Picking up letters posted to Turkey from UK

@bus5ojp

Hello,

Usually they drop it off at the "Muhtar" when they are not able to find you at the address. However, from my experience I can say that usually a letter from abroad often gets lost. Though, do not give up the hope as it can take  at least 2 weeks for a package/letter to be delivered if it gets not lost.

Hope you will receive it , fingers crossed.

Best,

Trasia Official

@trasiaofficial

OK thanks, what's a "muhtar" though? Is it like a local office that's in every part of the city?

@bus5ojp

I had letters delivered from the UK arrive a month or two late and left outside the building or somewhere near the lifts.

Extremely inconvenient. Lucky I found them.

Letters are left in the building if the mail carrier can go into. If the front door is closed, they are supposed to be left somewhere around. they have no time for in-person contact as favour, it is not their duty anyway, nowhere over the world.

There are so-called "registered letters" which should be submitted only to recepient. If not available at the address, it is delivered to neighbourhood unit by leaving a sticker notice onto the front door.

Normal mail is a nightmare, please instruct sender to send through registered mail, either they will deliver or you can pick it up through post office. Regular mail ,NIGHTMARE and always not possible, unfortunately some of my providers abroad are unwilling to do this, so I have to appoint a correspondent in the relevant country (Netherlands, UK, Luxembourg, Hungary) for them to forward it on with registered mail (which functions quite fine). Christmas cards etc, please forget about it if you do not have a letter box.

I am sure as in Hungary or other countries I should have received mail with this or that, no way (my family and acquintances know about this by now, but providers (??)

Maybe it depends on where you live. Until 20 years ago, Turkey had lousy mail delivery, but then they digitized everything.  In the past 20 years, I've received almost all mail I was suppose to, with a very few exceptions. I lived in Istanbul and then moved to Datça and am very happy with mail delivery and have had no packages lost.

I like your post, however in our complex we do not have post boxes and when my wife goes to the post office there are no records (Mahmutlar/Alanya).

I tell all just send something through e-mail and if really necessarry to send physical just through registered (which by the way works great)

@cdw057

Yes, my experience matches yours. Just a quick update, it's not with the local Muhtar, not with any of the local carriers, and the PTT office said they can only look for a tracking number. Which I don't have as it was sent International Standard with no tracking number.

PTT may have it but basically can't be arsed going through their mail to manually find it without a tracking number.

So that letter is probably lost now. Let's hope it was not too important.

International Tracked/Signed For is a must sending to Turkey. I didn't realize that the first time. I do now.