For the time being, consumers in Turkey cannot purchase Apple products through the official channels of the fruit brand – neither through the web store nor through the physical stores.

 

The decision seems to be related to the massive inflation of the Turkish lira in recent days, but some sources report that it is purely a stock problem.

At first glance, there seems to be nothing wrong when you visit the Turkish Apple Online Store: all products are displayed as usual, and you can also just order a new iMac, iPhone or other product. That is to say: you can select the device and configure it in detail. But when you want to place the device in the shopping cart, that turns out to be impossible.

According to tech site MacReports, Apple has ‘closed’ the online store because the Turkish lira has been in free fall recently. Today one lira is only worth 0.075 euros; at the beginning of this month, it was 0.09 euros. Apple would therefore miss out on a lot of profit on the devices.

Also, in the three physical stores that Apple has in Turkey, all in the capital Istanbul, customers would temporarily not be able to buy products. MacReports reports that store staff are telling visitors that “sales will resume once the Turkish economy recovers.” The site also features photos showing long lines of people waiting at the entrance of an Apple Store and found most customers have turned away empty-handed on their own visit to a store. Only a few AirPods models would be for sale in the relevant store, according to MacReports.

However, some sources report that “products are indeed being sold” in the Turkish Apple Stores and say that the coverage of MacReports is out of the blue. So there may be some ambiguity about the situation in the physical stores, but at the time of writing, it is impossible to buy Apple products via the Turkish web store, our own editors also noted.