What happens when you overstay your visa in Turkey

It is in our nature to follow rules. We are so conditioned to the idea that by breaking them, we will get punished.

Rules are made to keep people in line, to avoid chaos and to have more control. And that’s not a bad thing.

Imagine how chaotic the world would be if there wouldn’t be any laws. It would be one mad chaotic place – although, whenever we read the news, it already looks like a mad world out there…

I’m a good girl. Seriously, I am. I don’t like breaking rules and laws. Well, not the big ones and definitely not the ones with severe consequences.

I actually don’t need rules that tell me I can’t kill somebody or I can’t steal or … it’s not in my nature to do such things. But every once in awhile I do break a law.

Like when I overstayed my Turkish tourist visa by six months.

It wasn’t mine nor Niko’s intention to stay longer than the allowed period of 90 days in Turkey. We had the plan to hitchhike around the country for three months and then move on to the next destination.

But during those three months so many great and unique opportunities came on our path, like house sitting in a luxurious resort and teaching on a summer camp – just to name a few – that we couldn’t do otherwise but stay.

More than following a plan, we follow our intuition. And when our gut feeling is telling us to seize an opportunity, we will do it. Even if it means overstaying our visa. So it wasn’t really an impulsive decision but more like living in the moment.

You might judge us now and think “Hey you hippies, who do you think you are to make such a poor decision?”

We don’t see ourselves as people who are above the law and can do whatever we want to do. We see ourselves as people who follow the flow and we strongly believe that if something feels like the right thing to do, we will do it.

We’re not impulsive but we like to live in the moment. And if that moment throws us lemons, we’ll definitely make a nice lemonade! We also believe that if you do something with the right intentions, the outcome will also turn out well.

How to renew the visa for Turkey

Depending on your nationality, you can stay 30 to 90 days in Turkey. Some nationalities can visit the country visa-free (like EU citizens), others have to apply for an e-visa (like Canadians and citizens of the USA). 

Niko and I were both allowed to stay 90 days. Before deciding to overstay our visa, we wanted to know if there wasn’t another way to stay longer in Turkey.

Extending or renewing the visa for Turkey wasn’t a possibility. Turkey has the rule that you’re only allowed to stay 90 days per 180-day period. We would have to leave the country after 90 days and could only return 3 months later.

By then that little open window to house-sit and teach would have closed and we really wanted to crawl through that window!

Another possibility was applying for a residence visa for which you need a bank statement showing a balance of at least TL 10,000 or €3000 in your account, a Turkish tax number and a place of residence certificate.

We weren’t able to provide these documents so this wasn’t an option for us either.

 Consequences of overstaying the visa for Turkey

The last option of staying longer in Turkey was overstaying our visa. Of course, we did some research about that too.

We both love new adventures and having new experiences but being locked up in prison isn’t exactly on our bucket list. Luckily this wouldn’t be one of the penalties.

We discovered that the Turkish government deals with overstays with either a fine and/or a ban from re-entering Turkey, depending on the length of the overstay.

Determining how much we would have to pay or how long we would get banned for, was harder to figure out.

In practice, these guidelines vary wildly and depend on your nationality. Various websites showed us various prices but in general, the fine would be a minimum of $50 plus $0.40 (for European citizens) and $1 (for Canadian citizens) per day of overstay.

If you overstay more than 15 days, a ban to re-enter the country could be carried out and varies from 90 days up until 5 years.

We also read that we could refuse to pay the fine, which would automatically result in a ban from re-entering Turkey. But mostly the consequences would depend on the mood of the immigration officials on our day of exit.

What happened when we overstayed our visa for Turkey

We had such a wonderful time in Turkey (watch our videos here to see all the good things that happened to us) that we eventually overstayed by nearly six months. During that time we didn’t worry about it too much.

But on the day we left the country I was very nervous.

I felt butterflies in my stomach when we reached Sarpi, the border village between Turkey and Georgia. My heart was pounding in my chest when the Turkish migration officials examined our passports at the border control.

I wasn’t surprised that we were ordered to step aside and follow one of the officials to a small office. What did surprise us was that we weren’t alone there.

There had been a coup in Turkey and since then many Turkish citizens who work for the government (teachers, bank employees,…) were being restricted. If they wanted to leave Turkey, they have to go through certain procedures.

There were many people that day at the border and everybody was very occupied with the paperwork. This was to our advantage as nobody wanted to spend a lot of time on our case.

After a few minutes of waiting outside the office, I was called in first. When I entered the room, the woman behind the desk asked me if I had already paid my fine.

When I told her I hadn’t, she showed me a little note on which the amount of the fine was written. It was 170 Turkish Lira, the equivalent of €55. I couldn’t believe that the fine turned out to be so cheap! I expected I’d have to pay more than €200.

The only problem was that I only had TL50 cash on me so I asked if there was an ATM around where I could take money out or pay with my bank card. She shook her head, which I took as a no to both questions.

She stamped my passport and just let me go without saying another word. I think she just wanted to get on with the rest of her work.

When Niko entered the office, the official didn’t even tell him how much he had to pay. She asked him if he had cash and when Niko showed her the bank card instead, she also just stamped his passport. He was also free to go.

We couldn’t believe that was it. Nobody even told us if we were banned from the country. We double-checked the stamp on our passport but it looked like a normal one.

I think we will only find out the day we want to apply for a new tourist visa for Turkey. 

So we got very lucky! This doesn’t mean that everybody will be that lucky. Please don’t overstay your Turkish visa now. Recently a friend told us that she was charged $200 at the airport in Istanbul for overstaying just one day. A lot depends on where you cross the border, who you are dealing with and how busy they are!

So if you ever (un)intentionally overstay your visa, always double-check the regulations and hope for the best. We are now moving towards countries that wouldn’t be so relaxed about it so we’ll do our best to follow the rules again!

Update 2020: We tried to re-enter Turkey after 4 years, it didn’t work. We got deported. We now know that we’re banned from Turkey for 5 years.