visa for Europe increasingly rejected

• Nazar Mitra

  correspondent Turkey

• Gulsah Ercetin

  foreign editor

She was hired for a dream internship in Amsterdam. Last summer, Turkish sociology student Dilara Oztekin was to work for two months at the International Institute of Social History. Applying for a visa for the Netherlands was just a formality, she thought. But a few weeks after submitting all her paperwork to the visa office in Istanbul, her application was rejected.

Turks are increasingly sent home empty-handed after applying for a visa at a consulate or embassy of a European Schengen country. The number of rejections has increased significantly since 2015. 4 percent of all applications for the Schengen zone were then rejected, in 2021 that was almost 17 percent.

In the Netherlands, the number of rejections is slightly higher. Figures from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, requested by NOS, show that the refusal rate for Turkish visa applications was 20.9 percent in 2022 and 19 percent in 2021.

A big difference with 2015, when it was just under 5 percent:

There is no clear cause for the increase, says the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when asked. In any case, according to the ministry, it has nothing to do with a stricter visa policy. “Our visa policy is unchanged.”

The ministry says that the main reason for refusing a visa is that “insufficient information has been provided”. This means that documents are missing from the application or that it is not clear from the submitted papers that someone has income or housing and will therefore return to Turkey.

In Turkey it leads to a lot of frustration and misunderstanding. With Turks who have to go to Europe for work or study and with people who just want to go on holiday or visit family.

Such as headman (an elected official) Halil Kalafat from Istanbul. Three times in a row he was rejected for a visa to Germany. “I go every year to visit friends. I have all the papers and I still get rejected,” he says.

He assumed that his permanent contract would be sufficient proof that he will simply fly back to Turkey after a few days of vacation. “I lost so much money. For each application you lose about 100 euros. And the cost of airline tickets that you will not get back.”

Well-known and less well-known Turks have told what happened to her in recent months. There are also complaints about long waiting times. For example, the well-known singer Özcan Deniz had to cancel his concert in Berlin because his band members still had no response to their visa application after six weeks.

Dilara Oztekin had all the required papers in order, she says. She had an admission letter from her internship, a grant to finance her stay and already living accommodation in the Netherlands. However, her visa was rejected.

In this video, she shares what’s in the letter that disrupted her career plans:

In August, Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu said the long processing times and rejections were deliberate and politically motivated. He is said to have raised this several times with his European colleagues. The head of the EU delegation in Turkey said to Reuters news agency that visa applications are not judged on the basis of political considerations, but that incomplete or potentially fraudulent applications are more often made.

The number of Turkish visa applications for Schengen countries is increasing. A total of 3.5 million Turks will have applied for a visa by 2022, Deputy Foreign Minister Kaymakci announced last month in the Turkish press. Before the corona pandemic, that was 1 million.

Kaymakci is said to have understood from some EU ambassadors that due to the increase in the number of visa applications, the number of rejections is also higher. According to him, the high number of visa applications was mainly due to the pandemic and the then postponed applications that were added. Some EU countries indicated that they would like to address the problem.

But the opposition in Turkey blames President Erdogan’s government. “In the face of democratic decline and economic poverty, especially our young people are fleeing Turkey,” said parliamentarian Utku Cakirozer.

Former EU Turkey rapporteur and Member of Parliament Kati Piri (PvdA) suspects that the higher number of rejected visas is related to the growing number of asylum applications in the Netherlands. “Turks who are at risk because they are politically active, for example, can apply for asylum. In the Netherlands, the granting percentage is the highest of all countries.”

A large proportion of Turkish asylum seekers enter the country with an ordinary visa. That is why there is a stricter look at who all gets a visa, says Piri. “Years ago all papers were in order, but not now? There is a reason. This just smells like stricter asylum policy.”

But it should remain possible to get a visa, she thinks. “Think of people who can’t visit their families now and Turkish students who can’t come to study.”

It seems that this frustration among the Turks will not diminish. They have recently even had to apply for a visa if they go to another country via the Netherlands. They can no longer travel without a transit visa.