Turkey Report

[DaveRo]

Originally Posted by SIMCollector

With regards registration of your phone's IMEI, I was told it was not necessary and the government website stated above I believe states that for tourists it is not necessary.

That's not how I interpret the government website.

Here is the relevant page in English. I expect it's clearer in Turkish

I was told that if your IMEI is not registered then the SIM would be disconnected after 1 month. But this doesn't seem to have been the case for me. But at the moment, I'm not really sure whether some of my SIMs are registered or not and I don't particularly want to plug my details into the Government website in case it triggers disconnection !

I can understand that!

I assume all this also applies to dongles, BTW. Has anybody tried to register a foreign dongle - as opposed to buying a Turkish one and having it registered by the seller?

[SIMCollector]

Originally Posted by DaveRo

That's not how I interpret the government website.

Here is the relevant page in English. I expect it's clearer in Turkish
I can understand that!

I assume all this also applies to dongles, BTW. Has anybody tried to register a foreign dongle - as opposed to buying a Turkish one and having it registered by the seller?

I agree with you, the translation is not so good. I was reading this page, very early in the morning and for some reason thought registration may not be necessary.

Individual Import Applications | MCKS&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp

If your only staying for a short time then it may well not be necessary to register your IMEI. I was charged 5 Lira for the registration at a Turkcell extra store. But you get a receipt and an SMS (in Turkish) is sent to your phone, confirming registration, I beleive. Somewhere I have a copy of the actual document I completed as I requested this. But I dont think this is normally given.

On the lower part of the page in the URL above this is stated, which may refer to dongles in Turkey :

"With the web service application, records taken by subscription centers of GSM operators (Turkcell, Vodafone, Avea) are synchronously entered to the system. By this way, device can be recorded as soon as application is made. However, if any problem is identified while Telecommunications Authority is checking the documents received by GSM operators’ subscription centers the related device will be deleted from the record list. For this reason, documents given to subscription centers must be complete.

If the documents related with device and electronic identity information of device are not problematic, device information is entered to the system and IMEI number of the device is recorded. "

HTH

And if anyone know an online way of topping up a Turkcell SIM, I'd very very interested to hear !