Turkey entry ban removal starts from two facts in the statute. A Turkish entry ban lasts at most five years, and the Presidency of Migration Management (Göç İdaresi) may extend it by at most ten more years only where there is a serious threat to public order or public security (Law No. 6458 on Foreigners and International Protection, article 9/3). The same Presidency may lift the ban, or keep it on the record and still allow you to enter for a defined period (article 9/6). Waiting for the ban to run out is therefore not the only route, and often the slowest.
Who imposes a Turkish entry ban, and on what ground?
Article 9 of Law No. 6458 gives two grounds. The Presidency of Migration Management may ban the entry of a foreigner whose entry is objectionable on grounds of public order, public security or public health, after taking the views of the public bodies concerned where needed (article 9/1). And a foreigner deported from Türkiye is banned from entry by the Presidency or by the governorate (article 9/2). The ban is recorded against the person as a restriction, the tahdit, with an internal code; the code tells the border what kind of restriction it is, and the ground behind it is read from the file. Article 10 says how the ban reaches you: a ban under article 9/1 is served by the authority at the border crossing when you arrive to enter, a ban that follows a deportation is served by the governorate, and the notice must tell you how to object to it effectively and what your other rights and duties are.
Two situations need not end in a ban at all. A foreigner whose visa or residence period ran out and who applied to the governorate to leave before the authorities found the overstay may be spared a ban even though a deportation decision was taken against him, provided the administrative fine was paid and the overstay stayed inside the periods the Ministry sets (article 9/4). A foreigner invited to leave under article 56 who leaves within the period given may also be spared (article 9/5).
How long does a Turkish entry ban last?
At most five years (article 9/3). Only where there is a serious threat to public order or public security may the Presidency extend it, and then by at most ten further years. A ban that the border presents as open-ended is read against that ceiling and against the ground in the file.
Can I enter Türkiye while the ban still stands?
Yes, where the Presidency allows it. Article 9/6 lets it keep the ban and permit entry for a defined period, and in practice that permission takes the form of an annotated visa (meşruhatlı vize): the ban stays on the record, and the person enters for the stated period and purpose. We obtain it for clients under an entry ban, and they do enter. It is the instrument the statute itself provides, not a favour, and it is often the right answer for a family event, a court date, a property sale or a business that cannot wait for the ban to expire.
How is an entry ban lifted?
The Presidency of Migration Management may lift the ban (article 9/6). The application rests on the file: the ground of the ban, the circumstances of the overstay or the deportation behind it, the fines paid, the family, work and property ties in Türkiye, and the reasons the restriction no longer serves its purpose. Where the Presidency refuses, the refusal is an administrative act that can be taken to the administrative court, and a request it leaves unanswered for thirty days counts as refused (Administrative Procedure Law No. 2577, article 10/2). The ban itself can be challenged before the administrative court within sixty days of its written notice (article 7 of the same law).
What if a deportation decision sits behind the ban?
Then the deportation decision is the first document to read. Under article 53/3 the foreigner, his legal representative or his lawyer may apply to the administrative court within seven days of service of the deportation decision; while the time to apply runs, and while the case is pending, the person is not removed unless he consents, and the court decides within fifteen days of the completion of the file, by a judgment that is final. The seven days run from service, not from the removal. Where service was defective, which the administrative courts find often in these files, the period never began to run, and a deportation two or three years old can still be taken to court. What was served, on whom, in which language and against whose signature decides it, so we read the service record before anyone says the door is shut.
An entry ban the court annulled
A furniture-fair organiser was turned back at Istanbul Atatürk Airport after a risk-analysis interview on 5 January 2018, recorded as an inadmissible passenger and barred on public order and security grounds, and was turned back again when he came for a fair that October. We filed in January 2019 before an Istanbul administrative court, which sent the case to Ankara because the ban had been entered by the General Directorate of Security, and on 30 October 2019 the Ankara administrative court annulled the ban: the power to bar entry is discretionary, but it has to rest on concrete information and documents, and the interview record named none. The forum follows the authority that entered the code, so the code and the body behind it are read before the petition is written.
What the restriction code is, in the Council of State’s own decisions
The code is a data-entry record, and the decisions of the Council of State’s Tenth Chamber show what a code is said to be and who entered it. The Presidency of Migration Management told the Chamber that G-87 (“General Security”) is the code on which an entry ban is entered against a foreigner whose entry is objectionable on grounds of public order, public security or public health (21 November 2024, E.2020/4631, K.2024/5214), and described M-99 as an Interpol code for locating and identifying a person (15 October 2024, E.2022/5776, K.2024/4048). In those decisions G-87 was entered by the Presidency; G-82 by the Presidency’s directorate general for combating irregular migration and deportation (8 May 2025, E.2025/1842, K.2025/2458); Ç-138 and Ç-141, the second a five-year entry ban, by the Istanbul provincial migration directorate after the airport’s risk-analysis interview and an inadmissible-passenger record (14 January 2025, E.2025/60, K.2025/164); and V-87, a first-instance court said, by the General Directorate of Security.
