Turkey lifts 14-day home quarantine for visiting expats

By Zuhal Demirci

ANKARA (AA) - A 14-day home quarantine was lifted Thursday for Turkish expats visiting homeland, said a top official of a Turkish state agency.

“During the summer period, we will assist our citizens abroad who are on a journey to homeland,” said Abdullah Eren, head of Turkey’s Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB), in a statement.

With the steps taken for normalization from the coronavirus pandemic, Turkey started to ease strict measures applied to citizens traveling from abroad and executed in border crossings, according to the YTB statement.

As part of loosening of measures, transit passages for citizens traveling from European countries via land were opened, the statement said.

About 6 million Turkish citizens live in European countries. In recent years, some 700,000 expats drove to Turkey from Europe, according to the agency.

* Writing by Havva Kara Aydin