With all the doom and gloom about the ex-IST OWE bookings, I though I'd chime in to say that I've finally managed to complete my booking!

Wasn't easy though:

• Sent a fax to my local BA telesales on April 3rd with my AONE3 itin and instructions to forward it to the Turkey telesales for pricing.
• Got the booking back on April 6th, priced by the local telesales with ex-Finland pricing. Called Turkey telesales directly with the PNR and asked them to reprice -- got the correct ex-Turkey price on the reservation on April 7th.
• Called on April 10th to confirm my reservation with a credit card, was told that they needed to do an address check on the card and that it would take a few days.
• A preauthorization for the price appeared on my credit card on April 12th, but no ticket numbers appeared on the booking. I called the Turkey telesales a few times every week, only to hear that everything was fine and the tickets would be issued in due course.
• Finally, on my call to the telesales on April 24th, it transpired that BA IST had been waiting for me to show up at the airport before issuing the ticket (which obviously made no sense at all given that they already had my credit card details and had authorized a charge), so I told them that I wouldn't be in Turkey any time soon. The telesales agent then had me hold a bit, and told me that my ticket would be issued in Istanbul and sent to my credit card's billing address in Finland.
• The next day, April 25th, my ticket was issued and I got a message that I'd be able to pick it up at the airport on the departure date.

So, four weeks from my initial fax to ticket numbers on the reservation. My advice: be patient, but do call them if nothing happens for a day or two: all the action above occured immediately after my calls.

Oh, and the price:

EUR 5 491.00 base fare + EUR 545.58 taxes & surcharges for

IST-LHR-ORD-SFO/JFK-LAX-DFW-JFK-BGI-JFK-HKG-NRT-HKG-SIN-HKG-LHR-MCT-LHR-IST.

Sure beats slumming it to CAI, especially since I now get the MCT round trip that wouldn't have been possible with a CAI booking.