Made by an Istanbul native. For the next wave.
SettleIn is a local's guide for the people moving to Türkiye — residence permits, healthcare, banking, neighborhoods, the everyday parts of settling in, with an AI assistant grounded in facts checked by someone who lives here. I'm Arek. I built it because I've spent the last decade watching friends from America, Egypt, Germany, and Russia hit the same walls in their first six weeks here.
I grew up in Istanbul. For 35 years I've watched people move here from everywhere, and the same things break their first months. Paperwork. The tax office. Wrong neighborhoods. Bad advice from people who Googled the answer ten minutes before.
SettleIn is what I wish my friends had had — a single place that answers the messy questions, holds the documents that need to be held, and warns you before the deadlines you don't even know exist sneak up on you. Built in Türkiye, served from Türkiye.
Why I built this
Most expat advice for Türkiye is written by people who spent a week here for a YouTube video. The good information lives in scattered Telegram groups, half-translated forum posts, and the heads of ten Turkish friends who won't answer their phone at 9 PM on a Tuesday.
I built SettleIn so the answers are in one place, accurate to this country and this year, and available the moment you need them — not after you've spent three days waiting for a reply.
It's not perfect. We're shipping fast and sometimes shipping wrong. When that happens, write to me directly and we'll fix it.
Reach me at arek@settleinturkiye.com. That goes to my inbox.
Bug, feature request, broken page, awkward translation, or just a question about Türkiye — write. I read everything.
About the company
- Where: Istanbul, Türkiye. Server stack runs from Türkiye-friendly regions.
- Stack: Next.js, Supabase, Anthropic Claude, and an iOS app.
- Privacy: Documents in the vault are stored encrypted. Direct messages can be end-to-end encrypted: once both people turn it on, not even we can read them. Read the privacy policy.
- Pro: $4.99/mo or $39.99/yr — see /pro. Every fee and rule on the site stays free. Pro is me watching your case and writing when something moves, plus a check of your document list before you file.
- Other work: I also run Box Realty Istanbul, an estate agency that has handled long-term rentals and sales since 2012, and I host a short-let flat. No landlord, agency or neighbourhood pays to appear on this site, and no page on it sends you to my own listings.