16 New Turkish Visa Centres

 In a major push to attract more tour­ists, the Turkish Embassy and VFS Global have announced plans to launch new visa application centres in 16 Indian cities. The centres will provide professional staff with local language capabilities to handle queries and applications. An automated queue system for applications will be implemented, and centres will also offer a dedicated website and door-step passport delivery services, the Turkish Ambassador to India, Dr Burak Akcapar an­nounced. “I am confident that these centres will help us in achieving our aim to make the visa procedure even faster and smoother,” he said. Travellers from India will be able to apply for Turkish visas in New Delhi, Mumbai, Gurgaon, Jalandhar, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Pune, Bengaluru, Goa, Puducherry, Kochi, Trivandrum, Chennai and Hyder­abad. All the locations commenced operations on April 1, and new visa centres are also being planned in Nepal and the Maldives. Turkey is one of the top tourism destinations globally and attracted 39 million tourists last year while India contributed 130,000 visitors, which was 10 per cent higher than in 2014.