Turkey:.at The Post Office .in Turkey

It was in August 1992 when I found myself in Turkey. Naturally, a visit of the post offices in the next larger city nearby was an integral part of the entertainment programme.

Manavgat - with 200.000 inhabitants a midsize town - is located in the county pf Antalya, nearby the coast and in the vicinty of ancient Side (temple devoted to Apollon, greek theater). Tourism is of decisive importance for the local economy, international visitors are ubiquitous.

It was promising, that in the ante room of the post office a frame displaying several special issues could be found, a form of presentation widespreadly in use from the early seventies until the nineties for example in Germany and in France as well.

It was conspicious that the nominals of the stamps displayed were comparetivly low and the colours of the stamps were faded (typical consequence of the long running exposure to light). Amongst others a sheet issued 1987 was shown. So, the issues were about five years old).

At the counters I asked for "pul" = stamps and quoted the turkish word "filateli".

And as we may have all already suspected, the displayed stamps were not in stock.

Upon clarification of the current cost for a postcard to Germany (TRL 1.500), I made a selection out of the stockbook, which was courteously shown to me page for page, what a pleasure for the philatelist.

In stock were stamps issued during the years 1990-1992, with a focus on definitive stamps. Special issues were availabe in the scope of single values out of sets. But there was no offer of complete sets in the sense of a philatelitically motivated ready-to-sell assembly.

Therefore, I surmise
• A limitiation in the regard, that stamps which formed of a set, would only be sold setwise did not occur, although the circulation of the special issues by that time have been printed unanimously at a number of 0,6 Mio. per nominal.
• Availability of special issues = the use of these in the normal postal routine was possible for every client wohe desired so.

Different countries, different customs – it is that, that makes travelling so exciting So as for designs and topics (see below)
• Omnipresent in Turkey is Kemal Atatürk, naturally also on the definitives. He may have deserved the honour:
- Highly decorated war hero of the First World War and the following defensive war against the seemingly boundless annexation activities of the Entente Forces and their fellow allies
- President, radical reformer, creator of modern western oriented Turkey – grace to him we find the inscription on Turkish Stamps easier readable by him establishing the Latin characters in Turkey
- Secularizier, but authoritarian as well. Attached to alcohol so it is said.
• Animals (not my preferred subject, but with local reference as to species and design, and as for the selection of colours, it is clearly not continental-european and thus forms its own speciality
• Olympics 92 – it is pleasing to see that the in Turkey and the region as well so popular sport wrestling made it on the highest value of the issue
• The stamps honouring the postal services (150 years of Turkish Post und undersea cable in the Mediterranean) are more of the character of a definite issue, they can be found numerously on the normal mail during that time.



The cancelled stamps on show with normal cancellation have really been routed on and show the typical form of a Turkish handcancellation (handed in at the desk of a post office).

The postcard on display was put in a post box and shows a different form of cancellation.



Typical of Turkey is the great respect and the readiness to help visitors from abroad. That was helpful to overcome the language barrier (and - let's not be deluded - what is not something, one should expect the other way round, I speak here for Germany).

Already by that time Turkey suffered of inflation, which would even increase more heavily in the years to come and resulted in a nominal of stamps in Millions in 2004 (that is why the acquisition of definite issues of higher nominals was simply not advisable).

I bought the sheet shown above with my last banknotes (firesale – they all had to go) in a souvenir shop (there, there were about a hundred sheets of the same sort on top of each other) at a price of TRL 12.000,--, I believe, which was by the time DEM 2,40. The nominal of the magnificent Atatürk-issue of 1981 was after all TRL 500,--. In the year when the stamps were issued that represented an equivalent of USD 4,-- or DEM 7,50 or respectively the price one would have to pay for 50 domestic letters.

Thank you for sharing. I was also in Turkey in 1992 for some time - and spent a couple weeks in and around Antalya - beautiful area with friendly people.

I visited many post offices in Turkey and the service was routinely good (except for the very busy office in central Istanbul) - I was not collecting stamps at the time - but used their "poste restante" services to receive letters from my girlfriend (later wife) back in Canada. The poste restante system worked wonderfully there, and I received the large majority of her letters. One of the ones missed later made its way back to her in Canada - a month after I'd returned home.