are a saver, your mudarabah is the katılma hesabı you already have, and the two things to read are the split and the loss clause. At Kuveyt Türk a longer tenor buys a better split, 90-10 from six months in the Klasik tier against 87-13 at one month, and a lower withholding rate as well. The loss clause is the same at every bank we read: 100 percent of your capital is at risk in the pool, with TMSF cover as the layer outside the contract. If you own a business with a project that has its own accounts and an end date, the partnership door is open but narrow: Albaraka Türk's Kâr-Zarar Ortaklığı is the one product with a published page, and Ziraat Katılım's book proves such contracts get signed. Expect a quote, audit rights, a pledge against fault, and a murabaha offered first. If you are a founder with a product and customers, the Teknogirişim fund's 250,000 TL to 1,000,000 TL ticket is the clearest partnership capital in the market. If you are a home buyer hoping for diminishing musharakah, Turkey sells murabaha. Facts checked against resmigazete.gov.tr, mevzuat.gov.tr, tkbb.org.tr, kurul.diyanet.gov.tr, kuveytturk.com.tr, albaraka.com.tr, tombank.com.tr, ziraatkatilim.com.tr, kuveytturkportfoy.com.tr, emlakkatilim.com.tr on 1 October 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Is mudarabah halal according to the Diyanet?

Yes. The Diyanet High Board's ruling of 19 December 2018 names mudarabah, with musharakah, murabaha and leasing, as a method whose use makes a participation bank's profit permissible, with loss borne by the capital unless the operator acted with intent, fault or in breach.

What is the difference between mudarabah and musharakah?

In a mudarabah one side provides all the capital and the other the work, so an honest loss falls entirely on the capital provider. In a musharakah every partner contributes capital and loss must follow capital shares. Albaraka Türk's Kâr-Zarar Ortaklığı is a musharakah; a katılma hesabı is a mudarabah.

Does a participation account guarantee my principal?

Not in the contract. The Banking Law defines a participation account as one whose principal is not guaranteed to be repaid in full, and Kuveyt Türk's banking services contract says each holder bears a pool loss at 100 percent of their capital. The bank may smooth results with a profit equalisation reserve, as TOM Bank's form explains. Separately, TMSF insures balances up to 1,200,000 TL by statute.

Can my business get mudarabah financing from a Turkish participation bank?

In principle yes, because BDDK's Article 16 lists mudarebe and müşareke among permitted methods, but in practice it is rare and quote-only. Albaraka Türk publishes a Kâr-Zarar Ortaklığı product for investment projects, and Ziraat Katılım's accounts show 683.8 million TL of partnership investments at 30 September 2025 against 312.6 billion TL of standard financing. Bring audited accounts, a defined project and an exit inside seven years.

Is there diminishing musharakah home financing in Turkey?

No. The TKBB's musharakah standard of June 2025 leaves diminishing musharakah outside its scope, and no participation bank home financing page we read offers co-ownership with the bank. Emlak Katılım's Birlikte Konut Finansmanı is joint ownership between two customers, not with the bank.