Most import failures from Türkiye are not quality failures. They are sequencing failures: the buyer paid before anyone looked. What follows is the order the checks should happen in, and why each one exists.
1. Confirm the legal entity exists
Before anything physical, check that the company issuing your proforma invoice is registered, active and filing. Turkish trade registry records are public. The single most useful cross-check is whether the bank account name on the invoice matches the registered company name. When it does not, stop.
2. Confirm the address is a factory
A registered address in a residential block in Istanbul belongs to a trading company, not a manufacturer. That is not automatically a problem, but it changes your price expectation and it changes who is responsible when goods are wrong. Know which one you are buying from before you negotiate.
3. Establish real capacity, not stated capacity
Ask the question in units of your product per month, not in square metres of floor space. Then check the answer against the number of people present and machines running. A factory quoting a lead time that requires three shifts, with one shift of workers on site, has told you something.
4. Map the subcontracting
Turkish manufacturing runs on workshops. In furniture, textiles and metalwork a substantial share of your order may be produced somewhere you have never seen. This is normal and it is how the sector achieves flexibility. What is not acceptable is not knowing. Ask which processes leave the site, and whether those workshops can be visited.
5. Get the specification in writing
An inspection without a specification can only check quantity and obvious damage. If you have no technical sheet, drawing or approved sample, produce one before production starts. Even two pages covering materials, dimensions, tolerances and finish is transformative. Ambiguity in a specification is always resolved in the supplier’s favour, because they are the ones holding the goods.
6. Fix the AQL level before production
Agree the sampling standard, the inspection level and the acceptable number of major and minor defects in advance, in the purchase order. ISO 2859-1 General Level II at 2.5 major and 4.0 minor is a reasonable commercial default. Agreeing this after defects appear is a negotiation you will lose.
7. Tie the balance payment to a passed report
This is the step that makes the other eleven enforceable. Your terms should read: balance payable against a passed third-party pre-shipment inspection report. Turkish exporters accept this routinely. Without it, an inspection is an observation. With it, an inspection is leverage.
8. Verify production is genuinely finished
The most common wasted inspection is one booked on the factory’s optimistic estimate. Before anyone travels, confirm at least 80 per cent of the order is produced and packed. A factory that avoids giving a clear answer here is usually behind schedule and hoping to catch up.
9. Count the quantity
Cartons counted, units per carton verified by opening a sample, totals reconciled against the packing list and the purchase order. Short shipment is more common than defective goods and far easier to prove at the factory than at your warehouse.
10. Sample workmanship and function
Draw the sample according to the agreed plan, at random, from different pallets rather than the ones nearest the door. Operate anything that operates. Measure anything with a tolerance. Photograph everything, including units that pass, so the record shows the whole sample and not only the failures.
11. Verify packaging and labelling
Carton strength, inner packing, barcodes scanned rather than eyeballed, destination-market marking, language requirements. Labelling errors are the cheapest defect to prevent and among the most expensive to discover after customs clearance.
12. Supervise loading and record the seal
Goods that passed inspection on Tuesday can still be loaded wrong on Thursday. Watch the cartons go in, open a random one at the container door, confirm heavy is stowed below light, and photograph the seal number on the seal and on the door. That number should appear identically on the bill of lading.
What this costs against what it saves
A single inspection day in Türkiye costs a few hundred euros. A container of unsellable goods costs the value of the order, the freight both ways, the storage, the lost season and the customer you promised delivery to.
The reason buyers skip the day is almost never the money. It is that they do not know anyone in Türkiye they trust to be on their side. That is a solvable problem, and it is worth solving before the deposit rather than after.