Netsel Marmaris Marina

Location

Marmaris, Mugla province, south-west Turkey, at 36 51.02 N 028 16.38 E, about 500 m from the town centre

Operator

Setur Marinas, part of Koc Holding, in joint venture with the Torunlar group since 2005

Ownership history

incorporated 1987 by Net Turizm and Yuksel Insaat, opened April 1989, commercial centre 1992, Torunlar GYO bought in May 2005

Berths

about 701 afloat on Setur's current page, 720 afloat and 130 ashore on the marina's own 2018 sheet, 830 total including 130 dry in agency listings

Vessel range

to 90 m LOA per Setur, with Dockwalk listing 95 m and no third source supporting it

Depths

maximum 18 m, minimum 3.5 m, on nine floating pontoons of roughly 150 m each

Mooring

Mediterranean stern-to on laid lines, 24-hour berthing assistance, two concrete-block breakwaters

VHF

channel 72 as Port Marmaris on the marina's current pages; the marina's own 2018 sheet and several directories still print channel 06

Shore power and water

metered through a service box at TRY 2.76 per kWh, water free of charge; in 2004 both were free and the supply was 220 V 16 A

Fuel

station on the inner breakwater selling at current Opet pump prices; duty-free supply to foreign yachts requires the owner to be present

Boatyard

100-tonne and 30-tonne lift and launch priced per square metre, 130 dry berths, first 10 days on the hard free with a mooring contract

Customs status

Marmaris is a Turkish port of entry; transit log valid one year and renewable, foreign yachts may remain up to five years if sailed at least once every two years

Tax

VAT on Turkish marina services rose from 1 per cent to 20 per cent on 1 September 2024; stamp duty of 0.948 per cent is added to mooring, hardstanding and lifting fees

Charter

foreign-flagged yachts can no longer embark charter guests in Turkey, per TYBA board member Ozgur Cengiz in May 2024; cabotage is reserved to Turkish flag under Law No. 815 of 1926

Airport

Dalaman 90 km by road, about 1.5 hours, 5.58 million passengers in 2025, mostly seasonal European charter with year-round service only to Istanbul

Accreditation

the marina publishes no Gold Anchor or Blue Flag rating on its own pages

A marina inside a town, under a castle

Netsel sits at 36 degrees 51.02 minutes north, 028 degrees 16.38 minutes east, on the eastern side of Marmaris Bay in Mugla province, south-west Turkey. Setur puts the town centre 500 m away and the marmaris.org guide calls it a two-minute walk, which is the honest description: this is an urban marina, not a resort compound with a gate and a shuttle bus. You step off the pontoon into a shopping arcade of about forty brand stores, and out of the far side into the bazaar. The bus station is 1.5 km away by the marina's own 2018 spec sheet.

Directly above the berths is Marmaris Castle, which Suleiman the Magnificent rebuilt from scratch in 1522 as a garrison and staging base for the Ottoman campaign against Rhodes. The 1957 earthquakes destroyed most of the town and left the castle and the old houses around it standing; restoration started in 1979 and it is now a museum of seven galleries, with concerts on the grounds in spring and autumn. Immediately east of the marina is the Marmaris cruise port, where the ships berth and the Rhodes and Symi ferries leave from. That proximity is the whole character of the place: a berth here is in the middle of a working tourist town of about 98,000 people that multiplies in July, not in a private estate.

What the marina holds, and how much it has grown

Setur's current page gives 701 berths afloat and a maximum of 90 m LOA, on nine floating pontoons of roughly 150 m each, with a maximum depth of 18 m and a minimum of 3.5 m. The marina's own 2018 specification sheet gave 720 afloat and 130 ashore. Agency listings that draw on the marina's material describe 830 berths in total of which 130 are dry. The numbers to work with are therefore about 700 to 720 in the water and 130 on the hard, and you should not treat any single published figure as exact. Dockwalk lists the maximum at 95 m against Setur's 90 m, and no third source supports 95, so 90 m is the figure to plan against.

