Surviving a Turkish Police Station

Feb. 9

Today half of our group had to go apply for our residence permits. It's kinda like the Turkish version of the Green Card; all foreigners staying in the country for an extended period of time need to have one. Technically, if a police officer stopped me on the street, my education visa in my passport would suffice, however, education visas are single entry only, meaning I cannot leave Turkey and then try to reenter without my residence permit.

So the 16 CIEE all crowded onto a bus chartered for us and took the hour long ride to the police station where our papers would be processed. We went through the metal detectors, then presented our passports, and then waited in a cafeteria for about three hours. After about an hour, the cleaning crew shut off the lights in the cafeteria, making us all feel even more abandoned. Finally, we were led upstairs, to a waiting room filled with other foreigners also applying for residence permits. More waiting ensued, before we were finally given the paperwork that we were to take to the Turkish police officers for them to process. When I handed my paperwork and passport to my officer, he looked it over, and then got up and left for ten minutes with me just standing there like an idiot! I'm pretty sure he was just taking his lunch break. Once he got back, he stamped about 3 sections (which took all of 20 seconds) and then turned in my paperwork. I will have to come back in about 2 weeks to a month to get the actual permit.

After all of our paperwork was processed, we all got back into the bus and back to the university.