Shopping in Istanbul: what to buy and how not to be fooled

Best buys

Carpets and kilims, ceramics, copper, towels, spices, coffee

Most faked

Saffron, 'antique' ceramics, hand-painted tiles, leather brands

Bargaining

Expected in bazaars, not in fixed-price shops

Payment

Cash gives leverage; cards widely accepted

Tax refund

Ask about VAT refund forms on larger purchases

Shipping

Reputable carpet dealers ship worldwide and insure

Turkish carpets and kilims

The serious purchase, and the one worth doing properly. A carpet is knotted with a pile; a kilim is flat-woven with no pile and is generally cheaper. Both can be superb and both can be junk.

What to look at: turn the piece over. On a hand-knotted carpet the pattern is clearly legible from behind and the knots are visible and slightly irregular — that irregularity is the point. A machine-made piece has a mechanically perfect, often gauze-backed reverse. Ask what the pile and the warp are made of: wool on cotton is the workhorse, wool on wool is traditional, silk on silk is the expensive end. Ask where it was woven and roughly when; a good dealer answers precisely and enjoys the question.

Prices are genuinely negotiable and genuinely variable. Take your time, see several, and never buy on the first day of your trip. Reputable dealers ship internationally and insure — that is normal, not a red flag.

Ceramics and tiles

The real thing is beautiful and the fake is everywhere. İznik-style ware, with its cobalt blues, turquoise and the famous tomato red, is the historic tradition; genuine hand-made reproductions are expensive because they are hard to fire. Kütahya ware is the accessible middle ground and much of it is genuinely hand-painted.

How to tell: hand-painting has minute variation in line weight and the odd wobble; a printed transfer is uniform and often has a faint dot pattern under a loupe. Look at the underside and the rim for brushwork. And treat any "antique" ceramic sold from a stall with deep scepticism — genuine antiquities cannot legally be exported from Turkey.

Gold and jewellery

Turkey has a real goldsmithing industry and the gold street in the Grand Bazaar is competitive. Gold is priced by weight against the day's rate plus a workmanship charge, so the figure should be explicable — ask for the breakdown. Look for the hallmark. If a seller cannot or will not explain how the price was reached, walk away.

The everyday things that are actually great

Peştemal — flat Turkish towels, light, fast-drying and genuinely useful at home. Copper, especially older hand-hammered pieces and a proper cezve for making coffee. Mosaic glass lamps, where quality varies enormously — look for real glass tesserae rather than printed plastic, and buy from a workshop if you can. Spices, tea and coffee from the Spice Bazaar and the streets behind it. Soap — olive oil and laurel soap from Antakya is excellent and cheap.

What to be careful with

Saffron. If it is cheap and sold in large bags it is safflower, not saffron. Real saffron is expensive everywhere on earth.

Branded leather and watches. The counterfeits are obvious, and bringing them home can cause you problems at customs.

Anything described as an antiquity. Exporting genuine antiquities from Turkey is illegal and taken seriously. If it is real you should not buy it; if you can buy it, it is not real.

The "my cousin has a shop" route. If a friendly stranger walks you to a particular shop, someone is being paid a commission and it is coming out of your price.

How to bargain without being awkward

Bargaining is expected in the bazaars and not in modern fixed-price shops. Be warm; this is a social transaction and pleasantness genuinely moves price more than firmness does. Decide your ceiling before you start. Be willing to walk away politely — it is part of the dance, not an insult. Accept the tea; it obliges you to nothing.

Shopping with a local

This is the single most direct way a guide saves you money. Ours will tell you honestly what a given carpet should cost, which shops make what they sell, and when to walk on — and because we take no commission from shops, that advice is worth something. Say you are interested in buying when you enquire about a private tailor-made tour and we will build the time in properly rather than rushing it.

Shopping in Istanbul — frequently asked questions