The growth is worth seeing because it explains the shape of the place. Netsel's own website in 2002 and 2004 described two concrete-block breakwaters enclosing about one hectare, berthing for yachts to 40 m LOA, all-weather protection for over 750 yachts, Swedish patented floating concrete pontoons anchored to concrete blocks, 220 volt 16 amp electricity and fresh water free of charge at every service box, 120 toilets and showers, a 20-tonne slip hoist and a 120-tonne travel lift. The maximum length has more than doubled since, the free electricity has become metered, and the pontoon system is the same idea scaled up. Mooring is Mediterranean stern-to on laid lines with 24-hour berthing assistance.

The last tariff Netsel published with a currency on it was in euros in 2018; the lira table that replaced it carries no date and does not reconcile with what visitors report paying.

Who built it, who owns it, and the Camper and Nicholsons question

Netsel Turizm Yatirimlari A.S. was incorporated in 1987 by two partners, Net Turizm and the contractor Yuksel Insaat. The marina opened in April 1989 once the port works were finished, and the commercial centre and the administration building followed in 1992. By the company's own account roughly 95 per cent of the physical works were built by the Turkish state's Directorate-General of Railways, Ports and Airports Construction rather than by the operator, which is unusual and is why the breakwaters are of a scale a private developer would not have paid for. The operator's own material describes Netsel as one of the first facilities in Turkey to offer modern marina service and as the main marina in Marmaris since it opened. Yotters found no independent source for either claim, and both are the kind of thing a marina says about itself.

Torunlar GYO bought into the shares in May 2005, and from that year the marina has been run as a joint venture between Setur Marinalari and the Torunlar group, with the Koc-side vehicle being Tek-Art Kalamis ve Fenerbahce Marmara Turizm Tesisleri A.S. Setur is part of Koc Holding and now runs 13 or more marinas with over 6,000 berths, including Mytilini in Greece. On Camper and Nicholsons: Yotters could find no record, in the marina's own current or archived material or in any independent source, of Camper and Nicholsons Marinas ever holding a management or operating contract at Netsel. Camper and Nicholsons Marinas does operate in Turkey, but its marina there is Cesme, up the coast in Izmir province. If you have heard the two names together, that is the connection, and it is not this marina.

The paperwork: transit log, blue card, and the licence that matters

Every foreign-flagged yacht entering Turkey takes a transit log at the first port of entry, and Marmaris is one. It is valid one year, renewable, and it is cancelled when the yacht leaves for a foreign port, when the owner changes, or when the owner or captain leaves the boat in a marina for lay-up. The process is now largely digital through e-Transitlog: you file the yacht, owner and crew data online, then take originals to the harbourmaster and collect approvals from health, passport police and customs. Published 2025 costs run around EUR 70 for the document plus a length-based charge of roughly TRY 2,600 for a 10 to 15 m yacht, and fees are reset annually. Anyone aboard who is not on the transit log is not legal.

The second document is the waste record. The long-running Blue Card scheme, which logged every black and bilge water pump-out to a shore facility, was folded into the fully digital Maritime Waste Application, the DAU, some years ago: the ministry closed the old Ship Waste Tracking System, GATS, and the old Blue Card System, MKS, on 1 May 2020 and moved every coastal province onto DAU, which is reached through the integrated environment portal ECBS. Each vessel carries a unique record and every pump-out is logged electronically; existing Blue Card numbers carried over. The regime is current rather than new, and the ministry's own DAU guidance has been revised since. Enforcement is by port captain and coast guard and it is uneven by region, but in the Gocek bays immediately east of here boats without grey and black water tanks have been barred from anchoring, and Turkish pollution fines were raised sharply from 1 January 2025. The third piece is the one nobody thinks about until it bites: a foreign-flagged yacht can only be left in a marina that holds a valid marina licence from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. In 2020 one Marmaris marina lost its licence and the boats left in it were caught by that rule.

