Clothing manufacturer in Bangladesh for Turkish brands

The duty position, stated plainly

Turkey operates a Generalised System of Preferences, and Bangladesh is on it as a least-developed country. But the Ministry of Trade’s beneficiary list marks two excluded sectors against it: S-11a and S-11b, which in the EU sector classification that Turkey mirrors are textiles and clothing. So the one thing Bangladesh is best at is the one thing the preference does not cover, and Bangladeshi garments pay Turkey’s ordinary third-country duty, which a Turkish customs guide puts at generally 12% on apparel.

On top of that sits the additional customs duty, the ilave gümrük vergisi. Presidential Decision 7709, published on 16 October 2023 and in force from 15 November 2023, raised it from 30% to 39% on most lines in chapters 61 and 62. And the relief that once softened it for poorer countries is gone: a decision published on 18 April 2020 abolished the lower additional-duty rates for least-developed and developing GSP countries, so Bangladesh now pays the same additional duty as China or Vietnam.

We are not going to add those two numbers together for you and present the result as your landed cost, because how they stack depends on the exact tariff line and the customs value, and that is a question for a Turkish customs broker with your product code in front of them. What we will say is that the combination is large enough to change whether an order makes sense at all, and that it should be settled before anyone samples a garment, not after. Ask your broker for the total charge on your specific HS code, and we will build the quote around the answer.

So when does importing from Bangladesh still work?

Despite all of that, Turkey imported about US$725 million of Bangladeshi apparel in 2025, so a great deal of it clearly does work. From what is publicly verifiable, these are the situations where it does.

• Volume basics at a price no Turkish factory quotes: tees, fleece, jersey and underwear in large runs, where the Bangladeshi cost gap is wide enough to survive the duty
• Goods that are not staying in Turkey: Turkey operates customs regimes for imported inputs that are processed and re-exported, and their terms are a matter for your customs broker rather than for us to describe
• Capacity your own lines cannot take: a Turkish manufacturer with full lines and a customer waiting can place the simple part of a range with us and keep its own capacity for the work that pays more
• Categories Turkey does not make competitively at scale, where the alternative is not a Turkish factory but a Chinese one

The customs union, and what it means for your goods

Turkey and the EU have been in a customs union since 1 January 1996, covering industrial products, textiles included. Goods that are in free circulation in Turkey, whether produced there or imported from a third country with all duties paid, move into the EU with an A.TR movement certificate and no further customs duty. Trade between the two ran to €217.6 billion in 2025.

For an importer that is worth understanding precisely. It does not make Bangladeshi goods cheap in Turkey: the Turkish duties above are paid first, on the way in. What it means is that once those duties are paid and the goods are in free circulation, the EU market is open to them without a second customs bill. A Turkish company selling into Europe is therefore not choosing between the Turkish duty and the EU duty; it is paying the Turkish one. A company whose customers are in the EU should compare that against importing into the EU directly under Everything But Arms, where Bangladeshi garments pay 0% until about November 2032, three years after graduation. In many cases the direct EU route is simply cheaper, and we will tell you so rather than sell you a shipment to Istanbul.

VAT at 10%

Textiles and clothing sit on Turkey’s reduced VAT list at 10%, raised from 8% by a presidential decree published on 7 July 2023 and effective from 10 July 2023, when the standard rate went from 18% to 20%. It is charged at import and again at the till, and a registered importer reclaims the import VAT as input tax. At 10% it is the mildest of the charges on this page.

Labels must be in Turkish

Turkey’s textile labelling regulation, published in the Official Gazette on 25 April 2015, is aligned with the EU’s Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011: only the fibre names in its Annex 1 may be used, and the fibre composition must be given by percentage. Article 17(3) adds the national requirement, that the labelling or marking must also be done in Turkish. So a label made for the EU is close but not sufficient; the Turkish text has to be there too. We prepare the artwork and ask your importer to confirm the Turkish wording before printing; keep the approved file so reorders match.

• Fibre composition by percentage, using the regulation’s Annex 1 fibre names
• The labelling also in Turkish, as Article 17(3) requires
• Care instructions as symbols with text
• Country of origin: Bangladesh
• Your brand name and the importer’s details

TAREKS: what gets tested at the border

Textile and apparel imports are checked through TAREKS, Turkey’s risk-based import inspection system, under the annual product safety and inspection communiqué; the 2026 edition was published on 31 December 2025 and took effect on 1 January 2026. Listed products are checked for conformity with Turkey’s chemicals regulation, KKDİK, and an accredited laboratory test report on azo colourants can be required. A testing house’s note on the equivalent 2025 communiqué lists the risk-based tests as nickel release, phthalates, chromium VI, dimethyl fumarate and aromatic amines from azo dyes, with EN 14682 on cords and drawstrings and EN 14878 on flammability for children’s wear.

None of that is unusual: these are the same substances and standards EU and UK buyers test against, and accredited laboratories in Bangladesh can run the tests before bulk is cut. What matters is doing the tests before shipment rather than discovering the requirement at the port, and that the test reports travel with the shipping documents.

Getting goods there

Ambarlı, on the European side of Istanbul, holds about 22.4% of Turkey’s container throughput; Aliağa near Izmir and Mersin on the southern coast are the other main container gateways, and bonded trucking to Gaziantep serves the textile cluster there. There is no direct service from Chattogram: a freight aggregator lists the quickest Chattogram to Ambarlı routing at about 34 days with one transshipment, on sailings every two to four weeks, and Chattogram to Istanbul port at about 49 days with two transshipments. Those are aggregator figures rather than a carrier’s commitment, so treat them as indicative and ask for the routing on the day. Air freight into Istanbul takes two to five days before customs. Ask for the routing and a committed ship date on the order confirmation.

A market that already knows Bangladesh

Turkish retail is not new to this. LC Waikiki states on its corporate site that it established a laboratory in Bangladesh in 2010 to control its Far East production, and trade press reported in 2016 that it had rolled out a quality management system at its Bangladeshi garment suppliers. The relationship is also moving at government level: on 5 June 2026 in Dhaka the Turkish and Bangladeshi foreign ministers discussed a free trade agreement, or a preferential trade agreement as an alternative, with annual trade around US$1.3 billion and a target of US$2 billion; textiles and apparel were named first among the investment sectors, and Bangladesh offered a dedicated Turkish economic zone. If a preferential agreement eventually covers apparel, the duty position on this page changes fundamentally. It has not changed yet, and we will not price an order today on an agreement that does not exist.

Working with us from Turkey

For Turkey our first job is arithmetic rather than sampling: tell us the styles, the quantities and your HS codes, ask your customs broker for the total duty on those codes, and we will build a landed cost that either works or does not. If it does not, and your customers are in the EU, we will show you the same order shipped directly into Europe at 0% duty instead. That is a worse outcome for one shipment and a better one for the relationship.