You have a company name, a good-looking website and a WhatsApp contact who replies within minutes. None of that is evidence. Here are seven checks that produce evidence, most of which you can run before spending anything.
1. The trade registry record
Every Turkish company appears in the Ticaret Sicil Gazetesi, the official trade registry gazette. The record shows the legal name, registration number, date of establishment, registered capital and the registered address. It is public.
What to look for: a company established four months ago quoting you a 500-container annual capacity, or a registered capital of a few thousand lira behind a claim to be a large manufacturer. Neither is proof of fraud. Both are questions worth asking out loud.
2. Tax and social-security status
An active company files taxes and declares employees. A manufacturer with 120 workers and no social-security declarations is not a manufacturer. This is often the fastest way to separate a factory from an office with a nice photograph library.
3. Ownership and authorised signatories
Ask for the signature circular (imza sirküleri). It names who is legally entitled to bind the company. Then check whether the person negotiating with you is on it. A surprising share of problem cases involve someone who genuinely works at or near the company but has no authority to commit it, which becomes relevant precisely when you want to enforce something.
4. Registered address versus signature address
Compare the address in the registry with the address in their email signature, on their invoice and on their website. Mismatches are common and usually innocent — companies move, and the registry lags. But a registry address in a different city from the “factory” is worth resolving before you pay.
5. Declared activity
Turkish company records include a declared field of activity. A company registered for wholesale trade that presents itself as a manufacturer is a trading company. Again, this is not disqualifying — trading companies are legitimate and sometimes the right partner, particularly if you are buying small quantities across several product types.
What it changes is everything downstream: your price expectation, where quality control has to happen, and who is actually responsible when goods are wrong. A trading company that hides being a trading company has told you how they will behave when something goes wrong.
6. Export history
Does the company have a plausible history of exporting to markets like yours? Customs data aggregators, chamber of commerce membership records and the company’s own references all contribute. A factory that has never shipped to the EU may still be excellent, but your first order will also be their first experience of your market’s labelling, certification and packaging requirements — and you will be paying for that education.
7. Bank account name against company name
This is the single strongest indicator, and it costs nothing.
The account name on the proforma invoice should match the registered company name exactly. Payment instructions to a personal account, to a company with a slightly different name, or to an account in a third country are the classic pattern of both outright fraud and of business email compromise, where an attacker intercepts a genuine invoice and changes only the bank details.
Two rules that prevent most of this:
- Never accept changed bank details by email, ever, from anyone. Confirm by voice on a number you already had.
- Send a small first payment and confirm receipt with the supplier by phone before sending the balance.
What these checks cannot tell you
All seven are documentary. They establish that a company exists, is active, and is who it says it is. They tell you nothing about whether the machinery works, whether the capacity is real, or whether the quality is acceptable.
For that you need someone standing in the building. The documentary check is what you do first because it is cheap and it screens out the cases that never should have reached the factory-visit stage — and because sending a deposit to a company you have not verified is the most expensive minute in the whole process.