Buying A Sim Card In Turkey – Tourists & Visitors

Alright – lets get straight to the point!

Buying a sim card once you land in Turkey is not a difficult task!

The one tip I’ll give you is to NOT BUY a SIM card in the AIRPORT as they charge almost double the price you’ll be charged in the city!

— AIRPORT PRICE – 285-295 TL (£21-£22/$29-$30)

— CITY PRICE – 170TL (£12/$17)

What You Get

You normally get 15GB of data if purchased from the airport along with 750 mins and similar amount of texts. However, if you purchase in the city, you’ll get 20GB of data and a similar amount of mins and texts.

Once you’re out of the airport and have made your way to the city, simply make your way to any of these following shops:

1. TURK TELECOM
2. TURKCELL
3. VODAFONE

Why these three? Well, in my experience these three network providers have the best service/signal and are the most reputable providers in all of Turkey. Unfortunately there’s no 5G yet, but the data you’ll get on 4G in Turkey is pretty decent.

For the sake of this article I’ll be focusing on VODAFONE as that is the sim card I went with. I’m with VODAFONE in the UK and just thought it’d be easier for me to use a VODAFONE sim card in my phone.

So here’s 5 steps to getting your VODAFONE (or the other two) SIM CARD when in Turkey:

1. Go to Any Vodafone [OR TURKCELL OR TURK TELECOM] shop within the city you’re staying at. They are very easy to find and are available almost everywhere in Turkey
2. Ask for a new sim card. You can mention you’re a tourist. Some places the staff may not speak english so just type into your Google Translate that you’d like ‘a new sim card with 20GB of internet’. It should cost you around 170TL (£12/$17)
3. The staff member will take your details including passport details so don’t get worried at this point. It is just standard procedure.
4. Once that is done, the sim card will be placed into your phone.
5. Wait several hours (maybe 2-4 hours) and you should see the 4G icon along with VODAFONE pop up on your phone with the signal bars etc.

That’s it really! It would be pretty much the same with TURK TELECOM and TURKCELL. However, they may have different procedures when it comes to taking your details.

Hope you’ve found this useful and if you have any queries, let me know below in the comments area.

If you prefer to watch a video on how this is done, feel free to do so below: