Getting a PCR test at the airport in Istanbul

This is the card that shows you how to check your Covid-19 test results. I covered my personal bar code with a bit of paper.

We’ve been through our share of bureaucratic processes in Turkey. Sometimes it’s easy and fast, sometimes it’s more complex and not so fast. So imagine our delight to find that getting a PCR test at Sabiha Gökçen Airport is quick, simple and very well organized. (Bet that’s the first time you ever saw the words “delight” and “PCR test” in the same sentence!)

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Ikamet: how to get your residence permit in Turkey

Turkey is a wonderful place to live. That’s what we felt after just a few weeks in Finike, a small city on the Aegean coast. So we decided to apply for a residence permit, also known as the ikamet. (İkamet means “residence” in Turkish.)

Though the process is fairly straightforward, there are a lot of details, lots of opportunities to make mistakes, and none of the information we found online was 100% complete or 100% accurate. That’s why I decided to write this post – to provide a complete list of documents and an accurate list of the steps you need to take, in the right order.

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