Getting Married In Turkey and Obtaining Permanent Residency During the Pandemic

I have lived in Ankara, Turkey since August 2020. I came to this fascinating country and married my wife as the COVID-19 pandemic was in its most confusing and terrifying stages. Since arriving, I have been greeted warmly by nearly everyone I’ve met. The people have always been helpful and understanding as communication troubles arise, even in the most casual and fleeting of situations. Beyond that, I’ve been able to experience many parts of a country that’s full of rich history, cuisine, and endless invitations to sit and have some tea.

Despite the hospitality, my wife and I have constantly struggled with outdated bureaucratic practices, lethargic employees, and incorrect instructions since my immigration to Turkey. Although she is a Turkish citizen and I am entitled to a permanent residency with a track to citizenship through naturalization, it has been an uphill battle in every step of the process. I experienced similar bureaucratic struggles during my student visa process in Czechia in 2012.

Turkey has many amazing advantages for expats, though it’s often fallen beneath the radar of the international expat community. So many parts of the country, especially the west coast on the Aegean Sea, are ideal places for expats to set down for a while. Larger cities such as the massive metropolis of Istanbul and the capital Ankara have become increasingly cosmopolitan in recent years. Frustrating obstacles in the path to residency shouldn’t blight anyone’s time in such a great country. I hope that my experiences will provide some valuable lessons for every expat that considers what Turkey has to offer.

A Complete Pivot: How the Pandemic Brought Me To Turkey

December 2019 was, in many ways, the end of an era in my lifetime. My wife and I started dating and we quickly realized that our relationship was going to be committed. She was spending a year in the US to get a flavor for life there. I was one of the chefs of a large and popular restaurant.

Then, March 2020 arrived, and everyone quickly began to realize that this virus was going to be much more deadly and last longer than initially imagined. With elderly parents and a lack of good health insurance in the US, my wife had to fly back to Turkey. On March 16th, 2020, restaurants were ordered to close in Denver. The same day and just a few hours later, my wife boarded a plane and we had our tearful goodbye. Without being able to process any of it, I lost two of the most important things in my life.

The summer of 2020 was rough for both of us despite the fact that we were physically healthy throughout. To keep ourselves busy and try to use our resources, the restaurant started making thousands of lunches for the children that rely on school for their meals. The restaurant eventually opened up again in a limited take out and delivery capacity that we had never attempted before. We had to reconfigure the entire flow of our massive restaurant and try to keep the business alive. Meanwhile, my wife transitioned into a caretaker position for her parents as curfews and lockdowns started in Ankara. Before long, my future father-in-law started to complain of abdominal pain and was soon diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer.

With both of us drowning in confusion and despair, I started to think about dropping everything and going to Turkey to be with her. I put in my notice at work in late July and bought a one-way plane ticket.

Love and Tragedy: My First Steps in Turkey

What should have been a joyful reunion between me and my future wife was marred by tragedy. Sadly, my future father-in-law passed away only nine days before I arrived. Even though there weren’t explicit quarantine requirements in Turkey at this time, I couldn’t even meet my future wife and her family until I passed my PCR test after arriving. I didn’t want to risk passing the virus on to her family, so I spent five days total holed up in a hotel. When we finally reunited, it was a surreal, metaphysical experience. As she closed a chapter in her life, I did my best to support my wife in starting a new one.

Through my E-Visa, I was afforded 90 days in the country before having to apply for a new long-stay visa. That meant that we had an important decision to make. We realized that, in order to stay together, we needed to get married. It was already on both of our minds anyway, so we started to get our things in order for our civil marriage.

We sent our documents to a translator to be notarized. In the meantime, we scheduled mandatory health checks for both of us and started to apply for the marriage license. We waited in line at the marriage bureau in the central district of Ankara, Çankaya. They told us that we would need to do the registration and civil ceremony only in the jurisdiction of her home address. So, we tried again at the marriage bureau of Sincan, a small city that has been absorbed into the Ankara metro and the home of my future mother-in-law.

One of the documents that I had to obtain was a letter from the US Embassy in Ankara that confirmed my marital status. Everything was completely accurate from the document and we already had it translated and notarized, yet the manager of the Sincan marriage bureau called us a few days after we delivered everything and he said that he was unable to verify it. We canceled our plans for the day and sped over to the office. The document from the US showed my date of birth in the typical US format MM/DD/YYYY. Turkey, like most of the rest of the world, uses the DD/MM/YYYY format. He was completely oblivious to this fact and, despite members of his office confirming what we said was true, he refused to fix the “error.” He eventually relented after I showed him several forms of ID and we ended up paying a clerical fee to add a document confirming the alteration.

From there on out, our marriage went off without a hitch. We scheduled our date to tie the knot on 10/10/2020. We managed to have some family members, including my mother who flew in, attend the short civil ceremony and live-streamed it for those that couldn’t make it back in the States. We found a new apartment in the hills of Çankaya, just south of the Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi (TBMM) campus — Turkey’s national parliament. Things were finally beginning to look stable for us!

Enjoying Your Time Abroad

In my almost two years in Turkey, I’ve been through many great experiences despite the occasional challenges. By and large, this has been a great place to live both during the worst days of the pandemic and in a new marriage. We have been able to travel throughout the country and take part in the rich culture.

