We chose Turkcell because they have probably the best coverage. For normal tourists it won’t matter much since touristic areas are mostly well covered. Because we are cycling through entire Turkey, it was important to us. In hindsight we rarely had no cellphone reception. But we cannot compare to other providers.
When we arrived in Turkey the system didn’t let foreign passports buy a SIM card. We found a very helpful Turkish woman to buy one for us. Another thing to consider is, that after three months a foreign phone will need to be officially registered to continue working. This means paying customs. There are services to change the IMEI of the phone to avoid that. This is of course not legal and we don´t support that.
The initial cost for the SIM card was around 150 TL. We think they gave us a tourist package, because you cannot charge the account with a foreign credit card.
Later we installed the Dijital Operatör App. When we created an account they gifted us 20 GB of internet, which lasted us for the second month.
The thing is that you have to create your account whilst the app is still in Turkish. Since to change the app to English you have to login first. Afterwards we went to settings(middle button at the bottom of the screen) and searched for „Dil Tercihi“ where it should be the first entry.
Foreign credit cards are not accepted to charge online. We did not try to charge in the store. We asked turkish friends to transfer money and we gave them cash.
Available Internet Packages:
49 TL 1000mins 100SMS 10GB
60TL 1000mins 100SMS 15GB
70 TL 1000mins 100SMS 20GB
95 TL 1000mins 100SMS 30GB
We had to call the hotline to use our transferred money, because we could not find the button to use the transferred money to pay. Whenever we tried to pay it only offered credit card.
Hotline:
05325320000
Double 7 for an English operator
They can activate the package for you. If you find the button to pay with the transferred money please tell us and we will add this here. In the English Version of the app of course.
If you have any questions or more information to add please use the comment section.
Have a good time in Turkey! We definitely had.