Turkey Visa

How are you arriving in Turkey? Buy it at the airport if that is your point of entry.

I’m flying to Rome, Athens, and final stop is Istanbul. All via flights. It’s really that easy to just buy upon arrival? I thought it was something that took a couple weeks/months beforehand and you need before departing to Turkey?

Save yourself another potentially long line to stand in and just apply for the Turkish e--VISA online, it should be very straightforward. Use only the official government website and read the FAQs in case you have any Qs.

Thank you Agnes. Yes the last thing I want entering another country is to stand in another wait to get a visa.

You're welcome, good luck and happy and safe travels. I assume that you're actually going to be spending time in Turkey and leaving the airport, not just transiting through?

Absolutely. Trip isn’t until April, but doing 4 days each in Rome, Athens, and Istanbul.

We did the e-VISA online about 4 months ago before going to Turkey. It took about 10 minutes to obtain.

You have received some bad advice on this thread. You should ONLY buy your Visa online through the official Turkish government e-visa website: www.evisa.gov.tr Buying it through any other party will cost you more, there is no guarantee you’re dealing with a honest e-visa broker, and you could be revealing your personal information to an organization that should not have it. Only the government of Turkey should be obtaining your info. I entered Turkey in May and again in July . While entering at the massive IST Airport, you will not find the place to buy your visa-on-arrival at the airport as there is no signage saying where it is located. Some believe this is deliberate because the government charges $50 for the e-visa + $1.50 service fee and the visa-on-arrival costs $30. It’s in the government’s interest to collect more, rather than less, money from tourists.
which may be why others on this board reported they also could not find the visa-on-arrival desk at IST Airport.
The airport receives the second highest number of international passengers IN THE WORLD. So , if you ever were to find the Visa desk at IST airport, the line to buy it is going to be a very, very long line— not something most people want to spend their time doing to save $20.

I bought one online recently. But I almost got scammed by a fake site. Correct government site is
https://www.evisa.gov.tr/en/

Check your dates of travel. You cannot buy this to far in advance. I think it was 90 days before your entry.

I printed out several copies and have it on my phone. It took a few minutes online.

My additional advice is to set your earliest entry date on the Visa to be a few days before your scheduled flight. If your flight is canceled, you could choose to rebook on an earlier date without having to buy a new Visa. Since the Visa is valid for 180 days, the loss of a few days on the back end is unlikely to affect most travelers.

What surprised us is no one ever asked to see our visa which was simple on-line. You print it after completing the form and paying the fee, lowest of numerous visas we have purchased over time. Has anyone ever arrived and NOT bought a visa?

Save yourself a huge hassle and get your Visa ahead of time via the correct government website. That new airport in Istanbul is so massive and, as others have stated, the signage is horrible. If you're like a lot of people and try to get 10,000 steps in a day, you could probably do it just trying to find your way around that airport ( a slight, but not huge, exageration).

I posted my own thread of what happened a few days ago. The official website is almost completely useless. I spent hours and hours on 3 different devices and finally got 1 group of visas. Then paid for another group and never got an email with the visas, or any access again.

Luckily they were entered into the system and when you appear before the immigration police they just need your passport and they look it up on their computer. So I did not need to show the PDF they sent.

Before getting to that point of the airport there was a visa office open (about 11:45 pm) that sold visa for Americans on paper for $30 (compared to the $51.25 on the evisa.gov.tr non-functional site)

Applied for visas on 11/30 and received them (email) on 12/1. Cost was about $100 per person.

Definitely get the visa online. Only use the government website Kenko supplied. Cost is about $50 per person. If you pay far more than that, you are not on the correct website. Since you type in your passport number, name, DOB, etc to obtain an eVisa, Passport Control at the Istanbul Airport will know you have the eVisa. If they do not ask for the hardcopy, it just means they already have your eVisa info in the computer system. They do not forget to ask you… they already know.

As someone else suggested, type in your arrival date as a few days earlier than your arrival date. That gives you flexibility in case of travel changes.

Our flight to Sophia bulgaria next august takes us first to IST where we have a four hr layover before our connecting flight to sophia. After our best of bulgaria tour is over we will immediately fly to istanbul for our best of turkey tour. When we apply for our Turkey visa, we dont include the earlier date into turkey IST do we since its just a layover at the airport. We wont leave the airport.

Also any advice as to which airport to fly into, IST or SAW, after Best of Turkey tour ends? The bus will take us after breakfast to the Izmir airport (ADB). I think SAW is a lot smaller and probably easier to get around in to connect to our flight to Miami but there are a lot fewer flights from SAW to MIA than from IST to MIA. A flight thru SAW is cheaper though. My concern is what if you miss your flight at SAW and theres just not that many flights from SAW to MIA? how easy and quickly can you get from SAW to IST if you missed your flight but need to run to IST to catch one to MIA?

Just purchased my visa. Bought it through the official government website. https://www.evisa.gov.tr/ $51.50 took 5 minutes to complete. Thanks everyone!