Patience and Compliance: Obtaining My Permanent Residency

I had successfully gotten married to the love of my life, next I needed to apply for my permanent residency before my E-Visa expired in November. Every province in Turkey has an immigration office, known locally as the Göç İdaresi. This is where all long-term visas and permits are obtained. Located at the crossroads of the Middle East and Europe, Turkey hosts the world’s largest refugee population. This is largely due to conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and others in the region. Being in a province of around 6 million people, Ankara’s immigration office is usually quite busy.

Almost three months after making the initial application, I received an interview appointment at the same office in January 2021. The line outside the building staggered up and down the street and it took 30 minutes to even make it inside. Next, we sat in a waiting room for two hours before my number showed up on the screen. We went to stand in another line at a specific office to have the interview and waited another 30 minutes. The interview was scheduled at 11:45 am but it wasn’t until around 2:15 pm that we could finally speak to an official.

The official took one look at my stack of documents and said something to my wife. She looked confused, they spoke for a minute, and then she angrily said, “Let’s go,” and we turned around and exited the building. Lighting a cigarette outside, she explained that he refused to process my documents because we did not have the right pink file folder to hold them in. I looked around and most, but not all, of the applicants were holding pink file folders. Luckily, a shop down the street was conveniently located to sell those folders as well as make copies or quick certified translations. The official also said he would allow us to skip the line and take the next available spot. Back inside his office, he gave us that blank stare that every career bureaucrat uses to simultaneously admonish you and let you know that your case doesn’t matter to them.

Before the application would be officially processed, however, we needed to pay the fee in the cashier’s line. That line took another hour and a half. When all was said and done, we spent five hours, six teas, two sandwiches, and one headache pill getting through that immigration office. As fate would have it, that wasn’t my last time in that office.

Corrections and Delays: One Tiny, Yet Crucial Mistake

About a month later, I received my permanent residency ID card. It was almost all correct, except for a misspelling of my middle name. Of course, none of my documents ever used that spelling so it was some careless data input on somebody’s part. Like any classic bureaucracy, however, it was going to be a serious problem for me if I didn’t get it corrected. Back to the immigration office, we went. This time, my wife and I went straight to the office where the official worked. After a short wait in line, she showed him the error. He said there was no way he could fix it and referred me to the documents office elsewhere in the building.

Upstairs and away from the crowd, we waited for the document’s official to get back from his lunch break. When he returned, we felt a sigh of relief as this was someone who actually seemed willing to help. He noticed the discrepancy, looked for evidence of it in the system, and promised to correct it within the hour. In much less time than he promised, he delivered me a new ID card with the correct spelling. After everything, we ran into the first friendly government official on our journey due to a misspelling of my name.

Struggling to Register My Name to My Address — Permanent Residency in Turkey

I finally had my permanent residency ID card, so it was time to register my name at our home address. This simple data entry would allow various government offices, banks, and clinics to link me to local jurisdiction. It would allow my wife and me to open a joint bank account, take out loans, open a mobile phone number in my name, and more.

We set off to visit the local population office in Çankaya, known as the Nüfus Müdürlüğü. After we got a number and walked up to the counter, my wife began to make our request. The official scanned through the documents and noticed that I was a foreigner. She said that they did not process foreigners at that office and that I would need to return to the immigration office. Not again! So, we got in a taxi and headed back there.

We went up to the information desk back at Göç İdaresi and told him our situation. The man behind the desk said that it’s not possible to register anybody at a home address from that office and that they’ve never had that responsibility. Really starting to get frustrated, we decided to call it a day!

The next day, we tried again and went back to the population office and hoped that another official would help us finish this. This time we did get another official and we did get a different answer. The new directive was that I can only register in the same population office as my wife, which was back in Sincan. Already going through the trouble of getting married in that city, I only saw more struggles ahead. At this point, I was ready to just give up and push the entire situation to the back of my mind.

A few months later, we visited my mother-in-law at her home in Sincan and helped her run some errands. She had just bought a new apartment and needed to update her address. We took this chance to not only register my wife at the new address but also finally get me registered as well. In contrast to the bustling population office back in Çankaya, this office was completely empty of residents. One obviously bored official sat behind his desk and we took a number just to keep things legitimate. He registered my mother-in-law and wife without issue but said that he was not able to do the same for a foreigner at this office. Unbelievable.

With patience already long lost, I simply tried to adapt to my apparently impossible transition to Turkish life. I would keep using my wife’s bank account, use a phone under her name, and do whatever else it would take to have a “normal” existence in the country. Still, something was scratching at the back of my head. After seeing three different population officials in two different locations, I realized that we got answers that simply couldn’t make sense. I decided that it had to boil down to either a general apathy or a serious lack of training. I decided that I was going to make my situation their problem to fix.

We built up the courage to go back to the Çankaya population office one more time. We took a number, waited, and then luckily got a completely new official at the desk. My wife took charge and told them all about our dealings with the bureaucracy up to that point. She said that we weren’t leaving the office until her husband was registered. The official begrudgingly went to go retrieve her manager. Within minutes, the simple data input was finished and my address was finally registered. After over a year in the country, it was finally done.

Perseverance and Focus: Staying Positive Despite the Challenges

Simply focusing on the good things in the country during your experience as an expat will do wonders for your mental health as you deal with the most frustrating bureaucracy. Even as you feel that your time and money is being wasted going between offices with little progress, it’s still important to remember why you made the move abroad in the first place. I have experienced plenty of inconveniences in Turkey during my time here, though I realize how much privilege I have and how incredible this country truly is.

Originally published at https://expatempire.com on May 18, 2022.