Those files settle five points. A code must rest on concrete information: in the G-87 case the Chamber asked for the documents behind the code, the authorities produced no concrete information or document that would justify it, the Presidency reported every G-87 code on the person lifted, and the Chamber quashed the judgment that had upheld the ban (E.2020/4631). The code you were told of may not be on the record: in the V-87 case the Presidency and the General Directorate of Security both told the court they had entered no code against the claimant (3 February 2025, E.2025/62, K.2025/368), so the record is read before the petition names a defendant. The court is the one where the authority whose act is challenged sits (Administrative Procedure Law No. 2577, article 32): Istanbul for the Istanbul directorate’s airport codes (E.2025/60), and a suit against a code and a suit against the deportation behind it are joined before one court while both are pending (22 April 2025, E.2025/1843, K.2025/2174). An application to lift a code carries the lawyer’s power of attorney: the Istanbul directorate did not act on one filed without it (18 September 2025, E.2025/3880, K.2025/3927). The case is won in two instances: in a G-87 file the regional administrative court’s appeal decision was final, and the Chamber upheld the refusal of a further appeal (25 June 2025, E.2025/2035, K.2025/3225).
What the decisions say a code means. A few codes carry their meaning in the Chamber’s own words. In one file the act itself carried two labels, “G-Yurda Giriş Yasağı” (entry ban) and “087-Genel Güvenlik” (general security) (25 November 2020, E.2016/14905, K.2020/5409). N-82 makes a person’s entry subject to prior permission, which article 9(7) of Law No. 6458 lets the Presidency require on grounds of public order, public security or public health, and a governorship require for unpaid administrative fines and public debts; in three American nationals’ files decided on 8 June 2023 the N-82 record was followed by a cancelled short-term residence permit, a residence application refused with ten days to leave, and a deportation order, and each of those suits was joined with the suit against the N-82 act (E.2023/3149, K.2023/3371; E.2023/3217, K.2023/3370; E.2023/3241, K.2023/3372). N-78 is recorded as carrying a contagious disease (12 December 2022, E.2022/7448, K.2022/5868), as G-78 was in a record of 2000 (10 March 2021, E.2016/13120, K.2021/1053); O-100 as an asylum seeker barred from entry (22 June 2023, E.2018/2011, K.2023/4050); G-26 as unlawful organisation activity, with a deportation on the same record (16 November 2023, E.2023/4480, K.2023/7022); V-70 as a marriage of convenience and V-71 as whereabouts unknown (8 June 2022, E.2017/920, K.2022/3148 and E.2017/1165, K.2022/3154); V-69 as an invalid residence permit (8 December 2020, E.2015/4717, K.2020/5929); V-77 as a foreigner found not to be an Ahiska Turk (20 October 2021, E.2016/106, K.2021/4941). The Presidency calls the V codes administrative tracking codes (17 December 2024, E.2024/6385, K.2024/6509). Many codes appear only beside the authority that entered them. V-157 was entered by a provincial migration directorate in an Afghan national’s deportation file, beside V-144 and V-162 entered by the Kırklareli governorship, and no decision says what V-157 means (13 February 2024, E.2023/6644, K.2024/114); V-160 was entered by the Konya governorship and the Sakarya directorate (30 October 2023, E.2023/5544, K.2023/6095; 4 March 2024, E.2024/336, K.2024/440), V-84 by the General Directorate of Security (26 September 2022, E.2022/5199, K.2022/4090) and V-87 by the Gaziantep directorate (27 February 2025, E.2025/952, K.2025/1232); Ç-120 stood behind a visa-overstay ban in two files (8 December 2020, E.2020/3217, K.2020/5912; 17 May 2021, E.2016/2616, K.2021/2318), and a first-instance court described Ç-104 as a two-year ban for an overstay of up to two years after a lawful entry (22 May 2024, E.2023/3752, K.2024/2090). So whether your code is an entry ban, a prior-permission requirement or a tracking entry is read from your own record. The code carries no duration of its own either: the ban decision does. A V-70 record came with a one-year ban in 2009 (E.2017/920, K.2022/3148), an O-100 ban entered on 22 November 2017 ran until it was lifted for expiry on 31 March 2023 (E.2018/2011), and article 9(3) caps every ban at five years, with at most ten more only on a serious threat to public order or public security, so a table that gives a code a fixed term, or calls it indefinite, is not reading the file.
