Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
Data from a government printing office indicates that Turkey has significantly exceeded the reported issuance of special passports, which grant short-term, visa-free access to the European Union and various other countries. This discrepancy suggests the existence of an undisclosed official initiative aimed at circumventing visa regulations and restrictions for Turkish nationals, raising growing concerns about security, fraud and misuse.
According to the latest data from the General Directorate of the Mint and Stamp Printing House (Darphane ve Damga Matbaası Genel Müdürlüğü, DDM), which issues official passports, Turkey printed 1,407,200 special passports (hususi pasaport in Turkish, commonly known as *yeşil* due to its green cover) in 2024. The highest record was set in 2023, when the DDM issued 1,816,700 special passports.
Given that only 200,000 special passports were issued in 2010, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has significantly expanded their distribution, seemingly as part of a covert effort to circumvent visa restrictions imposed on Turkish nationals by the EU and other countries.
The government has never officially disclosed the exact number of special passports in circulation. However, various reported figures — sometimes attributed to officials — suggest that the number may have reached around 2 million at some point.
However, given that the DDM has has printed millions of special passports in recent years, the reported figure of 2 million appears to be a significant underestimation — even when accounting for newly issued passports replacing expired or lost ones as well as those set aside for future use.
Citing DDM data, some Turkish media outlets reported that the number of special passport holders had reached 6,929,100 by the end of 2024. Notably, for the first time in December 2024, the issuance of special passports surpassed that of ordinary passports, marking an unprecedented milestone.
The monthly statistics released by the DDM confirm that the increase in passport numbers in recent years has been a consistent trend, although the data do not specify the breakdown between special passports and those in other categories. According to the figures, the DDM printed 7,957,030 passports in 2023 and 6,175,660 in 2024. The trend has continued into this year, with reported figures for January and February standing at 381,650 and 200,000, respectively.
In stark contrast to these large figures, the DDM printed only 694,060 passports in 2018 and issued no passports in 2019 and 2020, according to the annual performance reports reviewed by Nordic Monitor.
The undisclosed government policy of expanding the coverage of special passports for private citizens has raised security concerns abroad, prompting some countries to bolster their vigilance of holders of such passports. In certain instances, this has led to the denial of entry to individuals suspected of fraud or blatant abuse of visa-free travel privileges.
The General Directorate of the Mint and Stamp Printing House (Darphane ve Damga Matbaası Genel Müdürlüğü, DDM), which issues official passports, publishes data on the number of passports printed each year:
passport_print_data_Turkey
The issue extends beyond just special passports. The Erdogan government introduced a new category called the service passport (*Hizmet pasaportu* in Turkish, or *gri pasaport*). Although separate from internationally recognized diplomatic passports, the service passport essentially functions as another type of special passport, intended for individuals carrying out official duties. In practice, however, service passports have also been issued to private citizens.
Although not as problematic as special passports, service passports — issued in limited numbers and required to be returned to the interior ministry after travel — still present challenges for Turkey. In 2020 over 40 Turkish nationals who were provided with service passports by Malatya province’s Yeşilyurt district municipality were sent to Hannover, Germany, ostensibly to attend an environmental workshop hosted by a German company. None of them returned.
It was later revealed that the project was a scam, and that the municipality was aware of its fraudulent nature but still endorsed the travel as official in order to obtain service passports for Turks who had no intention of returning to Turkey. Similar passport scams were uncovered in other Turkish municipalities, with reports alleging that applicants paid between 5,000 to 8,000 euros to obtain service passports through these channels.
According to a statement by then-interior minister Süleyman Soylu, 804 out of 2,872 people who traveled to Europe as part of groups from municipalities after 2018 did not return, despite their service passports expiring.
The potential use of special passports by criminal figures, terrorists or individuals seeking permanent resettlement abroad by bypassing immigration rules complicates security checks. This situation necessitates in-depth screening at border crossings, resulting in long delays and occasional entry refusals for Turkish nationals.
Some individuals who have acquired Turkish citizenship through the Erdogan government’s fast-tracked and facilitated golden residency programs are also eligible to obtain special passports since they appear to meet all the criteria outlined on the interior ministry website.
This situation is alarming because Turkey’s golden visa and residency programs have enabled notorious organized crime figures and jihadist militants to acquire Turkish citizenship through property purchases, company establishments or takeovers and by laundering illegal proceeds through the Turkish financial and banking systems. Some individuals have even gone so far as to change their names to Turkish ones in an effort to evade detection and become eligible for special passports.
Senior figures from Hamas, designated as a terrorist group by both the US and the EU, as well as international fugitives sought under outstanding INTERPOL Red Notices, have acquired Turkish citizenship with the approval of President Erdogan through investments in real estate and business ventures.
