Hadi bye bye Istanbul

A minha história acaba de dar mais uma volta com uma nova mudança de país, 7 anos depois de me ter mudado para Istanbul, mudo-me agora para Londres.

A principal razão da mudança prende-se com a minha carreira, após 10 anos de em software development já tenho uma ideia mais ou menos definida do tipo que trabalho e empresa onde quero trabalhar, e na Turquia não consegui encontrar oportunidades tão boas como esta que encontrei em Londres.

Isto para não falar do eterno problema da licença de trabalho que é tão complicada em algumas carreiras na Turquia. Quanto a isso o melhor é mesmo obter a nacionalidade (sendo casado com uma pessoa de nacionalidade turca).

Durante este tempo na Turquia, estudei 5 meses de língua turca full time, trabalhei em 2 empresas, e passeei pelo norte, sul, oeste e centro da Turquia. Ficou muito por conhecer, mas foram 7 anos de aprendizagem, e saio agora da Turquia com um sentimento de quem sai do seu país. Uma das primeiras coisas que fiz ao vir para Inglaterra foi estabelecer contacto com alguns turcos que cá vivem.

Londres tem a vantagem de ter gente que vem de todo o lado, e facilmente encontrarei portugueses (coisa pouco vista em Istanbul) e turcos. Tem também a vantagem de ter uma língua conhecida, para quem viveu na Turquia agora Inglaterra é um "piece of cake".

Türkiye Allahaısmarladık! Yine görüşürüz! (Fica com Deus Turquia! Até breve!)

Turkish Citizenship

Lately I have been investigating the option of becoming a Turkish citizen, with double citizenship Turkish and Portuguese. This brings advantages if you plan on working in Turkey, because of the current difficulties in getting a working permit in Turkey, bringing efforts and expenses both for you and the company you work for.

If you are married with a Turkish citizen for more than 3 years than you can apply for the citizenship, the process can be started in Turkey or outside Turkey in a Turkish consulate and it takes between 6 and 18 months.

During this period a visit will be made to your house to ensure that you are living together with your spouse.

One of the questions that comes up, for male foreigners is the obligatory army attendance for Turkish citizens. About this I was never able to get a definitive answer from anyone I talked to. What I figure is that it is possible that you will be called by the army, but in most cases this won't happen, and even if you are called you may be able to opt for a minimum time (1 month) with extra payment involved. I also understand that if you served the military service in another country you won't be called.

Here is the place to go in Istanbul: İstanbul İl Nüfüs ve Vatandaşlık Müdürlüğü

And on the map

Extending the Residence permit in Turkey (5)

Another year, and back to the Residence Permit extension, once again the process has changed. For the better!

They decentralized the offices for the Foreign papers and now you can take care of everything on the local Police Station.

The starting point for people in Istanbul is the same: https://e-randevu.iem.gov.tr/yabancilar , but now you have to chose the local police station, I guess you should chose the one for your registered address.

Then you chose the kind of work you want to get done, in my case "SPOUSES OF TURKISH CITIZENS".

I took an appointment at 9:00AM and everything was very fast and eficient! I guess that in the area where I live there not that many foreigners, so I was first in line.

Everything is done in less than 30 minutes, and after 3 or 4 days I had the new Residence Permit in my hands!

Portugueses pelo Mundo (Istambul)

Um video com os compatriotas a viver em Istambul:

Portugueses pelo Mundo (Istambul):

• Parte 1
• Parte 2
• Parte 3
• Parte 4

UPDATE:
Vejo que os videos foram retirados do youtube, mas a RTP encontrei o video no site da RTP, bravo!

• Portugueses pelo Mundo - Istambul

Registering a foreign phone in turkey

Turkey controls the mobile phones that are allowed to be used in the country. If you buy a phone inside the country you shouldn't need to worry, but if you bring a phone from outside the country, after 2 weeks you should receive the following SMS:

"****** IMEI nolu cihaz kayit disi listensinde oldugundan dd-mm-yyyy tarihinde kullanim disi birakilacaktir. Hattiniz acik kalacaktir. Bilgi icin4440532" (turkish characters are not sent through SMS)

So I just brought my most recent phone (HTC Desire) and got the message after a few days. I knew what to do since I had done it before, go to Türkcell with:

* The phone with the turkish SIM card

* The passport with a stamp of entry in the last 30 days

* The residence permit (you need a subscription instead of prepaid if you don't have the residence permit)

* 10 TL

The problem is that my entry stamp at the passport was not visible enough... I have about 50 stamps by now and very few look as bad as this last one! The month is not clear at all, so they didn't accept it...

I then had to go to the Police Station to request a declaration of my last entry date. For this you need to go to a local Emniyet, fill up a request, stamp it (kaşe yaptırmak), photocopy the first page of the passport, and the next day you can pick up the declaration.

Not that bad after all, but pretty frustrating if you think that all you needed was the border cop to stamp it in a visible way...

Famous couple of turkish and portuguese

Since my move to istanbul 6 years ago, and mostly through this blog I met a few couples of Portuguese+Turkish, which is a rare thing in this world!

The most famous one I've met (I should say "heard of") is Miguel and Pinar.

They won a contest from a turkish travel agency to travel for 1 year for free, actually getting paid around 2500 eur per month, and go the best hotels in Turkey and around the world. All they have to do is to publish videos of the places they go.

Now, you may think they are lucky, but they had to prove their skills in order to win the contest and the fact is that their videos are really good. I've watched a lot of small productions at Youtube, and I can say they do a great job, the 2 of them, recording and editing these videos!

Take a look at them at http://www.istebenimtatilim.com/