Cabotage, charter and the VAT that changed in 2024

Turkish cabotage is governed by Law No. 815, in force since 1 July 1926, which reserves commercial carriage of goods and passengers between Turkish ports to Turkish citizens and Turkish-flagged vessels. For a private yacht the practical expression of that is simple: a foreign-flagged yacht in Turkish waters is there for travel, leisure or sport, the owner is expected to be aboard, and carrying paying guests is prohibited without ministry approval. Duty-free fuel for a foreign yacht is likewise conditioned on the owner being present. A yacht may stay in Turkey up to five years for storage, maintenance or repair provided it is sailed at least once every two years, which is the single most useful sentence in Turkish yachting law for an owner planning a long lay-up.

Charter is where it tightened. Until recently a foreign-flagged yacht under 39 m could embark charter guests in Turkey on a cruising permit charged at EUR 36 a metre, described as a contribution to the Ministry of Tourism. Ozgur Cengiz of 4U Yachting, a TYBA board member, set out in May 2024 that foreign-flagged yachts can no longer take charter clients from Turkey at all; a yacht under 39 m with a Greek charter licence can take clients from Greece, cruise Turkish waters and go back to Greece for embarkation, and it is also possible for such a yacht to disembark in Turkiye on payment of the EUR 36 a metre fee; a yacht over 39 m can apply for a Turkish charter licence, which he says some owners regard as too costly to make Turkiye worth considering. Separately, and this is what actually moved berth prices, VAT on marina services in Turkey went from 1 per cent to 20 per cent on 1 September 2024. Before that date VAT applied only to marina fees under TRY 100; after it, mooring, lift and launch and the rest carry the full rate.

The wintering market, which is the real business here

Cruising guides and the marina alike describe Marmaris as having the largest winter liveaboard community in the Mediterranean, though Yotters found no published count behind it. Netsel is a licensed marina, which is the thing that matters for a lay-up: as at 2020, when one Marmaris marina lost its licence, the two licensed marinas in the town were Albatros Marina and Netsel. Yotters has not re-checked the Ministry of Culture and Tourism list for 2026, so verify it before you sign. The reasons are structural rather than promotional. The bay is deeply enclosed and backed by pine mountains, so it is a genuinely quiet place to leave a boat; Turkish law allows the five-year stay; the town keeps functioning through winter because 98,000 people live in it; and the trade base is deep, with sailmakers, riggers, engine and electrical specialists, carpenters and painters within a few kilometres. Winter temperatures average 10 to 11 degrees Celsius, so a boat is habitable without heroics, and the marina's shore facilities, pool and shopping arcade stay open.

The tariff is built for exactly this. Setur prices mooring as LOA multiplied by beam multiplied by days multiplied by a unit price, with a minimum billed area of 24 square metres, and the unit price steps down through 30, 60, 90 and on to 365-day contracts. The 365-day unit is about 79 per cent below the daily unit in every size band, which is a much steeper long-stay discount than a Western Mediterranean marina offers and is the arithmetic behind the wintering trade. Hardstanding requires a mooring contract, the first ten days on the hard are free, and after that the surcharge is 30 per cent of the equivalent mooring rate. Living aboard while ashore needs the marina administration's approval in writing under the business regulation.

What it costs, and why the published tariff will not tell you

The last Netsel tariff published with a currency attached to it was in euros. The archived 2018 price page priced the smallest band, 24 to 59.99 square metres, at EUR 1.458 per square metre per day for a daily stay, falling to EUR 0.307 for a twelve-month contract, and the largest band above 180 square metres at EUR 1.900 falling to EUR 0.421. For a 13 m yacht of 4.2 m beam, 54.6 square metres, that was about EUR 80 a night or EUR 6,120 for a year. The current page publishes the same table in Turkish lira with no tariff date and no currency symbol on the mooring rows, showing 12,718 for a daily stay in the smallest band down to 2,679 at 365 days. The punctuation is the problem. Read as decimals, TRY 12.718 per square metre per day, the printed figures come out at roughly a tenth of what visitors report actually paying when applied to the marina's own formula; read with a thousands separator, TRY 12,718, the same table is about seventy times too high. Neither reading reconciles, so the table cannot be used as a quote and you should ask for one in writing.

