Turkey / Kurdistan Border | Customs and Immigration

June 10th, 2024 by TornadoTim

We managed to cross from Iraq to Turkey with our German car, but it wasn’t easy. We were already here yesterday and after a long discussion were refused to cross here and should go to Ibrahim Khalil. But the manager also said that there we could get a special permission to cross here. So we drove to Ibrahim Khalil and asked around to get the permission and ended at the Customs Director, who made a call to the border to let us through. Then we drove back here to Serzeri border, but slept on the way because it was already too late. In the morning we arrived and they immediately knew about us and processed our car. The first steps are for the customs to search your car and then another step to search your car, but also from below. The you park in a long line and walk to the immigration windows. We were standing in line when the manager from the day before saw us and got us in his office. He took our passports and the Carnet and got them processed and stamped, so I don’t know what you have to do. The last part was paying the exit tax which here is only 37.000 IQD and not 43.000 like in Ibrahim Khalil. Afterwards we could drive over to the Turkish side.

There it was a very pleasant process. Park your car in line and go to the middle booth for immigration. The go to the first booth for the car. After struggling a bit with our German registration, he needed an insurance number, but luckily our German green card insurance does include Turkey. There’s no way to purchase it at the border as far as I saw. Then he checked our Chassis number and his colleague from the X-ray wanted us to unpack everything. The customs officer was the only one to speak English so I told him how much stuff we have and that no everything is packed. Then it was okay with just a visual inspection and we could enter Turkey. All in all it took 2 hours and most of the time went for the Iraq customs as that’s the only problem for crossing the border. Everything else can handle foreigners without problems. The drive after the border towards Van is really stunning and was worth the extra effort to cross here.

October 16th, 2023 by rachseidel

We had the same experience as below - only Iraqi and Turkish vehicles can pass and the officers told us to go to Ibrahim Khalil

July 23rd, 2023 by instagram.com/monterontour

We tried this border to get from TR to Kurdistan but were refused by the officers.
The officers were very kind and helpful. There was one officer speaking english (the chief of customs).
The exit from turkey is not the problem. the actual problem is that the kurdish side does not have the appropriate computer system to register foreign vehicles correctly.
so officer's told us crossing for foreigners without car is no problem. crossing with turkish car is also no problem.