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Almost a year ago, the Turkish government abruptly blocked access to the websites and apps of a string of popular eSIM providers. The eSIMs themselves kept working (and still do), but the intention was clear: once you’d landed in Turkey, you weren’t meant to be able to buy one.
At least, that was the plan.
We’re now a year on. I spent the past few days in Istanbul to see how things stand on the ground. The headline finding: eSIMs still work, and they’re usually a great deal cheaper than buying a local Turkish SIM at the airport.
Which providers are blocked?
On 3 May 2026, we were unable to reach the websites of the following providers from a Turkish Wi-Fi network in Istanbul: Airalo, Holafly, Nomad, Alosim, BNESIM, Jetpac, Maya Mobile, Saily, Roamless, GoMoWorld, Instabridge, MobiMatter, Yesim, GigSky, Flexiroam, Airhub, Sim Local, Keepgo, Roamify, eTravelSim, Ubigi and RedteaGo.
Worth noting: Roamless presents itself as a US-based company, but is in practice a Turkish outfit. The fact that even that provider is blocked tells you how rigidly BTK is applying the filter.
The apps from these providers usually don’t work either, but occasionally they do. That’s because some providers load their app from a separate domain that isn’t caught by the block. The Holafly app, for instance, worked fine; the Airalo app didn’t.
What about the rest?
What was originally reported as a block on “eight major providers” has clearly grown. The good news, though, is that we could still reach more than twenty other providers without any trouble. Anyone who compares options ahead of their trip has plenty of alternatives.
Wi-Fi and DNS: the block is leaky
In many places across Istanbul, blocked providers were perfectly accessible over Wi-Fi. We noticed that a lot of free Wi-Fi networks (hotels in particular) had set their internal DNS to Google (8.8.8.8) or Cloudflare (1.1.1.1). That effectively sidesteps BTK’s block and lets hotel guests reach censored sites without lifting a finger.
More importantly: not once did we have any issue with an eSIM we tested, and we tried more than fifteen. An activated eSIM simply does its job in Turkey. The block targets buying an eSIM, not using one.
So what should you do?
If you’re heading to Turkey, the advice hasn’t changed: buy and install your eSIM before you leave home. Forgot to sort it out and now staring at the eye-watering prices at the airport? Chances are you can still pick one up, but the household-name providers may not load. Compare the options on findyouresim.co.uk and you’ll see that roughly half of them are still reachable from inside Turkey.
