The Best VPNs for Turkey

ExpressVPN has over 50 servers in Turkey, plus hundreds more in surrounding countries to deliver some of the fastest speeds out of the country.

In fact, connecting from Istanbul into servers located in Bulgaria and Greece, our internet speed dipped by a virtually unnoticeable 2%.

It was a similar story using servers further afield, such as in the US or the UK, with a slowdown of just 15%. These measurements were way faster than Astrill and PrivateVPN.

And if you’re looking to get a Turkish IP address from abroad, ExpressVPN’s Istanbul server worked perfectly to access geo-restricted platforms like BluTV, Exxen, and Tivibu GO.

The VPN’s apps are some of the best designed on the market, simple and easy to use on all devices.

There are very few distractions on the home screen, and you can quickly change IP address by pressing the large connect button.

Connections are almost instant, even on mobile, where other VPNs suffer from minor delays at times.

But that’s not all. ExpressVPN’s RAM-only servers are regularly wiped and never retain any user activity data, which has been repeatedly proven over the years.

Plus, you’ll benefit from key security features such as a working kill switch, AES-256 or ChaCha20 encryption, and regularly rotating same-country IPs in the background.

There are very few VPN services that can provide this level of user experience, privacy and security at such a reasonable price.

Another reason for choosing ExpressVPN is its 7-day free trial, available through the iOS and Google Play app stores.

Once you’ve signed up to the trial on your smartphone, you can then use your free account on all your other devices.

If you’re staying in Turkey for longer than a week, a 30-day no-questions-asked refund period begins after the trial ends. In other words, you’ll have up to 37 days to use the VPN risk-free.

This level of flexibility allows you to try ExpressVPN extensively, before deciding whether to keep using it longer-term or not.

In our hands-on tests over the past decade, Astrill has been the only VPN able to work in high-censorship countries 100% of the time.

Astrill’s highly-effective StealthVPN and OpenWeb protocols do this by obfuscating VPN connections, making them appear as normal HTTPS web traffic.

The obfuscation technology is so good that it allows the VPN to work well even in China, the country with the strictest content filters.

As a backup to StealthVPN, you can also use Astrill’s SOCKS5 proxy in combination with a standalone Shadowsocks client.

This requires some technical know-how, and is rarely needed in Turkey, but you can see how to do this in our VPNs for Russia guide.

The VPN also offers a full range of encryption and security settings, including the choice between the OpenVPN and WireGuard protocols (and therefore AES-256 and ChaCha20 encryption).

Its built-in IP, WebRTC, and DNS leak protection has never failed in our tests, and its kill switch is reliable on its desktop apps.

The service only offers IP addresses from 56 countries, which is a lot fewer than ExpressVPN’s 109.

More positively, you’ll find server locations in Turkey and nearby countries like Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Greece available.

While finding these server locations isn’t hard, Astrill’s apps look dated and lack the smoothness that makes ExpressVPN so nice to use.

Now to the not-so-good news. Astrill is the most expensive VPN we’ve reviewed. If you’re looking for a cheap VPN, then Astrill isn’t it.

Moreover, there are no free trial or refund offers to take advantage of.

Astrill also proved consistently slower than its main rivals, especially while using the StealthVPN protocol.

But we did find a neat workaround to combat the slowdown, which was to use the VPN’s SuperCharged servers. This boosted our speeds to a more acceptable level.

PrivateVPN is significantly more affordable than most high-caliber VPNs, costing just $2.00/mo over 36 months per month. Its 1-month plan is also cheaper than ExpressVPN’s and Astrill’s.

Also, you can essentially use PrivateVPN risk-free via its 30-day money-back guarantee.

At these prices, the VPN’s value is undeniable. Not only does it bypass Turkish geo-blocks, but it also unblocks 10 Netflix regions, BBC iPlayer, Prime Video and many other popular platforms.

Astrill may perform better at bypassing censorship, but PrivateVPN provides excellent value for money – especially for long-term subscriptions.

PrivateVPN is also a secure no-logs VPN service that won’t leak your real IP or DNS information, which is a must-have when bypassing censorship.

Security essentials are all covered: AES-256 encryption, an effective kill switch, and crucial StealthVPN protocol to circumvent Turkish web blocks.

There aren’t many additional settings or features, such as multi-hop VPN servers, or a SOCKS5 proxy for use with Shadowsocks.

Moreover, there are two small issues with the kill switch: it’s not enabled by default, and disconnects briefly while switching servers, leaking your IP momentarily.

While PrivateVPN has a slightly larger server network than Astrill, it really needs to invest in expanding it.

That being said, you’ll find a good selection of nearby server locations for improved speeds, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Greece.

There aren’t many endpoints in each of these server locations, though, and your speeds will dip if they start overloading.

Finally, there’s also a server in Turkey to give you a working IP address from Istanbul.

In most cases, we don’t recommend using a free VPN in highly-censored countries because most come with security flaws and poor privacy policies.

Free VPNs are also far less likely to work in countries with censorship, like Turkey.

Fortunately, Windscribe’s free service comes with two extremely effective obfuscation protocols: Stealth and WStunnel.

These protocols are specifically designed to work in highly-censored countries like Turkey, China, and Russia.

We recommend installing Windscribe as a back-up option before you travel to Turkey, since the provider’s official website is unavailable from Turkish IP locations.

With Windscribe, you get access to free servers in 10 countries, including the US, Germany, and Romania.

This is a much better selection than with most safe free VPNs. In contrast, Proton VPN doesn’t even let you choose a server location on its free tier.

However, there aren’t any free servers close to Turkey, and our speeds did suffer from it. While ExpressVPN’s speeds were very consistent throughout our sessions, Windscribe’s varied depending on the time of day.

In addition to its monthly usage cap, Windscribe has other flaws that may put you off using it.

Firstly, it’s quite complicated to change protocols. You have to go into Preferences > Connection > Connection Mode > Manual > Protocol.

It’s a long-winded process for something that could just take a couple taps from the home screen.

Secondly, the free servers are hidden among the paid ones. You have to scroll through the list to find a server that doesn’t have a star label.

To make your life easier, mark your chosen free servers as favorites so you can quickly access them from the ‘Favorites’ tab.