Border Turkey - Greece | Customs and Immigration

Greece->Turkey

Saturday morning 8 AM crossing. Quick and easy both countries, done in less than an hour. Cars and vans use the left lanes at the crossing out of Greece so you can pass the long line of trucks blocking the lane. We were stamped out of Greece, crossed the bridge, stamped into Turkey (everyone gets out of the vehicle to be seen and photographed at the window with the agent). We then proceeded to customs. A cursory vehicle inspection was performed while we were in line and the agent told us we could buy insurance after we showed our other vehicle papers. Easy to park in front of duty free store for insurance and ATM. I imagine it wouldn’t have been so smooth during a busy season/day.
Also, we had zero luck buying a toll sticker (HGS) at any Shell station or truck stops where we read they are sold. Don’t waste your time trying. Post office is the place to go. Closed on weekends, but it didn’t matter. There were credit card lanes for Canakkale bridge. We were told by post office later you can just pass through toll lanes without a sticker and pay at post office after.

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Türkiye to Greece
We arrived at 2.15 pm on a Wednesday; 30 minutes later, we were in Greece. Only one quick passport check on each side. No customs or car checks.

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From Turkey to Greece, 2 people+van+dog.
Turkish side very fast and efficient. Show passports at first booth, then drive to second booth where they check if you have any speedtickets. We didn’t but friends did and could only pay cash in TL. We heard nothing about the HGS (we have the sticker, but only put a few TL on it last year).

Then a very long wait started as there were problems on the Greek side. Waited 3,5 hours during a storm on a bridge in military area.

After that we could slowly continue, the actual process on the Greek side took 1 minute. Scan passport, and drive on. No customs check, nothing about the dog. 4 hours in total.

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TR > GR: Easy border crossing. Took 2 minutes on Turkish side and 25 minutes on Greek side. We are travelling with a dog, but no documents were asked for him.

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TR-》》 GR
Not sure if it was because of end of holidays, in combination with weekend, but it took us 4 hrs to cross.
4 lanes full of cars, bikes are NOT allowed to come to the front (even not in 35°C!!). After passport and customs the 4 lanes get into 2 lanes to cross the bridge (military).
Greece side again 3 lanes, but faster than turkish boarder.
However, when your turn, all easy and fast.

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Easy. Greece - Turkey:
There are signs with information and lists (like „what to bring“ or „Turkey vehicle customs rules“) for the beginners. Please read them and you won’t be sent back for insurance or get in trouble with customs during your stay in Turkey (or when exiting).

If your green card covers Turkey, you do not have to buy additional insurance!

If the vehicle is not registered on your name, you need a power of attorney in English (or Turkish, but English helps entering Georgia etc. as well).

HGS (road toll) for your vehicle (except motorbikes) can be done approximately 700m after border on the parking of a newly built rest area. They only take cash or turkish (!) cards at an automat, so make sure you get cash out of the ATM in the border-building beforehand! You have only 7 (seven, not 15!) days to pay for it, so better do it right after arrival. If not, you can do it at any post office.

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Serious border! Went from Greece to Turkey. First of all, there are a TON of big lorries queued up out front. Also, motorcyclers should not drive to the front of the car queue as we got told off when we tried to do that (unlike at other crossings). Next up, the Greek exit process, which was really easy. After that, a somewhat long drive through a no man’s land and over a bridge to the Turkish side where we had to queue a while before getting stamped in. That was the easy bit. Next, we had to stop at a second window for the inspection of our motorbike docs. We were instructed to first purchase insurance from a kiosk inside the building in the middle of station before actually getting docs checked. Got insurance easily enough, though it did take a while. €25 for one 125cc motorcycle for 90 days. Then we had to take that insurance doc back to the border police, who slowly entered our info into their system. No inspection of our bags. One last check of our paperwork on the way out.

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From Greece to Turkey. Almost no waiting at the border, very fast passport check (Eu residents), we had to buy an insurance at the duty free building (Turkey side). It was 73€ for 90 days for a panel van under 3,5 t. No disinfection of the vehicle but they x-rayed it and did a quick visual inspection. No problems at all.

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Border, Greece to Turkey.
Took about 2 hours to cross into turkey at 1pm. Go in the door marked C in the attached photo to buy your insurance in this building before joining the line for immigration etc. (€115=90 days camper/motorhome. €58=90 days car).
Once in the line for border control. Passport first window, vehicle documents and new insurance papers second window, vehicle documents again third window, drive 300 metres to the final check point, vehicle documents again and congratulations you’re in turkey 😂👍

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Me… Sorry, the HGS-Systeme still exciste! We where on 3x Shell station where they told, it doesn’t exciste, yes they first 100. Km after the Greece_turquei border, is free, indeed. Then direction Istanbul, you get ticket on the highway-toll, you can pay with credit-card!! Then after Istanbul, started the HGS-Systeme, at there Shell station they told, we have 15. days time to pay …. for us going to Georgia, we should pay at the HGS-office on the border to Georgia!!!! We shall see! Cameleon. ( Dificult to find any one, how speaks an foreign language, on our way…)

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We passed in 1.hour both border, at Sunday !
the HGS-Systeme for toll of the Highways, does n’t exciste anymore in 9. 2021!
Cameleon….

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Both side of the border very friendly officer’s.
EU cars need the original green card (insurance) and if your vehicle is not registered on the drivers name (also company vehicles) YOU NEED: signed authorisation form that you are authorised to drive the vehicle.
COVID check only printed. No QR or digital forms

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Update 05/2021

We just crossed the boarder Greece-Turkey yesterday. Got PCR Tested the day before in Alexandroupolis (50€ per test, 12hrs for the result).
Whole crossing took about 1 hour. X-Ray on the Geek side, no x-ray on the Turkish side. Car documents, passports, insurance “greencard” got checked on the Turkish side and a quick look into the car.

