Who can file here from 31 August 2026
Ankara is the only Thai consulate for five countries: Türkiye, Georgia, Azerbaijan, North Macedonia and Turkmenistan. There is no visa post in Istanbul: e-Visa applications from all of Türkiye go to Ankara, and the honorary consulate in Istanbul does not handle the DTV. You do not need to travel to Ankara — the whole cycle is remote.
Since 31 August the DTV is filed only in the country of citizenship or of permanent residence, and the package needs a criminal record certificate. Both requirements live in the e-Visa form; Ankara publishes no DTV requirements of its own at all. So the picture differs for a citizen and for a foreign national with a residence permit.
A citizen of Türkiye — or of any of the district’s four other countries — files from their own country on their passport. Nothing here is in question.
A foreign national with a Turkish ikamet. Türkiye has no status called “permanent residence”. There is the kısa dönem ikamet izni, a short-term residence permit for up to two years, which is what most relocators hold; the uzun dönem ikamet izni, open-ended, granted after eight years of residence; and the Turkuaz Kart. If Ankara reads “permanent residence” literally, the way London and Prague do, only citizens, uzun dönem holders and Turkuaz Kart holders get through. If it reads the rule the way Frankfurt and Vienna do, where a valid residence permit with address registration is enough, an ordinary ikamet with a yerleşim yeri belgesi from e-Devlet gets through too. Which reading the post has chosen, it has not announced. Before 31 August Ankara asked for a resident permit and accepted the explanation that the applicant was in Türkiye visa-free.
“I have a Turkish residence permit for a year. Has anyone filed from Türkiye on a residence permit after 31 August?” — applicants’ chat, 2 September 2026. Nobody has an answer yet.
Georgia is in the district, but by the letter of the rule simply being there is not enough. Whether the post will count a Georgian residence permit is unknown; there are no cases. We have seen no DTV filings after 31 August from either Georgia or Türkiye: the market is waiting for the first decisions.
Applications filed before 31 August
Ankara applied the rule not retroactively but erratically. On the night of 31 August two filings from Georgia without a residence permit, made on 26 and 28 August, were refused; two dependant families got split decisions, with visas for two children and refusals for a third child and the mother — the first refusals to dependants in the post’s history. And on 2 September an identical filing from 28 August was approved with no document requests in five days, while another drew a request for a resident permit. The refusal wording is always the same: “Your visa application has been rejected”, with no reason given. In Ankara you cannot promise that “filed before 31 August means the old rules” — but it is too early to bury such applications either.
The post’s site describes the world before the reform
The DTV page is dated 16 July 2024: it still shows a proof-of-current-location document, removed from the form on 31 August, and says nothing about the certificate, permanent residence, finances or timelines. You cannot reach it through the site menu — the visa services section has been broken since the spring of 2025 and the page only opens through a direct link with a parameter. The languages are English and Thai. Even the visa-free page still talks about 60 days, although from 15 September 2026 the stamp for Turkish citizens drops to 30. The requirements live in the e-Visa form, and that is what we assemble the package for.
How filing works
- Everything online, with up to ten applications per account. The form takes three files: location, money, work, each up to 3 MB, which is why documents are stitched into a single PDF with a table of contents.
- The fee is $400, charged to the card in dollars, non-refundable. That is about 19,300 lira or 13,200 THB at the ECB rate on 3 September 2026, not the “10,000 THB” Turkish sites write about.
- Timeline per the post’s site: 5 to 10 working days. In cases before 31 August, 4 to 15 days; one Turkish citizen in 2025 had to wait 35 to 37 days. Processing starts closer to the departure date given on the form.
- Finances: no less than 500,000 THB, about 732,000 lira. Before 31 August Ankara was the only post that did not require the sum to be held for three months; statements from Turkish banks in English with a stamp went through. We show three months of movement anyway.
- The interview is online and the link comes by e-mail; it is not scheduled for everyone, and in recent months there have been noticeably fewer. You may be asked to show on a map where you are.
- Dependants: a spouse and children under 20; per the form a child needs the certificate too, and the post has announced no age exemption.
- Contact: the post’s Facebook page answers in the evenings and at weekends — on Saturday 29 August an approval came an hour and a half after a message there. The phone line drops the call after four minutes on hold.
The criminal record certificate
The post’s site does not mention it; the form requires it. Ankara has set no shelf life, so we hold to the general one: no older than three months.
For a Turkish citizen this is the adli sicil kaydı from e-Devlet: instant, free, with a barcode. But e-Devlet issues it in Turkish only; the English-language version is issued by Turkish consulates abroad. An apostille does not work for Thailand until 28 February 2027. For Turkish documents Ankara has a legalisation chain of its own: a notarised translation, the Valilik or Kaymakamlık, the Turkish foreign ministry, the embassy, at $15 per signature, one to three working days. Whether it is needed for a DTV certificate the post has not announced: on other document requests Ankara’s “legalise” has been satisfied by a notarised translation, but for the certificate there is no such practice.
A foreign national with an ikamet obtains the same certificate through e-Devlet, with the password issued in person at a PTT branch on the ikamet card; the form also allows the certificate of the country of citizenship. In Georgia the interior ministry issues the certificate to anyone physically in the country, in three working days, and it is valid for 15 days. For a Georgian citizen that is the certificate of the country of citizenship; for a Russian in Georgia it matches neither the country of filing nor the country of citizenship, and how Ankara will treat it the post has not said.
What we track here
The first decision on an ikamet holder after 31 August: it will show whether Ankara reads “permanent residence” literally or the German way. Whether the post counts a Georgian residence permit, whether a resident permit request can be closed with an explanation or turns into a refusal, which certificate it will take from a Turkish citizen and whether a child needs one. The chats are already discussing the short-term ikamet as “the key to Ankara”; with not a single decision yet, it is too early to build a plan on that.
For Turkish citizens the right to file is not in question, and we take those cases. To ikamet holders, and to people in Georgia without a residence permit, we speak honestly about the uncertainty and suggest starting with a Preflight Check.
A package you have assembled yourself we check before filing — the Preflight Check: $300, a written report within two working days. Full support all the way to the visa is the Solo Route and Family Route.
The state of every consulate is on the live board, and the consulate assigned to your country is on the map.