Türkiye Import Rules
The Turkish side of the corridor: environmental licences, importer registration, conformity letters, the capacity-based quota system, the mixed-plastics ban — and the consignee verification checklist we run before any contract.
Why Türkiye tightened the rules
Türkiye became the UK's largest plastic waste destination — around 210,000 tonnes in the 2020 peak — and the growth attracted exactly the abuse you would expect. NGO investigations in 2021 documented UK plastic dumped and burned in the Turkish countryside. The response was structural: Türkiye banned imports of mixed plastics, tightened polymer-specific rules, and built a licensing-and-quota system that decides, facility by facility, who may import what and how much.
We regard that system as the corridor's foundation, not its obstacle. Every control below is one we verify, in Turkish, before a contract is signed.
The documents a legitimate consignee holds
Geçici Faaliyet Belgesi (GFB) — the temporary activity certificate a new facility operates under while its full licence application is assessed. It permits operation but signals a facility early in its regulatory life; we treat GFB-only consignees with extra care and volume limits.
Çevre İzin ve Lisans Belgesi (ÇİLB) — the full environmental permit and licence, issued for the facility and specifying the waste codes it may process. This is the core document: no ÇİLB (or GFB), no trade. The licence lists the codes — a facility licensed for PE film is not thereby licensed for PET bottles.
Atık İthalatçısı Kayıt Belgesi — the waste importer registration. Processing capacity at home is not enough; the importer must be registered as such for the relevant materials.
Uygunluk Yazısı — the conformity/suitability letter confirming a specific import's compliance, obtained through the Turkish system before goods arrive. Our documentation pack — Annex VII, contract, loading report, weighbridge tickets — is assembled so the consignee's conformity process can use it directly.
The quota system
Import permission is capacity-based: a facility's allowed import volume is set as a fraction of its licensed processing capacity, with the balance expected from domestic collection. Quota is consumed through the year, per facility.
The operational consequence is the one traders ignore at their peril: a consignee can be perfectly licensed and still unable to receive your container, because this quarter's quota headroom is gone. A load that sails against exhausted quota waits at port, accumulating demurrage, until it is re-routed or returned. That is why our verification is not an annual checkbox — we confirm remaining quota headroom per contract, and schedule shipments against it.
What is banned
- Mixed plastic waste — banned outright. There is no compliant way to send unsorted mixed plastics to Türkiye, whatever a broker may claim.
- Polymer streams outside the consignee's licensed codes.
- Contamination beyond the tolerances in the import framework — Turkish inspection regimes physically check arriving containers, and rejection at inspection is expensive for every party on the paperwork.
Our consignee verification checklist
Before any first contract, and refreshed on a rolling basis:
- ÇİLB / GFB sighted, validity dates checked, waste codes matched to the material we intend to ship.
- Atık İthalatçısı Kayıt Belgesi confirmed for the material.
- Quota position discussed and headroom confirmed for the contracted volume.
- Facility verified as a real, operating plant — our Türkiye partners visit; we do not ship to addresses we cannot picture.
- Contract executed with recovery and take-back clauses (see the Annex VII guide).
- Arrival and inspection history reviewed after early shipments — a consignee whose containers clear cleanly earns volume.
What this means for UK suppliers
When a UK waste holder asks "how do I know my material will not end up in a ditch in Adana?", this page is the answer. It will not, because the receiving facility is licensed for the code, registered as an importer, inside its quota, contracted to recover the material and to take it back if it cannot — and because we photograph the load before it leaves and reconcile it when it arrives. That chain, end to end, is the product we sell.
This page is general guidance, not legal advice. Turkish import communiqués are updated annually; see the "last reviewed" date above.