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greece to turkey

we had worries about the actual situation at the border. But everything went smooth and fast. As we are from germany, no visa was needed and we allready had a greencard.

greece side:
just needed to show the passports. Time: 2min

turkey side:
first house - show passports.
second house - greencard, passports, car documents + they did a short look in our car.
Total time 10min.

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From Greece into Turkey:

Very easy border cross. The only thing they would see were our passports and the car papers including insurance. Only a quick look inside our car. No questions at all. And no one cares about our dog, no questions and nothing they wanted to see. Everything was done in 20 minutes.

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30 days EU Green Card insurance
motorcycle 100 euros
car 180 euros
cash only
ATM in duty free at Greece exit, charges extortionate 10% foreign currency conversion fee

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Greece to Turkey:
Going out Greece went smooth.
If you need insurance for the car, make sure to pull over at the Duty Free store before you show your passport and Visa in Turkey.
There are multiple offices in the store where you can buy insurance. We paid 64 euro for 3 months in total for our car (Otomobil). All offices asked the same amount of money. They don't speak a lot of English.

Go back with your papers and go through customs. Passport and Visa went smooth. When checking the car documents and insurance, they wanted to look inside the car. In the end we had to get our luggage out and get the car through the scanner (drive back to the passport check and go to the lorry lane, but just skip the que if you don't want to wait a whole day).

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€97 for insurance/green card going into Turkey from Greece in UK registered van. At insurance place on right (looks like part of duty free shop) the first office said €165 & wouldn't budge so went to other office who said £97 & wouldn't budge, saying the other office will charge us €115! Minimum 3 months so more worthwhile for longer trips. Had no choice.

Also told we needed​ to get a vignette (HGS) sticker for windscreen which registers tolls, at a post office or service station, maybe tomorrow, but when we asked at a service station we were told we didn't need one on the roads we were on (? only needed​ for motorways). (We found out later that some Shell fuel stations may have the sticker.) Eventually found a main post office (PTT) (sub ones don't do it) on the Monday. It seems you can't pay cash/credit card at the tolls and have to have the HGS sticker.

Be prepared for a long queue at the post office (we waited 30 mins) & probably to take a ticket and then wait for your number.

We paid TL12.50 for the HGS sticker for our campervan (7.5 tons) and put TL100 on to cover tolls which apparently is pretty well unlimited. You need your original vehicle registration document for the chassis number etc & your passport. You can get an app to track how much your balance is but this doesn't seem to work!

Stick the sticker on the windscreen in the middle below the mirror. We were told to put it on the outside but we put in inside. We were concerned about sticking it as to pass the MOT we're not allowed anything stuck there which is in the line of vision & think it'd be pretty difficult to remove so we attached it in the space just below where the windscreen wipers stop at the bottom and the bottom of the window & it worked. As we left the motorway a screen flashed up to show how much credit we'd used.

NB MAKE SURE YOU GO THROUGH THE HGS LINE ON THE MOTORWAY. We couldn't see which was which on one as the sunlight was shining brightly on the sign and we accidentally went through the OGS one as we entered, causing us to have to pay another 60 TK at the other end! They refused to let us go through without paying even though we had HGS credit of over 90 TL. Robbery!
We then went through the correct HGS line north of Istanbul and at the unmanned entry were forced to take a ticket when we should have been allowed through automatically. Local vehicles were having the same problem & getting irate. We were told there was a problem with the HGS or our HGS sticker. At the next booth we had to pay another 17.95 TL as they said there was no credit left on our HGS sticker... even though we tried to explain to the boss that there was. Leaves a bad taste but at least it's cheaper than the Greek motorways.

It seems that for the motorway around Istanbul you have to use the inside lane line to pay (on top of your HGS). They take credit cards. (When we left the motorway later, east of Istanbul the HGS worked fine and debited 14 TL at the automatic booth!!)

Sunday afternoon chaos at border, long queues (2 hrs total) but not as bad as the lorries (3 km tailbacks) who we drove past.
We also needed a visa at €25 each from the building on right beyond passport control etc so they kept our vehicle registration document at the passport cubicle whilst we got the visa and then we had to return to the passport cubicle and the vehicle insurance cubicle before we proceeded with the van to the next cubicle where we had to show our vehicle registration document again! Most vehicles​ were searched but I think they forgot about ours.
NB They're putting up a new building on the right so the locations may be different soon! Hope fun

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Horrible customs/immigration at the Greek side.
We came from Turkey and had EU insurance but we did not have the original green-card (no incoming traveler has as the insurance is arranged in-line).
The did not accept the scan of the green-card and treated us like criminals.
The arrogant and rude officials told us (almost shouted) to "Go back to Turkey !"

In the end the (wonderful) Turkish customs helped us to make a color-print if the document.

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Fairly fast and efficient. I bought the green card insurance after passport and before customs check at the duty free shop. (Big Red signed shop). €65 for 3 months.

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If you don’t have a Turkish or Geek vehicle the Green Card / travel insurance, and you are traveling from Turkey to Greece the insurance will cost you €180 yes €180!!!! For just 30 days.
I turned around and went to Bulgaria instead.

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going out of turky:
drive in boarder ;)
you can sit in your car an pass the passport and car controll. easy and fast. 10minutes
drive over a bridge throu some military points

entering greec:
car desinfection
same like before. passport controll in the car and car check.
very fast. 3min or less

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