The step-by-step plan for Turkey

As a Dutch citizen you enter visa-free and stay for at most ninety days in any hundred and eighty. Whoever stays applies for a residence permit — the ikamet — via the official portal e-ikamet, followed by an appointment in person. The first permit is often six months to a year; after that you renew each time, until after eight years of uninterrupted residence you can apply for long-term residence.

That makes Turkey a renewal route, not a settlement route: your right of residence is always temporary until you've applied for it again. Whoever knows and accepts that rhythm lives there well and cheaply — the Dutch community on the south coast has been proving it for decades.

Two things turn out differently here from what the forums claim, both in the right direction provided you know them. Healthcare: Turkey is a CAK treaty country — pensioners with a Dutch statutory pension register with the CAK and get access via a treaty form to the Turkish state system SGK, for a treaty contribution. So no lifelong private policy, unlike in Thailand or Indonesia.

Tax: the treaty sends your occupational pension exclusively to Turkey — which then exempts it — but leaves your AOW (the Dutch state pension) with the Netherlands. "Everything tax-free" is a half-truth there, and the difference between the halves decides your net monthly income. Read both articles before you plan further.

Holiday Turkey and living-in-Turkey are two different countries. The coastal strip from Antalya to Fethiye has the Dutch community, the mild winters and the lowest prices; Istanbul is a world city with world-city rents. Explore outside the high season, do an ordinary supermarket round and feel the winter — the coastal winter is milder than the Dutch one, but houses there are built for summer.

And put the earthquake map beside it, because here it's a settlement factor: almost all of Turkey is seismically active, the south coast more moderately so than the Aegean coast. Look per neighbourhood at the year of construction (after 2000, preferably after 2018) and let that weigh in where — and in what — you'll rent or buy later.

The calculator for Turkey works with your own moving choices. The journey itself is affordable — the permit costs hundreds of euros a year, not thousands — and life on the coast is considerably cheaper than in the Netherlands. The big items are the move itself and the first months.

One warning belongs with every amount in this route: inflation there runs well above thirty percent, so every lira amount is a snapshot. Work out your budget in euros, and count on rents, fees and premiums rising sharply every year.

This is the step without forms, and yet this is where most journeys fail. Discuss with your partner and, depending on their age, your children: why do we want this, what are we giving up, and what is the condition for each of us to say yes?

With Turkey, distance is the smallest problem — three and a half hours of flying, and tickets are affordable. The real topics are the language (outside the tourist zones you won't get by in English), the school for children (Turkish-language public education or expensive international), and life in a country with a different political and economic dynamic from what you're used to.

Close the orientation phase with a target date for departure. Not as a deadline — as a compass. The clocks that set the pace here: the ninety visa-free days within which your application must be underway, the pet's titre test (count four to six months ahead), and the driving licence you have to exchange within six months of settling. Realistic picture: from serious decision to being settled, this journey takes most people four to eight months.

You fill it in below on this card, and filling it in is completing it. You can always adjust your target date — the planning then adjusts with it.