Our Thoughts on Turkey

Sadly, we had to leave Turkey to continue on our route around Europe. If you’re thinking of visiting this wonderfully interesting country in a Motorhome, do!! We’ve never felt unsafe or seen any trouble. If there was anything at all to complain about, it would probably be the Turkish way of driving. They are mad!! Andy’s words ... you need eyes in your arse lol. Please don’t that put you off though. 

The people we came into contact with were very friendly & kind. Most people speak a little bit of English or will try their best to communicate. They want to sell you their wares but are not offended when you say no thank you.

Migros & SOK seem to be the most popular supermarkets and are easy to find searching google maps. MMM Migros are big, MM Migros are medium sized, M Migros are small, you get the idea.

Fresh water taps are everywhere and there’s no shortage of bottled drinking water and fresh milk (Taze Sut), and everything is very reasonably priced including fuel & LPG.

We have seen campsites, but most (not all) have been closed for the winter. A local guy told us, “In Turkey you can stop anywhere and no one will be angry” (his words, thanks Muamer), and we did and it was brilliant!! The park4night app has been our bible as always although we have found a few places on our own. At Ephesus for example, the car park attendant was more than happy for us to stay the night and told us where we could empty our black waste.

As UK citizens, we needed a Visa, which we applied for online and had to print off. We also bought vehicle insurance at the border. To travel on the toll roads and some bridges we needed an HGS card that we stuck in the windscreen which we bought from the post office (PTT).

We want to say a huge thank you to Our Bumble for their very informative blog. Reading it made our trip much easier. Craig & Joanne, if you’re reading this, thank you from the both of us xxx

Gule, Gule Turkey, Goodbye. Hopefully one day, we’ll be back!

Update:

We drove to the Turkish/Greek border this morning.
We showed our passports & vehicle documents at the Turkish passport control. All was well. The guard stamped our passports and told us to drive to Custom Control at the next window. We were asked again for the documents and that’s when it all went a bit pear shaped.

The guy told us, we had over stayed by 5 days and we had to pay a “punishment” of €50. 

Shocked, we told him no, we had Visas for 3 months and had also paid for 3 months vehicle insurance at the border just over a month ago. His reply ... not my problem!!

Now we don’t mind paying what we owe, but in our heads we had done nothing wrong. We asked him why, but the only answer we got was that we could stay for 3 months, but the car only 1 month?? 

We were made to wait for 2 & 1/2 hours until we were given some paperwork so we could pay the fine!!

Strangely enough, the fine had been lowered to 195tl (£28.36). We still have no idea why we had to pay. We have made several enquiries and will update you when we can.

Note: We’ve heard back from “Our Bumble” who left Turkey after 89 days in November last year, they said they didn’t have any problems leaving.