What wins on the merits. A name on a list is not a reason: in four Russian nationals’ G-87 files the ban rested on a police list of foreigners said to use Türkiye as a route to conflict zones, on a Russian Interpol diffusion message, on a list of twenty names marked only “on grounds of our general and national security”, about which the National Intelligence Organisation told the court it held no information or document behind the code, and on a “secret” name list from the police intelligence department; with no concrete information and no investigation or prosecution on file, the Chamber quashed each judgment that had upheld the ban, quoting the Constitutional Court’s holding that the authorities must put sufficient and serious information before the court (17 May 2021, E.2016/3770, K.2021/2312 and E.2016/2309, K.2021/2311; 10 June 2021, E.2016/16059, K.2021/3251; 14 March 2023, E.2021/1714, K.2023/1215; Constitutional Court, application 2018/6143, 16 December 2020). The same judgment, as the Chamber quotes it, also says that a criminal case or a conviction cannot be demanded of the authorities; what they must put before the court is sufficient and serious information on the person’s own activity in the circumstances of the case (paragraph 53). The last of those files shows the whole road: the Chamber had first upheld the rejection on 16 December 2020, reversed itself on rectification, the first-instance court then annulled the ban, and the Chamber upheld the annulment on 4 April 2024 (E.2024/339, K.2024/1368). It is not automatic: the Chamber upheld the rejection in a Chechen Russian national’s file (25 November 2020, E.2016/2826, K.2020/5410), by a majority in six Uzbek nationals’ file resting on an Interpol-Europol letter (E.2016/14905), and in a British national’s in September 2021 (E.2016/3158, K.2021/4456), so the file is built on what the authority actually produced. A ban out of proportion falls: a five-year ban entered under Ç-120 on a Ukrainian national who could not pay the overstay charge of 545.25 Turkish liras at the border was annulled as disproportionate, the first-instance court noting that the Ministry’s own circular set three months for an overstay of one to three months, and the Chamber’s decision upholding the annulment is final (8 December 2020, E.2020/3217, K.2020/5912). A code alone does not refuse a permit: residence refusals that rested only on V-70 were annulled where the authority could not show what the code rested on; in one file the code had been entered ten days after the divorce suit was filed, and the divorce judgment awarded maintenance to the foreign spouse (20 October 2021, E.2016/1634, K.2021/4944; 17 May 2021, E.2016/2024, K.2021/2317). Family life counts: a visa-overstay ban on a Moldovan mother married to a Turkish citizen was annulled under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Chamber upheld that judgment although the authority had meanwhile lifted the Ç-120 code and argued the case had nothing left to decide (17 May 2021, E.2016/2616, K.2021/2318).
How a file is run. Where you apply decides the court: an application to lift a code made at a provincial migration directorate and refused, or left unanswered, is sued before that province’s administrative court even where the Presidency or another province entered the code, because the refusal is the act challenged (Şanlıurfa, E.2022/7448; Istanbul, 5 December 2022, E.2022/7310, K.2022/5681; Diyarbakır, 19 September 2023, E.2023/3925, K.2023/4569; Adana, E.2025/952), and an application to the Presidency is sued in Ankara (30 October 2023, E.2023/5351, K.2023/6093). In two of those files the Presidency told the court that the petition left at the provincial office never reached it (E.2022/7448; E.2022/7310), while the power to lift a ban is the Presidency’s (Law No. 6458, article 9(6)); so the application is addressed to the Presidency or to the authority that entered the code, and the court follows from that choice. The court can call for the GöçNet restriction report: asked for the documents behind a G-87 and G-43 complaint, the Presidency answered that it had entered no code and sent the report, which showed V-160 codes entered by the Sakarya directorate (E.2024/336). A namesake’s record is not yours: in one V-87 file the Presidency searched GöçNet by the claimant’s identity details (nationality number, parents’ names, date of birth) and found no record at all, then searched by the name and found the code on another foreigner of the same name (E.2024/6385). An unserved ban runs from the day you learn of it: article 10 of Law No. 6458 requires the ban to be served, and where it was not, the Chamber counted the sixty days for the suit from the day the claimants learned of it at the migration office; it then annulled an O-100 ban the Konya directorate had entered on people who withdrew their asylum applications and left within the thirty days given, because no deportation order and no article 9 finding of public order, security or health stood behind it, and it examined the merits although the ban had expired by then (E.2018/2011, K.2023/4050, a first-instance decision open to appeal). The last day runs to midnight: an appeal sent through UYAP’s lawyer portal at 23:57 on the last of the thirty days was in time, though the court filed a copy sent five minutes later (E.2023/3752, K.2024/2090).
Can the matter be handled without travelling to Türkiye?
Yes. With a power of attorney given before a Turkish consulate, or before a notary abroad with an apostille or, in a state outside the Apostille Convention, legalization, we read the record behind the ban, file the application to the Presidency, bring the case before the administrative court and apply for the annotated visa, while you stay where you are.
Have your ban read
Which way fits your file, lifting the ban, entry with an annotated visa while it stands, or a court case against it, is decided by the ground of the ban, the deportation or overstay file behind it and the service record.
Related: deportation orders and entry bans and how to appeal a deportation decision in Turkey.
This page reports Law No. 6458 as read on the consolidated text of mevzuat.gov.tr. It is general information about Turkish law and not advice on a particular file; representation begins only under a signed engagement.