Turkish Residency – The final chapter

In a previous blog I talked about the bureaucratic run around for our Turkish residency, http://shamballacyc.blogspot.com.tr/2015/05/turkish-residency.html .  We were told we would get our residency card through the post in 5 weeks.  During this time we checked the postal boxes at the marina and even went into the post office in town looking for the elusive residency card.  After 6 weeks I rang up the clerk handling our application and he told me in broken English that there have been delays and the application decision may not occur until October.  I explained we wanted to visit our daughter in England and he said that during the review process we were allowed to leave the country for only 15 days.  This seemed crazy that it would take 5 months to review a 1 year short term residency application but I realised with his limited English I was not going to get any clarification over the phone and another face to face visit was needed.  Why people are employed in the foreigners’ bureau who can’t speak fluent English is a mystery as the majority of people seeking residency are English speaking.

So we scheduled another trip to Muğla.  We are getting to know this road up the mountain and the city quite well.

View of the provincial capital of Muğla

We managed to find the same clerk, Murat, who handled our application in May.  After a bit of searching Murat told us that we are ‘on the system’ and our application was approved on the 28^th of May.  So where was the official residency card?  Murat informed us that we should have received an SMS with the registration number which we could take to the post office in Marmaris to pick up our card.  We never received any SMS.  Murat just shrugged his shoulders and said we should try the post office in Marmaris anyway.  By this time it was mid-afternoon on a Friday so if we didn’t get back to Marmaris before the post office closed we would have to wait until Monday and we needed to book plane tickets for London but didn’t know if we could stay only 2 weeks or a month as hoped. 

So we hopped on the next bus to Marmaris (so happy they run frequently) and got to the post office with a half hour to spare.  The third floor of the post office is like some scene out of Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal.

Going Postal

We didn’t hold much hope of any joy here.  The clerk didn’t speak English, made some cursory checks on the computer but indicated that without a registration number he couldn’t find anything.  Luckily a nice young woman who spoke fluent English and Turkish translated for us and said we should go to the foreigners’ bureau at the police station.  We thought this had shut down in favour of the Muğla office but were assured it still handed inquiries.  With 20 minutes until this office closed for the weekend we hopped in a taxi and got there with 10 minutes to spare.  The police officer looked at our forms, made a phone call and said our cards were sitting in the Yat Marine office waiting for us.  All one could do is laugh at the absurdity of it all.  We caught the next dolmuş back to the marina before that office closed at 6 pm.  The man we were suppose to see had left for the day but one of the friendly female staff had our cards for us. 

We started speculating why on earth, when we go into the office at least once a week, they did not give us these cards when they saw us.  Finally we decided it was totally fruitless to try and understand what had happened -  just shrug and accept it as the Turkish way.  We are just happy we now have our residency cards and can plan a month long trip to the UK.

The elusive residency permit