Saily Not Working in Turkey: What's Going On and What To Do

Since around 10 July 2025, Turkey's telecom regulator BTK has blocked access from Turkish networks to the websites and apps of more than 50 foreign travel eSIM sellers — Airalo, Holafly, Nomad and Saily among them — and the block is still in force in 2026. The strongest proof that this is regulation rather than an outage comes from Saily itself: the company published its own post about the block at saily.com/blog/turkey-esim-ban, as did Holafly (esim.holafly.com/news/esim-ban-turkey). There is a certain irony in a VPN-family eSIM store ending up behind a national block wall. BTK's stated reasoning: eSIM sellers should provision through Turkish operators, store user data in Turkey and avoid 'permanent roaming' — foreign sellers without Turkish localization are treated as unauthorized telecom services.

This is the part that surprises people: a Saily eSIM installed before you arrived keeps working normally in Turkey. Your data roams on Turkish mobile networks, and that connectivity is not what BTK blocks — only the seller's website and app are. So if the plan is active and has data left, there is nothing to fix and no reason to delete it. As the table above shows, the same logic applies to every blocked provider: installed eSIMs run, storefronts don't. Trouble starts only when you need the store — to buy, reinstall or top up.

On Turkish networks, saily.com won't load and the app can't complete purchases. That means no new plan, no fresh install, and no top-up once your data runs out. The filtering happens at the consumer ISP level — DNS and SNI blocking on Turk Telekom, Turkcell and Vodafone TR — so switching from mobile data to hotel or café Wi-Fi usually changes nothing: that Wi-Fi rides the same ISPs. To be clear, none of this is Saily failing as a company; every foreign seller on BTK's list is in the same position.

Four realistic options. First, if your current eSIM still has data, just keep using it. Second, a VPN restores access to saily.com for top-ups — it works, but it's clumsy, and VPN websites themselves are sometimes throttled in Turkey. Third, buy from a store that Turkish networks can actually reach. Full disclosure: LimitSim is our store — it isn't on any published ban list and, as of July 2026, loads from inside Turkey without a VPN, with plans from €0.50. Fourth, airport and operator counters sell tourist SIMs, but packages run around 1,900+ TL and the queues are real.

The whole problem disappears with one habit: buy and install your Turkey eSIM before you board, while you're still on a network where the store is reachable. Once installed, it will work in Turkey regardless of the block. Size the package generously enough that you won't need a mid-trip top-up, since topping up is exactly what the block makes painful. And if you want the option to buy on the ground, pick a seller that is reachable from Turkish networks — check before you travel, since the BTK list keeps growing.