mcboulder

So, we see that starting in April 2014, Turkey requires a Visa prior to entry and it is quick and easy to do online. However, we are unable to get our twins' Visas as their passports expire at the end of September -- approx. 110 days AFTER our return. Has anyone run across this? It did not occur to us to renew passports that don't expire for over 3 months after our return. Any insight would be helpful. We depart in a week! Thanks!

nytraveler

Many countries require you to have passports that extend at least 6 months past the end of your trip. Apparently Turkey is now one of them.

If you check emergency passport services online you may be able to find one that can do this for you - but expect it to be expensive - and hope you live near a passport office. (I got one in 3 days when needed for a trip and didn't realize my old one was expiring - but it took 6 hours at the passport office and I had to show my plane ticket to prove it was an emergency.)

Croesus

"You are kindly advised to have a travel document/passport valid for at least 6 months as from the date of your arrival in Turkey."
http://www.mfa.gov.tr/visa-informati...eigners.en.mfa

I think you will need to renew them immediately.

lauren_s_kahn

You need to renew the twins' passports NOW.

DanielHurwicz

Travel Tips For Turkey here > http://www.ephesustoursguide.com/tra.../visa-passport

mcboulder

Thanks - with a bit of added stress, we got this done in the middle of finals to boot! We got back about 5 days ago from a fabulous trip to Turkey. The people were wonderful and we never had a bad experience at all. Evidently, the weather was unusual for that time of year, a bit cool and rainy, but it was perfect for being a tourist. We spent 4 days in Istanbul, 3 days in Cappadocia, 1 day in Ephesus and 3 days in Yalikavik on the Bodrum peninsula. We did take advantage of a guide for 1 day in each of Istanbul, Cappadocia and Ephesus. All of our guides were arranged by Ali Yalniz and they were great. His website is www.tourali.com. All spoke English very well and came with ideas of what to visit, but always asked what we wanted to see or do. We usually ended up with a mix of their ideas and ours. We went to restaurants for lunch that we would have never found and where the proprietors didn't speak English, which we found fun. Our teens really liked having the guides and each of them engaged beautifully with our kids. They even had a great lunch discussion on the politics and electoral processes of Turkey and the US. We had originally not planned to have a guide in Cappadocia, but after our positive experience in Istanbul, asked Ali to set one up for us.

lauren_s_kahn

Glad you had a great time in Turkey. I'll be there on the 4th of July. Right now I am in the middle of a home exchange in Warsaw. I go from Warsaw to Belarus and then to Turkey.

Glad the visa business worked out for you as well. When your passport gets close to 6 months left, it's time to renew. Lots of countries have the 6 months rule.