Turkish Customs – Part 1
Turkish Customs – With a Sting in the Tail! - Part 1 of 2
The following is a great submission from reader, and long term Bodrum resident, Ros Elliott-Ozlek, who re-tells her experience of Turkish Customs - the good and the bad...
This story is © Ros Elliott-Ozlek, Nov 2009
Nov 2009.
I shipped my furniture and books from UK to Turkey in 2003, twice as there were two houses to clear at different times that year. It cost me about £2,000 each time to the UK agents.
The Turkish agents receiving my goods and helping me clear customs also took from me about 2,000TL in total to do so, with the assurance I would get most of it back after 5 years. I was told to keep all the documents safely.
None of the furniture was valuable. Most of it was extremely old and makeshift. I wanted to have my books and things around me again as I had bought a new house in Turkey. My first real house after renting for 16 years.
After the five years were up in 2008, I delayed going back to the customs office for a number of reasons – fear being the strongest. I thought it wouldn’t matter as the five years had passed, so the goods would become Turkish anyway, so delay was not a problem.....
Moreover, I did not go back to the same Turkish agents who had cleared my goods from customs as I had contacted them during the five years (in 2004) when I got married to a Turkish man. I had thought I might need to inform the customs that I was now going to be Turkish, and maybe I could get my fees back sooner.
This was a mistake. The agents in 2004 were seemingly polite and helpful but kept passing me on to yet another ‘agent’, which meant repeating the whole saga in broken Turkish several times. This was extremely tiring and frustrating. The final ‘agent’ did not seem to be able to do anything or even fully understand me, and it also seemed the customs officials were saying I would never be able to get my money back and would have to take the goods out of Turkey again after the 5 years were up.
At this stage I beat a hasty retreat home and vowed not to bother them until the full 5 year time was up. However, on the way out of the customs hall I met another agent apparently dealing with a confident young American who smilingly said that he was sure that if anyone could help me, his agent would be able to do so. I took his card for future reference.
While I was plucking up courage to go back to customs (in January 2009) and get it all sorted, I was summoned by them anyway, by phone. It seemed that I was in the wrong and would have to pay a fine for being so late, and also remove my goods from Turkey. I also caught words like ‘you have to prove it’, referring to my new status as a Turk, which I had mentioned on the phone thinking that it would solve my case.
Accordingly I took the whole problem last January to the agent I had bumped into that day. He promised to sort it out and said that I would definitely get my money back. He rang that night and said that all was in order and he had found another agent to sort it out. Palms would need to be greased even though I thought I was within my rights. This was because I was late in applying to clear my goods after the five years was up, he said.
We met in his office the next day and he handed me over to another agent – apparently an ‘insider’ in the Den, but one with no English. After more trips to the customs office and a conversation with another official, things seemed to be going wrong. A power of attorney form was required. Maybe two, as there were two dossiers. More discussions in the building and a trip to another ‘mudur’ who stamped and signed the application my new agent was carrying, and we returned to the awkward official. She still refused to continue the procedures until the power of attorney was produced.
So the new agent took me to a notary and we got the required form done. Fortunately this costs less as a Turk now – half price even! (was it 35TL each instead of 75 each?) On the way back to the customs hall this agent informed me all would be well in a day or two after he had done various letters and searches. I asked him when I should come to get my money back, and he looked puzzled. Money back? Oh no I would never get those fees back. He was merely cancelling out the need for the original taxes so that I would not have to take my goods out of Turkey again.
I was rather upset at this point, and we summoned the first agent (the one who spoke English) to explain. He also looked puzzled now, then crestfallen. Agent no. 2 showed us a typed page giving a new law passed some years ago apparently cancelling out the one that states you can get your fees back after 5 years. Agent no.1 professed not to understand or know about this.
I wondered what game was going on. They had conferred the week before. They both knew what was required. Why had agent 2 not informed agent 1 of the ‘new laws’. Indeed, why did agent 1 not know about them, since he worked there next door to the Den, and had done so for about 20 years.
Then they asked me what I wanted to do now, as if I was still in control of everything. Did I want to abandon this paper chase and take my goods back out? They both personally guaranteed that if I took the goods out I would definitely get my money back!!! What about all the forms needed to get permission to take them out again, I asked, let alone the costs of shipping back to UK, and to where? My house was sold in 2003, my mother’s in 2004, my father’s and brother’s far to small.
