Türkiye’s first official real-world asset tokenization arrived from an unexpected direction: gold. A Ministry of Treasury and Finance communiqué published in the Official Gazette on 29 July 2026 opens the door for precious metals held physically at the Mint or the Exchange to be converted into “digital precious metals” on distributed ledger infrastructure and traded on Borsa Istanbul. It is a short instrument, but what it says about the regulatory architecture of tokenization in Türkiye is much bigger than its text.
How the structure works
The new provision assembles four elements. One-to-one physical backing: the token represents unprocessed metal of defined purity and weight sitting in custody. Distributed ledger infrastructure: transfers run between Exchange members on a DLT-based system. A central clearing institution: conversion is performed by clearing houses operating under the capital markets regime. And ministerial approval: both the conversion and the trading on the Exchange require the Ministry’s favourable opinion. Procedural detail will come from Exchange regulations, and a transitional provision extends the same approval requirement to assets already converted.
The real news: a third lane is born
The communiqué’s most striking sentence is a definitional exclusion. The digital precious metal is neither a capital markets instrument under Law No. 6362 nor a crypto-asset trading on platforms. Turkish law now runs three lanes for tokenized assets:
| Lane | Regime | Supervisor |
|---|---|---|
| Crypto-asset | CMB crypto regime, CASP licence | Capital Markets Board |
| Tokenized capital markets instrument | Law No. 6362 | Capital Markets Board |
| Digital precious metal | Precious metals legislation plus Exchange rules | Treasury and Finance plus the Exchange |
The separation is deliberate: gold tokenization will run inside its own sectoral framework without carrying the licensing load of the crypto regime. In our RWA tokenization piece we asked how a token’s legal nature would be determined; Türkiye has now given its first concrete answer: by the law of the underlying asset.
Who this touches, and how
For refineries and the bullion side the picture is clear: registration obligations under the tracking system tighten through the transitional articles, and tokenization is possible only over registered metal in custody. For fintech and crypto ventures the boundary line is the point: this lane runs through Exchange members and central clearing institutions, so a platform listing a “gold token” is not something this communiqué enables; that remains a matter for the CMB’s crypto regime. For those wanting to bridge the two, the realistic route is partnership with institutions holding Exchange membership. The crypto side’s own rules are in our CASP licence guide.
Does this free up gold-backed tokens or stablecoins?
No. The communiqué defines a closed loop: physical metal in Mint or Exchange custody, converted by a central clearing institution, with ministerial approval. Issuing a gold-referenced token to trade on public platforms stands outside this frame and stays inside the crypto-asset regime.
Will it serve as a template for other asset classes?
The logic travels: physical backing plus authorised custodian plus central converter plus sectoral approval. Seeing the same skeleton repeated for commodities and agricultural assets would not surprise. It is the first strong signal that Türkiye’s RWA approach for non-capital-markets assets is heading toward “solve it in the asset’s own law”.
Where to start
If you are building in this space, settle three questions: which lane does your target asset fall into; who in your structure holds the clearing institution and Exchange membership layer; and who carries the custody and registration duties of the underlying asset’s own legislation? In tokenization the easy part is the token; the hard part is writing the answers to those three questions first.
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