My wife and I will be traveling to Turkey for the last week of Septermber and the first week of October. We plan to spend three days in Istanbul and then fly to Izmir for three days in Selcuk/Cesme then fly from Izmir to Kayseri for four days in Capadocia then fly back to Istanfull for the final four days. My question has to do with making online reservations with Turkish Airlines and Sun Express. When I made Sun Express reservations for the 9/27/12 Thursday flight from Izmir to Kayseri there was no field on the online form for a middle initial. Then I read something that said that your reservation had to match exactly the way your name is presented on your passport/ID which includes our middle initials. This was my same experience when I started to fill out the online reservation form for Turkish Air for the other two legs. There was no field for middle initial. Does this mean we will have problems at the airport when they compare our passports to our online tickets/boarding passes? Does anyone have experience with this?

Put your middle name (or initial) after your first name in the space provided for first name with space in between.

Otherchelebi,
Thanks for you quick reply. I will do that with my reservations on Turkish Air for legs from IST to Izmir and from Kayseri to Sabiha Gokcen. How bad am I off for the existing flight on SunExpress from Izmir to Kayseri that I made with no middle initial? Will they keep us from flying over this?

I doubt you will have any problems. Especially if your wife is not in the same boat.

however, if she comments loudly that she does not know you and has never set eyes on you before.........

That's about half the time. I'll just keep my fingers crossed

Goose, my itinerary for 10 days in sept is a bit similar to yours. May i ask if you are planning to hire a car in izmir / selcuk and later in cappadocia. if yes, can you pls give details of agency used. it would save me time to do loads of research about rental agencies.

shwets,
We are renting a car in Izmir at the airport. I have a corporate number for Avis so I tried them first, but they had no vehicles available in any class. I ended up reserving a car for three days. We plan to spend one night in Selcuk and then two nights in Alacati. I was able to rent a care at the Kayseri airport from Avis for the 4 days in Cappadocia. sorry for the delayed response. Work is so annoying.

Great post - we have almost identical itinerary and was worried about the same thing after booking our tickets (my fiance thinks I'm nuts to be worried about this).

Has anyone had an issue with their middle name being on their passport BUT missing from their airline ticket for flight within Turkey? I generally read it shouldn't be a problem.

While booking flights please do use your full names as on passport, using nick names sometimes creates problem but forgetting one name usually does not make a big issue, a big smile at check-in desk helps a lot. Aletrantively ask your booking agent or send an e-mail to customer supprt to add a note on your ticket itinerary your full names.

Happy travels,
Murat

I have taken many internal flights in Turkey, most recently in April. My passport has my middle name, but the airline reservation did not. I had zero problems and no one even questioned it.