We ‘agreed’ to let matters take their course with the cancelling out by agent 2. Agent 1 promised to check up on everything and call me again. I insisted on a document to be made out to me explaining that all was now cleared for good and that they would never bother me again from customs. I also wanted my folder back, which they had kept, as I had written all sorts of notes and important details on it during the 5 years. They promised.
They also took 500 TL off me to ‘grease the wheels of the system’. More like grease the palms. Agent 1 did write me a tiny note showing I had paid 250TL to him and 250TL to Agent 2 for the ‘Beyunameler’ (check sp) of which 2 were now needed as there were 2 dossiers – hence the 2 powers of attorney…..
I also entrusted my orange cardboard file (with all the documents relating to the furniture in it) to agent 2, expecting to have it all finished in a week. I was left waiting to hear from agent 2 (Interestingly, this whole confusion took place on a day exactly 22 years since I arrived in Turkey. 10.2. 1987 – 10.2.2009) but decided to call him a few days later for a progress report. He said he had had to send the Beyunameler to Ankara and was expecting a reply from them. We would have to wait.
A week or so later I got another official document from the Customs Office which made no sense to me – asking what I was doing about the problem with my goods and would I please come in and see them as soon as possible.
I immediately rang agent 2 who asked me to fax the document to him and he would deal with it. I duly did so. When I rang him later he told me the customs officers would have to come and inspect my goods, and make sure I was not using them for commercial purposes! They would notify us of the date. It would probably entail a fee for their expenses in travelling out to me and checking the goods.
Two weeks went by and no news, so I rang again and Agent 2 said he was following it up, but the director had not given a date yet. He would call me.
Thus the summer came (in May) and my phone calls were not answered by anyone. I assumed they were all on leave, or the customs office perhaps closed for a month in August. We were also in the UK for a week in June/July. I left text messages with Agent 1 but received no reply. At the end of the summer Ramazan began. I decided it was pointless to try and find anyone then or get anything done. I’d wait till ‘after the Bayram’ – a famous Turkish expression which seems to apply to almost everything that gets put off till ‘after the next bank Holiday’.
On October 8th another formal letter arrived by recorded delivery from the Customs Office. What was I doing about my goods, it enquired, as I was now well out of date and my ‘permission’ had long since expired.
I tried ringing Agents 1 and 2 but no answer form either and Agent 2’s cellphone number told me it was out of use now. His office number told me he no longer worked with them. They had no knowledge or record of my folder or business.
By now I was hopping mad and decided to try and find some ‘big guns’, or a ‘torpil’ in Turkish, which means a torpedo – someone who will smooth the way and sort it out, someone who is owed favours. I found my most powerful one and told my tale of woe to his wife, - a good friend of mine for many years.
She phoned me back immediately to tell me I had an appointment to see the Director of the Customs Office the following day at 10 am, and gave me his name and directions to find him, including what to say and which names to mention. He would sort it out for me, she assured me, as her husband had phoned him now to organise this.
Meantime my husband had phoned every number he could find on my business cards from the agents, and shouted and raged at everyone. He had even found the elusive Agent 2 who told him he no longer worked for that agency and did not have the folder I’d given him anymore, as it would be at his old agency. Husband threatened everyone with court proceedings and even physical violence……
I begged him not to interfere as I was now going to use a big torpil. He insisted on accompanying me to the Director of Customs the next day, but after a lot of arguing I got him to agree to wait and let me go alone as it would be rude to issue threats when a torpil was in use.
Next day I was duly ushered into a luxuriously furnished office by a very polite, smiling secretary who was expecting me, high up in the building where I had spent so many unhappy hours in the poorly furnished offices of the civil servants running things.
Although I had to wait twenty minutes seated in that deep leather chair while Mr. X took a phone call, tea was brought and he apologised for keeping me waiting and explained the call was from the Chief of the Ankara Customs Office, so he had had to take it. I briefly explained my problem and situation and was informed that the procedures were really very simple and should not cost much. Why had I not come to him through the British Consulate, whose Honorary Consul was a good friend of his? I explained that I was technically a New Zealander, and thus not under the jurisdiction of the British Embassy or its Consulate as far as I knew.
