Sending Flowers From Europe to Turkey: the Whole Process

The most common reason to send flowers to Turkey from abroad is not a public holiday. It is a phone call: a birthday you would otherwise have missed, a recovery, an engagement, a death. The process is straightforward once you know four things in advance. This page goes through them in order. If you would rather go straight to ordering, the overview is on our send flowers to Turkey page.

1. The hours you are behind

Istanbul is three hours ahead of the UK and two ahead of Central Europe. That sounds harmless and is the single most common reason a same-day delivery quietly becomes a next-day one. If you sit down at half past eight in the evening to finally place the order, it is half past eleven in Istanbul and the shop closed long ago. Order in your own morning and the whole Turkish afternoon is still ahead of you. Exact windows are in our same-day delivery guide.

2. Paying in your own currency, not lira

You see prices in your currency and you are charged in it. The rate is fixed at the moment you order, which means the figure on your card statement is the figure you saw on the page, without the surprise that comes from an order billed in lira and converted by your bank. Why we do it that way, and what actually happens with foreign currency fees, is covered in the euros or lira guide. What flowers in Istanbul genuinely cost, with real numbers rather than ranges, is in the price guide.

3. The Turkish address

Deliveries fail here more often than they fail on distance. A British or German address is street, number, postcode, done. An Istanbul address has one more component that genuinely matters: the mahalle, the neighbourhood. Without it, a street name repeats several times over in a city of sixteen million. On top of that, apartment complexes have a site name, a block and a flat number, and those rarely appear in the address someone sends you over WhatsApp.

So ask for four things: district (ilçe), neighbourhood (mahalle), street with number, and flat or block number. Our Istanbul neighbourhoods guide places the common ones. Hotels, offices and hospitals have their own rules, set out in the hotel and hospital guide.

4. The recipient's phone number

This is the detail most often left out from abroad and the one that effectively decides whether the delivery lands. Turkish couriers call before they ring the bell. A Turkish mobile number in the format +90 5xx xxx xx xx usually means delivery on the first attempt. Without a number the courier rings, and if nobody answers the arrangement goes back to the shop.

The card, short and in Turkish

If the recipient speaks Turkish, write the card in Turkish even if it is one line. We print exactly what you type, with ç, ğ, ı, ö, ş and ü intact. The difference between a bouquet that arrived and a message that was sent almost always sits in that one line. Which phrases suit which occasion is in the Turkish flower-giving guide.

What you do not have to arrange

Customs, import, cross-border transport: none of it. The flowers do not cross a border. They are cut and tied in Istanbul and travel at most an hour across the city. What you send from abroad is the order, not the bouquet. That is why what arrives is fresh rather than something that spent three days in transit.

Browse the current collection, or read the guide for your occasion first. If this is a bereavement and the funeral is imminent, start here: sending condolence flowers to Turkey.