How much, if anything, can I get in compensation for being wrongly denied boarding on a flight Turkey-Italy?

Question

A while ago I was supposed to fly from Istanbul to Milan-Bergamo with Pegasus, but was refused boarding due to misinformation on travel documentation IATA's Italian government sources supplied for a short while (it's been corrected since, when I alerted my IATA contact of the incident).

The thing is, I called the border police at Bergamo, who sent a clearance via SITA Telex to the Pegasus supervisors at the transfer desk that I could fly. However, although the gate agent was made aware of it, he refused to acknowledge it or to speak to the Italian border police, and nonchalantly (and sadistically - he was smirking at me) denied me boarding.

The fact that the Italians sent a clearance to Pegasus before departure saying I could fly makes me think Pegasus made an error, and that I should therefore be eligible for compensation, as I had to wait 24 hours for the flight to Zurich I was re-booked onto.

Am I eligible for compensation? If so, how much and how do I go about applying for it?

UPDATE: Pegasus ended up giving me PegasusPlus flight points worth the amount I had to spend on food, accommodation and public transport during the extra day in Istanbul. As I was re-booked for free (because the SITA Telex message from the Italian border police made the supervisors realise that the Timatic error was indeed an error), that's definitely good enough for me.

UPDATE 2 Turkey has introduced regulations influenced by EC261, meaning EC261 compensation applies even when departing from outside EU/Schengen. As such I was able to retroactively claim €400 for the incorrect denied boarding

Answer 1

UPDATE: EC261-based regulations do now apply in Turkey

Before:

You would have to claim under any compensation frameworks issued by Turkey (I cant find any that assist you) or contained within Pegasus airlines own conditions of carriage (again, not good news), as EU 261 rules do not apply here - Pegasus Airlines is a non-EU airline and you were flying into the EU, so EU 261 does not apply here.

As to whether you have grounds for compensation, that's a difficult one to answer and you will probably struggle to establish a case with the airline for them to compensate you. They are not obligated to rely on unsolicited third party messages supposedly from Italian authorities granting permission for the passenger to fly - if they themselves had contacted the Italian authorities and been given permission that way, that's a different issue.

Answer 2

UPDATE TUrkey has introduced regulations influenced by EC261, meaning EC261 compensation applies even when departing from outside EU/Schengen.

As such I was able to retroactively claim €400 for the incorrect denied boarding

Answer 3

If I was you, I would issue a chargeback with your bank, for service that was paid for but not provided. This assumes you could not do any leg of your journey.

It is not the airlines's fault that they could not take you on board. But there's zero reason why you should pay for a flight that you couldn't make use of.

You lost real money. All the airline can ever claim is missed profit from the extra chair on the plane. Which could be not empty given their eagerness to deny boarding.