Turkish Embassy ‘expect’ country will be moved to amber list this week

In a statement to Sky New, the Turkish Embassy in London has said it expects Turkey to be removed from the UK’s travel red list later this week.

Stating “The scientific data on COVID-19 support our expectation that Turkey will be removed from the red list at the upcoming review,”

Turkey has been on the red list since May 12, meaning almost all travel from the country to the UK is banned.

It said in a statement that case numbers in the country are falling and are now lower than those in the UK.

The embassy cited data from Our World In Data, which shows that the seven-day rolling average for new cases in Turkey is 232.46 per 100,000 people, while in the UK it is 464.76.

It argues that Turkey has improved its genomic sequencing and continues to make progress with its Covidvaccination programme, with more than half of adults in the country having received two doses.

The embassy also pointed to the EU’s recent acceptance of COVID certificates issued in Turkey and the fact that a range of countries already allow quarantine-free travel from Turkey if travellers are fully vaccinated as further evidence as to why the country should be taken off the red list

“We expect the UK to take into account all these developments and remove Turkey from the red list this week,” the embassy said.