Almost every serious loss in Türkiye imports happens at the payment step, not the quality step. The goods were bad is a recoverable problem. The money is gone is not.
Pattern one: the advance payment that buys nothing
A buyer finds a supplier online, agrees a price, pays a 30 or 50 per cent deposit, and then communication becomes slower. Production is delayed. There is a problem with a machine, then with a raw material, then with a subcontractor. Eventually the replies stop.
This works because it is not obviously theft at any single moment. Each delay is plausible. By the time the buyer accepts what has happened, months have passed, the company may have been dissolved, and pursuing it means litigating in Türkiye over an amount that will not cover the litigation.
Prevention: verify the company before the deposit. A trade registry record, tax and social-security status, ownership and the bank account name take a day and cost almost nothing. The overwhelming majority of these cases involve a counterparty who would have failed a basic documentary check.
Pattern two: invoice interception
This one hits experienced buyers, not novices.
You have an established supplier. You have been trading for two years. An email arrives from your usual contact, in the usual thread, with the usual signature, saying the company has changed banks and here are the new details. You pay. The money is gone, and neither you nor your supplier knows for weeks.
The attacker has been reading one of the two mailboxes, sometimes for months, waiting for an invoice large enough to be worth taking. The email is often genuine except for the account number.
Prevention, and this is the whole of it: never accept changed bank details by email, from anyone, ever. Confirm by voice, on a phone number you already held before the email arrived — not the number in the email signature. Make this a written rule in your finance procedure, not a habit, because the person who pays the invoice may not be the person who knows the supplier.
Pattern three: full prepayment, partial delivery
The buyer prepays 100 per cent to secure a price or a slot. The supplier ships 80 per cent of the quantity, or ships the quantity with a cheaper specification, and then negotiates.
Once the money has arrived, the entire negotiating position has moved. You are no longer a customer deciding whether to pay; you are a creditor asking for something.
Prevention: never prepay 100 per cent to a new supplier, whatever the discount. And structure the terms so the last payment is due after evidence, not before.
The payment structure that works
For a first order with a new Turkish supplier:
- Deposit of 30 per cent on order confirmation. Enough for the factory to buy materials, small enough that losing it does not end your year.
- Balance of 70 per cent against a passed third-party pre-shipment inspection report, payable before loading. Write this into the purchase order, not into a side email.
- Bank transfer to the registered company account only, with the account name matching the registered company name exactly.
- A small first transfer, confirmed by voice with the supplier before the balance is sent, on any new account.
Turkish exporters accept this structure routinely. It is standard in the trade and asking for it does not mark you as difficult. A supplier who refuses point 2 in particular is telling you what they expect their goods to look like.
When to use a letter of credit
Letters of credit are expensive, slow and document-driven rather than goods-driven — a compliant document set gets paid even if the goods are wrong. For most orders under about €100,000 they cost more in bank charges and delay than the risk they remove.
Where they earn their place is high-value orders with a supplier you cannot verify well, or where your own bank requires it. If you use one, make a passed third-party inspection certificate one of the required documents. That is the mechanism that connects the payment to the goods rather than to the paperwork.
What to do if you have already paid
Move quickly, because the window is short.
- Contact your bank immediately and ask for a recall. Within 24 to 48 hours there is sometimes something to recover; after that, rarely.
- Report it in Türkiye. A criminal complaint creates a record and occasionally freezes an account.
- Gather everything: the full email thread with headers, the invoice, the transfer confirmation, the company details you were given.
- Get Turkish legal advice on whether the amount justifies action. Sometimes the honest answer is no, and knowing that quickly is better than paying a lawyer to tell you slowly.
None of this is as useful as the documentary check you could have run for the price of a taxi ride before the deposit went out.