What this is
Türkiye, explained.
Verified guidance for studying in Türkiye.
By people who've lived it.
Who's behind it
Baozar Zakariyyah — Nigerian computer engineer, six years in Türkiye, graduate of a foundation university in Ankara. Survived the YTB application, the ikamet renewal cliff, the kapalı-mahalle housing crisis, the language-prep year, and the post-graduation corporate transition (THY Take-Off, TUSAŞ LIFT UP, Insider recruitment).
Every fact you read here was written by someone who has either lived it or watched a friend lose money, sleep, or legal status to it. Where the rule is law, it's cited to the article. Where the rule is lived experience, it's labelled as such. We never quote a rule we'd be unwilling to follow ourselves.
More than 20,000 students follow the YouTube channel this product grew out of. The fact base behind this app is the written, sourced, dated, sortable version of what the channel tried to teach in video form.
How it works
- 1
The fact base — free forever
Every rule that applies to international students in Türkiye, written in plain English with the Turkish term in brackets where it helps. Each fact carries a stakes level (low / medium / high / critical), a verified-on date, and the official source it came from. If we don't know, we say so — we don't fill the gap with confident guesses.
- 2
The Tools — your dates, computed
When a rule depends on a date or a fee, generic information is useless. The Tools section takes your specific dates and computes what they mean for you. The passport-vs-ikamet checker tells you whether the renewal will give you a full year or three months. The budget planner tells you whether your income covers Ankara or Istanbul living costs.
- 3
The Updates — when the rules change
Turkish regulations change. When they do, an Update lands here with the source, the date, and the facts the change affects. If you're affected, the relevant fact pages surface the Update at the top so you don't read outdated guidance.
- 4
The Stories — what students wish they'd known
Reviewed, anonymised, attributed only by what helps (year of study, city, study level). The mistakes other students made are the cheapest education you'll find.
What stays on your device
Your life-stage selection, your saved dates, your reminder calendar, your budget inputs — all of it lives in your browser via localStorage and nowhere else. There is no account, no server, no analytics, no tracking pixel.
The only thing that touches a server is Stories submissions — you choose to send a story, we review it, we publish it. That data lives in EU-Frankfurt under KVKK posture, and you can request deletion at any time.
What we don't do
We don't give legal advice. We explain the rules, cite the sources, and tell you which office to call. The decision is always yours.
We don't take payment for marketplace introductions (housing, notary, translation). Money flows you → provider directly. We don't want to be a middleman with your refund.
We don't guess. If we don't have a verified answer for your question, we say so plainly. The honest gap is more useful than a confident invention.
We don't use streaks, badges, push manipulation, or attention-economy tactics. The job of the product is to help you solve a thing and then leave you alone.