Driving in Turkey: licence, roads and tolls

Tolls are electronic-only through HGS: no cash lanes, no barriers to stop at.

• A hire car comes with an HGS tag and the company bills the crossings back. In a private car, the sticker is bought from a PTT post office and topped up in advance; passing a gantry with an empty balance becomes a fine.
• The alcohol limit is 0.5 g/l for private cars and zero for anyone towing or driving commercially.
• The motorway network is modern and fast - Istanbul to Izmir or Ankara is straightforward - and the secondary roads across Anatolia are long, empty and hard on tyres.
• Istanbul traffic is in a class of its own. A car in the old city is a liability; the ferries and the metro are not.
• Fuel is expensive relative to the rest of the region, and the price changes often.