He was surprised – after all, New Zealand was part of the British Commonwealth was it not? In any case, I was to inform any friends of mine in similar difficulties to please speak to Willie at the British Consulate and contact him directly in this manner. He was upset that people seemed to have such a hard time sorting out their problems with the customs officials. It seemed ludicrous that such a man as my Mr Y (my torpil) should have to phone him and make an appointment for me to sort out what was a very simple matter.
He also informed me that a Beyuname cost only 150 TL so should not have cost me 250, and that as a Turkish citizen (did I have an identity Card? Yes?) there should be no problem at all, I had the right to keep my goods, and why did I pay 1,500 TL in the first place?
I was told in future to ask any civil servant demanding fees from me to write down exactly what the fees were for. Meanwhile he had rung for his deputy, who was personally assigned to take care of me and the problem. I was feeling triumphant and relieved that maybe now I could finish this ugly business. We left his office and went back down to no less than the office where my troubles had first begun several years previously complete with same civil servants who had caused me so much distress. I had even cried with frustration there on a few occasions. However, it was as if a new script had been issued. Everyone was friendly, smiling, and looked innocent. Even the sun was shining. The same two ladies who had made so many difficulties last time for me were now re-assigned to me. I felt I was being passed from pillar to post, now outside the safety of the big director’s comfortable office. Was this a new game, I wondered?
After the deputy Chief left, these 2 ladies began to blame Agent 2, saying that he had done nothing at all since that time I had been there in January or February.
They themselves had called him many times but he had done nothing. They started to confuse me with long drawn out explanations, including many words I could not make out. I wondered if this was to be the game, making Agent 2 take the blame for everything, since he was not there. Even the big Chief had said not to go through agents, as it was simply not necessary.
Perhaps it meant more spoils to be shared and thus higher costs for the poor foreign victim in the first place? Yet it is the agents who act as guides, leading one through the maze of procedures and offices, diluting the long indigestible words into something more comprehensible. As foreigners we are at the mercy of these sharks, snakes and alligators. I would always recommend a torpil, and a big one, to oil the wheels of such bureaucratic machinery.
On this day I decided to say nothing and let this game play out if that was what it would take. Somebody had to be guilty, apparently, so it may as well be the one who wasn’t there.
However, I made it clear that it did not matter what they had to do, their Chief had told me it was my right to keep the goods as a Turkish citizen, and that the file would be closed at last. One of them replied that they would now have to go and check with Deputy Chief what they would have to do. The other one offered me tea. I refused, for once.
Next I was led by the younger official to the Deputy’s office, which was down two flights of stairs and out the front door, and round to the right and into another building past a long queue of young men with tags hanging round their necks and holding sheaves of documents. I have been here before too, alone and with Agent 2. This long queue is always there.
We jump the queue and go directly into the office which is nice and empty for once, with 5 comfortable leather chairs around a coffee table in front of the deputy’s big desk. There is even a vase of bright orange lilies on the coffee table. This is very different from previous visits to this room, where a harassed official with a grumpy face sat amidst a sea of documents and cigarette smoke, signing and stamping papers as they were placed before him, and sometimes barking out short questions. I discover that this particular job or office has a regular rotation of directors, and a regular stream of silent young men entering with documents to be signed. My young official informs me when I ask her that these are all agents working for companies who want to process and retrieve their goods from the docks – apparently a long procedure with many stages, signatures and offices. This day being Friday, and 11.30 by now, the companies want to get their goods out before the weekend when extra charges will be incurred for the enforced storage.
Tea is ordered (and accepted by me this time) and the deputy Chief consults his up to date book of rules and regulations – a slim blue paperback. He telephones a colleague in Ankara and is directed to a particular regulation. He seems to understand the ‘problem’ and necessary procedures we must go through under which particular by-law in order to naturalise my goods. Further discussion ensues between him and my young official, however, and it is decided by 12pm that I will return upstairs to her office and await the outcome of another telephone call to the ‘Yolcu Salon’ for some more information. Then all will be reported to the Big Chief upstairs and they will decide if I need to write another ‘dilekce’ or do another ‘Beyuname’ to Ankara or wherever and thus close my file for good. They would like me to stay there for now, to save me coming and going from so far away, and they are confident that they can solve this problem within fifteen days. Maybe sooner!
