The Turkey visa from Pakistan

The short answer. A Pakistani passport needs a visa for Turkey. The online e-visa exists but it is conditional: you qualify only if you already hold a valid, unused visa or residence permit for the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland or a Schengen country. Everybody else applies for a sticker visa through the Turkish mission. Most of the disappointment we see in this office comes from people who read "e-visa" and assumed it applied to them.

Turkey is the holiday Pakistan takes. Istanbul, Cappadocia, Antalya, and more honeymoons than anywhere else on this list. It is also the country where the visa question is most often answered wrongly on the internet, because the answer has a condition attached and the condition gets left off.

The e-visa, and the condition nobody mentions

Turkey runs an online e-visa at evisa.gov.tr. For many nationalities it is a simple form and a card payment. For a Pakistani ordinary passport it is not open on its own terms.

You may apply for the e-visa only if you hold a valid and unused visa or residence permit from the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland or one of the Schengen countries. Hold one of those, and the e-visa route gives you a single entry of up to thirty days.

Points people get wrong about that condition:

• Unused matters. A Schengen visa you have already travelled on may not

satisfy it. The condition is written around a visa that is still live and

not yet consumed, and the exact reading has changed before.

• An expired one does not count. A UK visa from four years ago is not a

qualifying document.

• A residence permit does count, which is why overseas Pakistanis living

in the UK or Europe almost always take this route.

The sticker visa, which is the normal route

If you do not hold one of those documents, and most people applying from Karachi do not, you apply for an ordinary sticker visa through the Turkish mission in Pakistan. That is an application with documents and an appointment, not a form you fill in on a phone.

What that file looks like:

• Passport with the validity and blank pages the mission requires on the day.
• Photographs to their specification.
• Your return booking and your hotel bookings for the whole stay.
• Bank statements, usually six months, and your employment or business papers.
• Travel insurance.
• For a child, the birth certificate and consent from a parent who is not

travelling.

It is the same shape as any serious visitor file: who you are, who is paying, where you are staying, and what you are coming back to.

Who goes, and when

Honeymoons, which is most of the summer traffic, and which is why Istanbul and Cappadocia appear in the same itinerary so often.

Families, usually six to ten days, usually Istanbul plus one more place.

Traders, to the textile and machinery markets, where the file leans on the company papers and an invitation from the Turkish side.

The seasons matter more in Turkey than in most places. Cappadocia in January is a different country from Cappadocia in July, and the balloons do not fly in bad weather whatever the brochure says. We would rather tell you that before you book than afterwards.

I keep reading that Turkey is visa free for Pakistanis. Is it?

No, not for an ordinary Pakistani passport. Diplomatic and official passports have different arrangements, and that is where the confusion in those articles comes from. If you hold an ordinary green passport, you need a visa, and the only question is whether you qualify for the online one or need the sticker.

I have a Schengen visa. Does that get me the e-visa?

It is the condition the e-visa is built around, yes, provided it is valid and meets the terms on the day you apply. Because the exact reading of "valid and unused" has changed before, we check your specific visa against the current condition rather than assuming. If it does not qualify, the sticker route is still there and nothing is lost but a few days.

How long before the trip should I apply?

Six to eight weeks for the sticker visa in a normal month, and longer for the summer and the Eid holidays, when the appointment calendar fills before the hotels do. If you qualify for the e-visa the timeline is much shorter, but do not leave it to the last week: a declined online application still has to become a sticker application, and that takes the time it always took.

Can you book the whole trip, not just the visa?

Yes, and the tours page has the Turkey departures with their prices on it. Istanbul on its own, Istanbul with Antalya, Istanbul with Cappadocia, and the longer Grand Turkey itinerary that takes in all three.

Before you pay anything

Turkey's conditions for Pakistani applicants have been revised more than once, and the e-visa condition is the part that moves. We confirm the current position with the mission before every submission rather than trusting any list, including this one.

Send us the passports and tell us whether anybody in the party holds a US, UK, Irish or Schengen visa or residence permit. That one answer decides which route the whole family takes.