In January 2017 the Erdogan government launched a golden residency program that allowed foreigners to acquire Turkish citizenship by purchasing real estate valued at $1 million or investing $2 million in a business. A year later, these thresholds were reduced to $250,000 for real estate purchases and $500,000 for business investments. In response to criticism from the opposition, the government raised the property purchase limit to $400,000 in May 2022.
According to a statement from the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change in April 2022, 19,630 foreigners acquired Turkish citizenship through this program between 2018 and 2021, with the majority coming from Russia, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. No updated figures have been provided by the government since then. In addition to this, 238,768 Syrian refugees acquired Turkish citizenship according to a government communication office statement in August 2024.
Initially, special passports were issued to a select group of government officials, including senior public sector employees, members of parliament and mayors, to facilitate official travel abroad. However, these passports increasingly came to be used for personal and leisure travel. Simultaneously, the Turkish government broadened the eligibility criteria, granting special passports to a wider group of individuals.
In 2017 the Erdogan government expanded eligibility for special passports to include managers and owners of companies exporting at least $1 million in goods or services. As a result, more than 22,000 exporters qualified for these passports. Two years later, the threshold was reduced to $500,000, and the requirement for a consistent export volume over the previous three years was removed, further extending eligibility to thousands more businesspeople.
By November 2023 President Erdogan announced that approximately 35,000 exporters had received special passports. In January 2025 Turkish Commerce Minister Ömer Bolat said the government planned to issue an additional 8,500 special passports to exporters this year.
In 2019 the Erdogan government further expanded the special passport program by granting lawyers with 15 years of experience the right to apply. This change followed lobbying efforts by Metin Feyzioğlu, then-head of the Turkish Bar Association (TBB), a staunchly anti-Western neo-nationalist and Erdogan ally. As a result 40,000 lawyers — including attorneys from extreme left, far-right and jihadist backgrounds — became eligible for special passports.
The total number of individuals eligible to apply for a special passport has increased exponentially, as the privilege extends to immediate family members, including the applicant’s spouse and adult children under the age of 25.
Now, professional groups in the media and pharmaceutical and medical industries as well as doctors, notaries public, financial consultants, accountants and tour guides, among others, are also seeking the privilege of obtaining a special passport. Many are actively lobbying lawmakers to secure this benefit.
Draft laws have been introduced in parliament to further expand the scope of special passports. In June 2016 a lawmaker submitted a bill proposing that approximately 50,000 muhtars (locally elected administrators overseeing neighborhoods or villages) be granted eligibility. More recently, in March 2024, Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş proposed extending special passport privileges to journalists with at least 15 years of experience.
In January 2025 Turkish Education Minister Yusuf Tekin announced that the government plans to extend special passport eligibility to teachers in privately run schools. Public school employees are already eligible to apply for special passports provided they meet certain criteria.
The number of special passports has also been a point of negotiation between Turkey and the EU for some time. Multiple reports and official statements suggest that both parties agreed to cap the number of special passports at 2 million. During parliamentary deliberations in October 2019, ruling party deputy Ali Özkaya, who co-sponsored the bill granting special passports to lawyers, said Turkey had already issued 1.7 million out of the 2 million quota allocated for special passports.
In May 2023 then-interior minister Soylu stated that “there is a certain number [of special passports] allocated to us by countries worldwide. We are about to exceed this number. In fact, we can say that we have already exceeded it.”
Performance report for 2024 shows that the General Directorate of the Mint and Stamp Printing House has increased the production of Turkish passports over the years;
passport_print_2021_2023
Soylu said the foreign ministry had been critical of the increased number of special passports. “God forbid that we face a situation where all special passports might be converted into ordinary passports,” he added.
In July 2013 then-foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu warned that expanding the eligibility for special passports could lead to their use beyond their intended purpose. He said issuing such passports to individuals other than official personnel could result in other countries’ authorities limiting the privileges associated with these passports or even imposing visa requirements on their holders.
The ease of travel afforded by special passports has also fueled demand for forged versions on the black market. In September 2022 a police raid in Istanbul uncovered counterfeit special passports in the possession of people suspected of involement in forgery schemes and human smuggling networks.
The EU has yet to take any bloc-wide action against Turkey regarding the abuse of special passports, other than individual member states increasing their scrutiny. Turkey is not included in the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS), which is expected to be operational by the last quarter of 2026. The ETIAS will introduce new rules for visa-free travel to Europe’s 30 states, requiring travelers to obtain prior authorization from the EU before beginning their journey. As of now, 59 countries and territories are included in the list, but Turkey is not among them.
