Assist. Prof Erhan Doğan

THE EFFECTS OF THE VISA PRACTICE LIMITING INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL ON THE
TRAVEL TREND AND BEHAVIOUR OF THE TURKISH CITIZENS

Since 1980s travel of Turkish nationals to European countries has been restricted via visa regimes due to the reasons mainly related with migration control. These restrictions and regulations combined with the difficulties related with the operationalization of them led to many problems and have concrete impacts and effects over Turkish citizens and their travel practices.

The presentation is based on the research project which was designated to examine the impacts of visa over Turkish society. For this end interviews were conducted with people who make visa application to consulates of Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Sweden and Poland. Next to these interviews a media review was also conducted to see the news coverage of this issue. In order to have a balanced view of the issue, we have conducted interviews with the Consul Generals or Consulars in Charge of Visa of the selected countries in Istanbul.

The link between the visa and Turkey’s European Union (EU) accession process; the already operating Customs Union; the European Court of Justice (ECJ) decisions about the stand still clause of the Additional protocol; and how these links perceived and reacted by the applicants and business community have also been investigated in this research.