Visa Run

Many ex-pats living in Istanbul can relate this story or a version like it.  Although living and working in this very modern and European city with reputable jobs in teaching, journalism and law, most foreigners find they do so illegally.  When I first arrived in Turkey, I was told that I would be provided with a Residency and Work Permit.  However, almost 10 months on and I'm still here on a tourist visa and it's not going to change.  The cost and hassle to apply for the required documents is just too high for most Turkish companies to bother going through with it - much easier to send the employees dashing for the border every 3 months to get a new stamp in the passport.  It has become such common practice, that the border guards usually treat it as a game whenever they check through and see pages and pages of exit/entry stamps!  Still, these runs don't always go smoothly and a more dedicated border guard (or one having a bad day!) might just make an issue out of it.

The last couple of times I had made a trip of it, first in Bulgaria and then in Berlin to bring in the new year. This time, however, I couldn't be arsed and just wanted to get it over and done with.  So yesterday I jumped on the 7am service bus from Taksim (the 'centre' of the city) to the Otogar on the outskirts.  From there I got on the bus bound for Sofia in Bulgaria.  The idea has been to get off at the first town over the border and flag down another bus going in the opposite direction to take me back so that the whole process could be done in a day.  Usually, I would have been wary of doing it this way because the date of exit and entry would match and that may have been a little too obvious.  Luckily, I had just renewed my passport so when I re-entered my passport would be empty without any trace whatsoever previous visa stickers.

At the Otogar, I heard two guys conversing in a hybrid of Turkish and Russian.  Initially, I had assumed that it was a Turk and a Bulgarian guy trying to converse.  That was until I looked around and saw a distinctly looking Central Asian man (complete with a full set of gold teeth!).  Tentatively, in Russian, I asked the guy where he was from and was delighted when he replied. "Kyrgyzstan."  He seemed really surprised that not only had I heard of his homeland, but that I had lived there and liked it, which in the main I had.  Fortunately, he also spoke some English due to his job.  He was a horse acrobat for the Kyrgyz Circus and had done a lot of touring around the world as a result.  He was on his way to Sofia to meet up with his fellow artists for a show there.  So in a mixture of Russian and English (with the occasional Kyrgyz word thrown in) we chatted sporadically on our way to the border.

It was on the way to the border that I had a change of mind.  I hadn't really thought out my plan and as a result I hadn't changed over any money into Bulgarian Levs or Euros.  I had $20, but that was for my new visa.  How was I going to pay for another bus ticket and lunch should I have found myself waiting on that side for longer than expected.  Even worse, how was I going to pay for accommodation should I have got stuck there overnight!  I asked the bus attendant, a Bulgarian who understood my broken Russian enough, if he could help me at the passport control.  He said it wouldn't be a problem.

At the booth, I handed over my passport and let the Bulgarian speak to the officer.  The officer shrugged his shoulders as if to ask what the big deal was and pointed at the duty-free shop.  I was told to go through to the other side and jump on the first bus which would be along very soon.  The rest would take care of itself, which it did.

I couldn't help but think back to my encounter with the passport control officers in Uzbekistan who had made a simple flight to Turkey into something much more sinister.  After going through the hand luggage checks and having been frisked thoroughly in a little office by a heavy-handed official, I then proceeded to the booth to hand over my passport to get stamped out.  There, the guy told me that I had a problem with my documents.  He rubbed his fingers together and asked for dengi (money).  I told him straight away that I didn't speak Russian and played dumb.  After trying to tell me that I didn't have the correct visa and getting nowhere, he then tried various different approaches including claims that my passport was a forgery and that I wasn't the person in the photo.  Finally, after being escorted to another little room with an armed cop for a short time and insisting that I didn't understand anything they were saying, I was allowed through without having to cough up a bribe.

My journey back to Istanbul proved to be less hassle free as I was stuck next to a Bulgarian-Turk who knew some English.  At first he was jovial and polite, but as the duty-free whiskey took effect he descended into rant after rant about the Germans, the Jews and the French.  He liked the English, though, and I did learn a few things from him, nevertheless.

At the front of the bus I had noticed a group of girls (Bulgarians I had presumed, correctly it turned out) all looking very young and anxious.  The Bulgarian-Turk informed me that they were poor girls with no prospects in Bulgaria and were heading to Turkey to try their hands at prostitution.  The cost of one hours' 'service' would be more than a weeks' wage in their home towns.  Every day, at least one girl on every bus was making this trip - not just from Bulgaria, but from Romania, Russia, the Ukraine and other former Communist countries that had fallen on hard times.  Indeed, to prove his point, he tapped another young girl sitting in front of us on the shoulder.  When she turned around I could see that she was a very attractive, but very young Bulgarian girl.  He asked her how old she was and she answered that she was sixteen.  I didn't follow the rest of the conversation because it was conducted in rapid, hushed Bulgarian of which I only understood some Russian words, but none to string a sentence together.  After a couple of minutes, he sat back and confided in me that he had a 'date' lined up when he got back home.  I can only hope for the girl's sake that he had sobered up a little by the time he took her home...