From Istanbul to Lisbon: Ersel and Kübra’s D7 Visa Story

When we caught up with Ersel, he and Kübra had been in Lisbon for a few weeks and were sitting in an almost empty flat.

Their furniture was still on its way from Turkey. The cats didn’t mind much. “They’re house cats. It doesn’t matter what kind of house it is for them,” Ersel said. Well, mostly. With no furniture yet, they had nothing to climb on, and they were missing it.

Lisbon windows turned out to be a problem too. They’re built differently from the ones at home, so before the move Ersel tracked down a Spanish company that makes cat nets for them. Cesar, our client manager, asked for the contact straight away. He has six cats himself, and one of them was trying to climb out of a window halfway through the call.

That’s roughly where this story ends. Here’s how it started.

Lisbon won on the first visit

Ersel and Kübra picked their city on foot. They flew over as tourists and walked around. Spain was on the list, and so was Porto. Lisbon won.

Moving abroad had come up for years, the way it does in a lot of Turkish households. At some point, Ersel said, it stopped being a dream and turned into a plan. They could have followed the usual route to Germany or the Netherlands, where there are big Turkish communities already. They didn’t want that. Portugal felt closer to home. “It feels Mediterranean, even though it’s on the Atlantic,” he said. “The culture and the climate are close to what we know.” Neither of them fancied a northern winter.

Why they didn’t do it alone

The plan was to do it themselves. Then they looked at what that actually meant with a Turkish passport.

“With a Turkish passport, we need a Schengen visa even to fly to Lisbon and sort out a bank problem,” Ersel said. Every trip to fix something would start with a visa application.

So they started comparing options. “Some Turkish people do this freelance. They handle things for you, but they’re not a company, and we couldn’t trust them at all,” Ersel said.

The bigger agencies had a different problem. “They had slow response times. If they can’t handle the communication well at that stage, what happens when something goes wrong? So we decided Novomove was the best option for us.”

He booked a free 15-minute call with us in October 2025. The visa wasn’t what worried him most. “Housing is our main concern,” he told us on that first call.

A wedding in the middle of a visa application

When Ersel spoke to Mariana, our immigration lawyer, for the first time in November, he opened with some news. “We’re getting married this weekend.”

That meant a new passport for Kübra and another round of paperwork. They also switched from two separate visa applications to one joint application, with Kübra as Ersel’s dependent, so one lease and one income could cover both of them. The Ankara consulate replies by email and takes its time (one reply once took five months). When it rescheduled, their appointment moved to February.

Then there was the income. Ersel’s passive income is interest from a term deposit in Turkey. It’s taxed at source, so no tax return shows it, and every statement is in Turkish lira. He brought all of this to his next call with Mariana, at around midnight Istanbul time. He’d already highlighted every interest payment in yellow.

Mariana told him that was exactly right. Add translations of those lines, the exchange rate and a short letter explaining why there’s no tax return, and the consulate can work with it. “That’s a relief,” he said. It had been their biggest worry.

A cat-friendly flat, found by video call

A D7 application needs proof of accommodation. For a couple with cats, applying from another country, that’s a hard thing to get.

We introduced them to a real estate agency we work with in Lisbon, and they were matched with Alexandra. “Every week she went to see flats and sent us photos, or showed us round on a video call,” Ersel said. She also warned them about how renting works in Portugal, which they’d have had no way of knowing from Istanbul.

What stayed with him most was whose side she was on. “In Turkey, the agent works for the owner and is trying to sell you something, so they hide things,” he said. “Here, she was our agent. Having someone on our side was a huge help.”

They signed a 12-month lease in Lumiar and the landlord registered it with the tax office, just in time for the appointment.

“Having someone on our side was a huge help.”

The week the bank nearly derailed everything

Every D7 applicant needs a Portuguese bank account, and Ankara pushes harder on it than most consulates we work with. Five days before the appointment, the bank still hadn’t opened theirs. It kept coming back with more document requests.

“We panicked a lot,” Ersel said.

Mariana had been in court in another city that week. The evening before, a storm had put a tree across the motorway and left her stuck in traffic, so she opened her calendar the next morning just for him. She’d certify his documents the day they arrived and post them to the bank the same day. She would also write two letters for the appointment: one in case the account wasn’t open yet, and one in case it was open but the money hadn’t arrived. Money from Turkey can only go by SWIFT, and that takes days.

Near the end of the call she told him: “I don’t want you to feel alone. We’re here for you.”

He went to Ankara on 3 February. A new appointment could have been four or five months away, so skipping this one wasn’t an option. The consulate took their file and set a date by which the account had to be active, and they held the application until then.

They had braced for another two months of waiting once the bank was sorted. Instead, once the funded statement went in, things moved much faster. The visa was approved on 1 April.

“We wouldn’t have known what to do without Novomove,” Ersel said.

The worst day was the flight

Then came the actual move.

Their two cats, one of them called Pistachio, had never been on a plane. They had to be registered with the airport vet before flying. “It was one of our worst days,” Ersel said. The cats are fine now. The furniture is still on its way.

Portuguese, through a Spanish literature degree

Ersel’s nicest surprise came after they arrived. He studied Spanish literature at university, and he understands far more Portuguese than he expected.

Speaking is harder, and he isn’t there yet. Lumiar isn’t a tourist area, and plenty of the cafés and shops there don’t use English, so they’re learning because they have to. The learning resources aren’t much help either. Duolingo only has Brazilian Portuguese, and so do most of the YouTubers.

What he’d tell the next Turkish couple

We asked Ersel what he’d tell someone in Turkey planning to do the D7 alone. A few years ago, he said, it might have worked. There was more first-hand advice online from Turkish applicants, and the consulate asked for less. That has changed a lot.

In Turkey, a mistake also costs you time. “It takes five or six months to get an appointment,” he said. “If anything goes wrong, you have to start over. That’s a year of your life.”

“You might be fine. But I don’t think it’s a good risk to take.”

Next up are their AIMA appointments in December. Kübra’s is in Santarém and Ersel’s is in Queluz-Sintra, half an hour apart on the same morning, so they’re still working out how to be in two places at once.

Before we hung up, Ersel offered to help the next Turkish family who comes to us. He could answer their questions, or even record a video in Turkish for people who’d rather hear it in their own language. We’d love to take him up on it.

Ersel’s quotes are lightly edited for clarity. Every application is different, and consulate requirements and timelines change. Novomove is a relocation technology platform that coordinates licensed Portuguese lawyers, not a law firm.