Job Discussion Forums

[nichtta]

Hi everyone,

I'm running into a huge issue while trying to help a friend, who just moved here. It seems it has become impossible now for someone to live here on a "tourist" residence permit since banks don't offer accounts for those without already existing residence permits, i.e., only if you have a work or student visa before coming to Turkey can you stay longer than your tourist visa time period (90 days within a 180-day period). That means the route many people used to take to first come here doesn't work anymore. Why? Because you need a bank account to show you have $6,000 USD ever since the government stopped accepting currency exchange slips.

Normally, the go-to bank for foreigners has been Kuveyt Türk. It has no fees or a minimum balance, and opening an account just required a passport and tax number. To my knowledge (and from my experience), other banks simply don't open an account for a non-resident. Last year, KT began to put restrictions specifically on Syrian citizens; you can only imagine how many accounts were opened after the influx of over two million of them. Now, a guy working in the personal banking section told me that a corporate-level decision was made in the past couple of months to stop opening bank accounts for all foreigners. He even showed me his screen where he punched in my friend's tax number, and the system wouldn't accept it. It now only accepts numbers starting with 9, such as Turkish ID Numbers or Foreigner (Resident Permit) ID Numbers.

I really hope I'm wrong about this one, which is why I'm writing to you all to hear about alternative banks or different experiences, granted they're recent (within the past few weeks). It seems it's just another sign of Turkey making it more difficult on foreigners to move here...

[EFL Educator]

This comes as NO surprise....REASONS ARE OBVIOUS!

[Richard62]

Things may have changed very recently, but I know for a fact that Bank Asya has always allowed non-residents to open bank accounts without a residence permit. All they ask is your passport, and your address back at home. It's not the best bank out there, and they don't have many ATM machines, but if you need to open a bank account in order to obtain a residence permit, I'd say give it a shot.

[nichtta]

[JohnRambo]

[ryanlogic]

Many people working in the humanitarian sector around the Syrian border are unfortunately forced to get tourist visas bacause Turkey doesn't have a system for approving work visas for organizations who do not have 5 Turkish employees working for each expat... Inspite of the fact that they are greatly supporting the local economies by bringing in millions of dollars of humanitarian funds from outside the country and using it to purchase and manufacture humanitarian resources within Turkey.

Anyway, from where I sit the only kind of visa that you CAN actually get with out bribing people or having some important friends to drink tea with is a tourist visa.

In that regard, I can confirm as of this week that many people here are regularly opening bank accounts, applying for and receiving residence permits.

[nichtta]

[ryanlogic]

Ziraat Bank for sure... Passport and tax number only.

I'm told that some people won't know how to do it... Bring an insistent Turk and politely refuse to leave until they get it done.

[johnjengizholden]