What is unambiguous is everything around the berth. Lift and launch is TRY 163.75 per square metre on the 100-tonne lift and TRY 121.65 on the 30-tonne, halved for a survey or displacement lift; hull wash is TRY 21.59 per square metre; a propeller change is TRY 41.48 per square metre on the big lift. Electricity through the service box is TRY 2.76 per kWh and the magnetic card is TRY 56.14. Water and solid waste are free of charge, and so is parking for berth holders and operational towing; commercial towing is TRY 262.30 an hour. Bilge water, domestic waste water and waste oil pump-out are all TRY 68.32 per cubic metre. An outside technician pays TRY 262.00 a day for entry and a second technician TRY 224.57. Fuel is sold at current Opet pump prices at the station on the inner breakwater. Stamp duty of 0.948 per cent is added on top of mooring, hardstanding and lifting fees.

Weather, and what the bay does and does not protect you from

The dominant summer wind on this coast is the meltemi, the etesian, which blows from about mid-May to mid-September, strengthens through the afternoon and often drops at night, and reaches force 7 to 8 at its worst. It is a northerly system across the Aegean that turns north-westerly in the southern basin, and Marmaris sits at the corner where the Aegean meets the Mediterranean, so the bay takes it obliquely rather than head on. The marina adds two concrete-block breakwaters on top of a bay that is already almost land-locked, and both the operator and independent guides describe it as one of the safest shelters on the Turkish coast against bad weather. Cruising guides warn that the wind usually dies as you come into the bay, so plan on motoring the last stretch.

The seasonal picture is less comfortable than the shelter suggests. July and August peak around 35 degrees Celsius with a record of 45.5 degrees, which in a berth surrounded by a town and a hillside means air conditioning and shore power rather than a breeze. Annual rainfall is about 1,257 mm, most of it between November and February, so a winter here is mild but genuinely wet. Approaching from the east, cruising guides flag a submerged rock marked by a buoy that has been known to drift, and there is a submarine base to be passed outside the island. Entrance lights on the marina's own specification were Fl.R 6 sec, 8 m, 5 M and F.G 4 m, 2 M.

The honest downside

The first problem is noise. Marmaris bar street runs immediately behind the waterfront and the clubs on it are loud until very late in July and August. Cruising guides advise taking a berth or an anchorage towards the south and south-east of the bay if you want to sleep. The second is price trajectory. A cruiser reported to Noonsite in October 2024 that a 13 m yacht paid TRY 45,000 for five nights, TRY 9,000 or about EUR 242 a night, having found the marina pleasant five years earlier, and remarked that it was no better maintained than dozens of other marinas he had used. On the same trip Ece Marina at Fethiye charged TRY 4,200 a night, less than half. Netsel is priced as the premium marina on this coast and reads that way to visitors who have somewhere to compare it with.

The third is access. Dalaman is 90 km away, an hour and a half by road, and it handled 5.58 million passengers in 2025 on a schedule that is heavily seasonal European charter with year-round service essentially only to Istanbul. There is no long-haul, and in winter the timetable thins to very little. The fourth is that Netsel is a berthing and retail marina rather than a heavy-refit yard: the lift capacity is 100 tonnes and the serious hardstanding acreage is at Marmaris Yacht Marina, 8 km by road and about 2 nautical miles by sea. The fifth is the contractor economics. A cruiser reported to Noonsite that outside contractors working inside the marina pay a 17 per cent commission to the operator, and that quotes for yard work came back at South of France levels; the town chandleries by contrast are well stocked and cheap. Finally, the cruising ground: Marmaris is superbly placed for the Gulf of Hisaronu, the Datca peninsula, Gocek and the Dodecanese, and it is a long way from anywhere else. Rhodes is next door but it is another country and another clearance.

Para quién es: An owner who wants a five-year Turkish base with a deep trade town at the end of the pontoon and a very steep long-contract discount, and who does not mind sleeping two hundred metres from a nightclub strip in August or budgeting for a berth whose price is not published.