Getting a Residency Permit

If you’ve followed along, you’ll know I overstayed the allowed ninety days in Türkiye twice last year. In December, I applied for Turkish citizenship at the Miami Turkish Consulate. The officer seemed to think I would have no issue getting Turkish citizenship, given that we’ve been married for over thirty years, have two grown children with dual citizenship, and can prove on paper a lifetime of joint assets and bank accounts.

But you never know—and it may take the rest of the year to be granted.

I was denied entry this month at the Istanbul airport. Thanks to my husband’s patience, we waited as my passport was taken on a tour of the airport, and it was finally cleared. All four officers asked my husband the same question: Why doesn’t she have a residency certificate?

So that’s what we did this week.

Since my citizenship is not expected to arrive before August, I will need something to allow me to stay between the ninety-day cut-off and the unknown date of my citizenship (crossing my fingers). My husband contacted the same immigration specialist who advised us on my citizenship application. She set up the residency process, completed the application setup, and scheduled my appointment. So this past Friday was “Residency” day.

The office for my appointment was in Pendik, about a 45 to 50-minute train ride from our apartment. Arriving at the immigration office, the building looked like all immigration offices in various parts of the world. My husband asked me to wait for him across the street, as he needed to go to the office supply store. He dashed off and returned quickly with an empty pink folder.

Pink?

The government offices here do not take paper documents unless they are inside a specific pink folder.

On the front door to the immigration office, there was a single typed page directing all those with appointments to the “second floor of the parking garage.” My husband, of course, blew right past this. I only saw it because it was incorrectly typed in red ink in English. This experience did not give me the warm fuzzies. We had to ask twice for better directions before we found the correct office across the parking lot and up a flight of stairs.

The immigration office looked exactly like the Miami DMV office near the airport: dirty, full of people, and a bit chaotic.

We were early for the appointment. I expected we would have to take a number and wait, but the intake officer at a lunchroom table told us to walk to the front of the line. Many people were waiting, apparently without an appointment. We immediately sat down, and the officer checked my file. He approved all the documents, but needed the receipt for the filing fee.

Oops. We were told the wrong order of things. We tried to pay it online, but that did not work (which for Türkiye is unusual). Off we went, two train stops back to the tax office.

THEN we pulled a number and waited forty-five minutes to pay the filing fee. With the receipt in hand, we were back on the train, two stops to Immigration. Another wait for the receipt to be logged, then a shift to another section of the large room, where I waited with about two dozen others to have my fingerprints recorded.

By the time my fingerprints were entered into the system at about noon, the stack of pink residency filing folders was waist high. I cannot imagine how many people apply every day. I did not think that Türkiye would be a popular country for residency until I considered its location and the many countries that had wars or other issues. I sat with Ukrainians, Indonesians, other Asians, and various faces I thought were from the Turkmen countries.

And now, again, I wait. The immigration assistant said her last residency application in Istanbul only took a month. I can imagine having to leave Türkiye on August 5 because I have no residency or citizenship, then go back to Miami, and some immigration officer there gives me a hard time and doesn’t want to give me entry there either. I’d be an almost dual citizen with no place to go.

No, I do not have the precarious U. S. immigration status of the people I read about daily in the news. But I feel their pain and their stress.

SURPRISE UPDATE! It took three—THREE—days. The immigration assistant was very surprised. They used the wrong photo. I look like a drug addict (definitely not showing you that photo). I have residency for two years. And surely that’s enough time for my citizenship documents to arrive.