After a 20 year break, I finally got back to my bike life.
And even after I made that conscious decision to pursue my riding again, it still took me ages to get my motorcycle license here in Turkey. It wasn’t the testing that was difficult. It was only a road test. But the dizzying amount of physical footwork back and forth to hand in endless paperwork to GET to the point of a road test took months.
Getting my automobile driver’s license in Turkey took no time at all in comparison.
For some reason, already having a valid Turkish driver’s license for two decades did nothing to ease the process, either.
One would think that at least having Turkish citizenship would also make things easier. Nope. Didn’t feel that way.
Not just my original (or notarized copy of) my birth certificate was required, but also my original university diploma. Which I didn’t have. (Note: the copy that I photoshopped –using Bilgehan’s original diploma from Western– and printed out HQ on semi gloss card stock didn’t pass muster, either). To get an official one from my university in Michigan would have taken a few hundred dollars and at least 8 weeks processing time. Instead, my high school transcript and diploma was acceptable, which I had to cajole my high school in Tennessee into sending me by express courier, then have it notarized and taken to have its equivalency verified by the Turkish government…Add to that an eye exam, and a plethora of other administrative odds and ends. All this took a long time and a number of days leaving early from work.
In the end, I finally got my license RIGHT before the cut off. Mine was literally the last road test group to finalize their license requirements before a new driving law in Turkey was implemented, which now relegates all new drivers to the status of “intern” with a probationary period of two years, during which they cannot exceed a certain number of penalty points on their license or they are liable to encounter another set of administrative nightmares, like psychological evaluation or some such. To add to that, under this new system, you have to test separately for the different categories of motorcycles. Glad I avoided THAT.
In fact, not only did I receive my license before the cut off, I also got it AFTER the Turkish DMV was finally set up to implement the new EU standard licenses, so I now have a holographic stamp and a nifty QR code next to the longggg list of vehicles I am entitled by Turkish law to drive: a motor scooter, motorcycles (of unlimited size cc), 4 wheel motorcycles, cars, vans, minibuses, and farm tractors.
So, motorwise, I’ve got it all covered.
Next step was actually getting something to ride.