Antalya province received 16.9 million foreign visitors in 2024, a record, with Russia, Germany and the United Kingdom the largest sources (Hürriyet Daily News). Muğla, which includes Bodrum, Marmaris and Fethiye, passed 3.6 million foreign visitors in the first eleven months of the same year. In the peak months Antalya takes more than a third of all foreign arrivals to Türkiye. The resort markets that serve those visitors open around April and close around October, and most of their counterfeit stock is made or finished in Istanbul and shipped south in spring. The legal steps that remove that stock take weeks to months, so the season’s work starts in January.

Where to look first

The places to survey first are the Antalya coast, the Muğla coast (Bodrum, Marmaris, Fethiye), İzmir and the Aegean coast, and the Istanbul bazaars and wholesale districts that supply them. In practice that means three kinds of place.

  • Resort bazaars and shopping streets. Alanya, Side, Manavgat and Kemer around Antalya; Kaleiçi in the city itself; Fethiye and Hisarönü; Marmaris and İçmeler; Bodrum town and Turgutreis; Kuşadası; Çeşme and Alaçatı. The weekly markets in these towns have rows of stalls selling apparel, bags, footwear, sunglasses and watches under well-known marks. The same stock appears in the shops on the pedestrian streets, with shopfronts styled on the genuine boutiques.
  • The supply chain behind them. Most of the stock comes from Istanbul: Laleli, Merter and Osmanbey for apparel and leather, Bayrampaşa and Zeytinburnu for footwear. Some production has moved to the coast itself. A 2024 practitioner review notes workshops and warehouses relocating to the resort provinces, and sales continuing through the winter at a lower level (Gün + Partners).
  • Online. Resort sellers advertise on Instagram and TikTok and take orders by WhatsApp for delivery to the hotel. A listing is rarely involved, so the route is a test purchase, then the prosecutor.

The calendar

  1. January to March: market surveys and evidence
  2. February to April: criminal complaints and search warrants against known sellers
  3. April to October: monitoring and follow-up actions
  4. November to December: closing the files and planning for next year

Each stage has a legal step behind it, and the deadlines of those steps set the timing.

January to March: evidence. Surveys in the off-season find the shops that trade all year and the warehouses that hold next season’s stock. For each target we make a dated test purchase with a receipt, photograph the goods and the premises, and record the address and, where possible, the trade name. The goods are checked against your product guide and a short written confirmation is prepared for each. This is the file a prosecutor needs. A complaint without a purchase and a receipt is routinely returned.

February to April: complaints and warrants. A criminal complaint under Art. 30 of the Industrial Property Code No. 6769 is filed with the Chief Public Prosecutor for the district. The prosecutor applies to the criminal judgeship of peace for a search and seizure warrant. The police in towns, or the gendarmerie in rural districts and on the highways, carry out the search, and we attend to identify the goods. Practice in the resort districts varies more than in Istanbul. Some prosecutors accept invoices and test purchases as sufficient, others want a police report first, and some judges refuse warrants that an Istanbul judge would sign. An objection to a refusal can take months, which is why the complaints go in before April. The target in this window is the warehouse rather than the stall, because one search of a depot in March removes stock before it is spread along the coast.

April to October: follow-up. Stock that reaches the stalls is handled with short, repeated actions: test purchases, complaints against repeat sellers, and searches timed around the market days. Two legal dates shape the summer. The judicial recess runs from 20 July to 31 August. Urgent matters, including preliminary injunctions and criminal investigations, continue, but trials and most civil steps pause. The fast destruction procedure of Art. 163 lets seized goods that are costly to store be destroyed after a technical report, with samples kept. That matters when a gendarmerie station has no room for a seizure. Art. 30/7, under which a seller who discloses the source and helps seize the goods is not punished, is used deliberately. When a stallholder names the Istanbul wholesaler, the complaint is extended to the supplier.

November to December: the record. Most resort sellers close in November and cannot be served at the shop address, so we finish the season’s files before then. That means destruction orders, signed undertakings with penalty clauses from sellers who settled, and the list of names and addresses that opens next year’s survey.

What to have ready

Four things need to be in place before the first survey: registration certificates, a power of attorney, a budget ceiling for test purchases, and a named person on your product team who can confirm fakes. More specifically:

  • Registrations that cover the goods actually sold. Resort fakes cross classes: a fashion mark appears on towels, phone cases and sunglasses. Criminal protection requires a Turkish registration for the mark (Art. 30/5), and the warrant covers only the goods the registration covers.
  • A power of attorney issued early. Notarisation, apostille and translation take four to six weeks. A power of attorney requested in April is ready in June.
  • A test-purchase budget with a ceiling per item and a rule on what to buy (one item per product line), so the file is complete and the costs are predictable.
  • A product confirmation that works from photographs within two working days, because the statutory deadlines run from the date of notification and a sample can take a week to reach you.
  • A decision on settlements. Many resort sellers settle at the police station: consent to destruction, a signed undertaking, disclosure of the supplier. Decide in advance what you will accept, so that our representative can close the case the same day.

What to do next

Book the surveys for the first quarter, file the complaints before the season opens, run short actions through the summer and close the files by December. Our market enforcement service runs that calendar on the coasts and in the Istanbul districts that supply them.