I am taken back upstairs to the office which has emptied. I am seated at someone’s vacated desk. There is a computer (switched off on the desk, and three stacks of the familiar pink, numbered folders, and incomprehensible sheaves of documents. The whole office contains many such heavily laden desks and filing cabinets. Two ladies are chatting at another desk, while the other occupants seem to have gone to lunch. Someone returns now and quietly informs one of the remaining ladies that there is soup, meatballs, and rice for lunch. She leaves and the gentleman colleague remains at his desk behind a pillar. Someone’s computer is softly playing a tinny sounding arabesque song.
My young official returns and I learn her name. I will henceforth call her ‘Lady’. She now seems uncertain what to do with me so I suggest I go out for an hour to do some shopping and other business. She looks relieved but feels obliged to invite me to lunch in their canteen anyway. I reassure her I need to go out for a while and we arrange to meet back in the office here at 1.30 when she will make the phone call to find out what our next step is.
Outside the streets are filling with people leaving offices and other places of work to get some lunch somewhere. There are so many cafes lining the streets along the bay. I feel a return to normality after the heaviness of the surreal den of lions. It looks so pretty in the sunshine with the grassy parkland area all along the shoreline which the last mayor of the town had built.
One can now walk for miles all around the bay, - there is a wide grassy bank to walk the dog and play areas for children. I walk a long way up towards the town centre and finally decide on a pavement café to sit down at. Lunch is a lovely bowl of chicken salad. Tea is brought afterwards and I walk back to the Customs Building, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine for as long as possible.
Back inside Deputy appears and informs me all is well. I will get the refund of the tax paid on the first of my shipments as it was the more expensive one. I won’t get the second one refunded, as they only pay back one lot, according to their rules and regulations. I must also pay a small charge on the second one, an administration charge to close these files. Do I have an agent to carry out these tasks? Yes. Agent 2, who has disappeared, Lady and Snake chorus. They then decide, with heavy emphasis from Snake here, that as Agent 2 is the culprit it is best not to involve him again. They will find a reliable ‘helper’ for me from their own pack. Please to sit and wait. I settle down again to wait.
Meanwhile the room I am in has filled with busy colleagues and more ‘helpers’ or ‘gofers’ coming and going. I presume they are the agents who carry the documents from office to office for signing and registering. They have ID cards hanging around their necks on red cords.
Someone’s young daughter has arrived from school, judging by her pleated skirt, white socks and white blouse with tie. She perches on the corner of her mother’s desk with coloured pens and paper to play with until her mother can go home. Tea in little glasses is distributed and Lady offers me a glass, yet again. There is a liveliness and buzz of activity in the room now
My own personal gofer eventually arrives – a quiet and pleasant young man wearing a check shirt, trousers and trainers. These latter seem to be the requisite footwear of such gofers, as they rush up and down the stairs all day long and go between the main buildings of the Customs House. He is given instructions by Lady and almost bows as each order is confirmed. He is being sent to retrieve my refund/rebate, hopefully, and complete the next stage of my business today. I will henceforth refer to him as ‘Runner’.
Thirty minutes later Runner returns, his mission not accomplished. It seems they will have to do the 2 files one at a time. It will take a while to prepare the amounts ready for the payout. They will have to receive payment first, and maybe I will need to be there and something about a ‘code’….
So it is decided to let me go home now – 4pm, after 6 hours there. Lady promises to ring me when all is ready and probably in one or two days. This means next Monday or Tuesday as today is Friday. I give her my mobile number and warn her not to ring the home number as my husband will probably start shouting at her down the phone as he is so enraged about it all.
A day or so later, Lady rings. They will have to come and check my furniture to make sure it is still there, I suppose, and to check I have not sold it on! Normally I would be incensed and get angry on the phone, but I remember my torpil and stay calm. We arrange for them to come the next day, as early as possible. I tell them I have to go out in the afternoon, and Lady says it doesn’t matter if I am not at home, as long as someone can let them in. But how will they know which is my UK furniture and what is Turkish, I reply, astounded by the suggestion and also suspicious that this really is just a formality. Lady backs down and suggests they come in the afternoon - she seems to think it will take 4 hours to get to my place when I suggest they arrive at 9am. In reality it is a journey of 1 hour, unless they are coming by bus, which I doubt. I have an important meeting with two doctors to set up a Yoga class for pre- and post- natal students. I know I will have to cancel this, as appointments rarely run to time in Turkey. I also suspect they will want money for making the journey. I ring my torpil’s wife to confer. She says to wait and see if they come, and to ring her if they do not.
Story continues next issue...