Turkey’s trade minister said authorities received 153 complaints about visa intermediaries and are reviewing seven companies accused of reselling Schengen visa appointments, days after courts blocked reporting that linked visa firm VFS Global’s Turkey network to a contractor with ties to former foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Turkish Minute reported.
Responding to parliamentary questions, Trade Minister Ömer Bolat said the Advertising Board had launched reviews into seven companies over allegations that Schengen visa appointments were being collected through automated software and resold for profit.
The issue reached parliament after Burak Dalgın, a lawmaker from the opposition İYİ (Good) Party, submitted questions to Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan citing allegations raised in an international investigation into visa outsourcing practices and asking whether Turkish authorities had raised concerns about VFS Global with European Union and Schengen countries.
Bolat said the government had received 153 complaints related to visa intermediary services over the past five years, including 143 submitted through the Presidential Communication Center (CİMER) and 10 via the e-Government portal. He said the complaints had been forwarded to relevant institutions for further examination.
He also confirmed that allegations involving payments made to personal bank accounts and the failure to issue invoices had been referred to the Treasury and Finance Ministry and the Foreign Ministry.
The parliamentary disclosures came days after Turkish courts blocked access to Kısa Dalga news website’s “Visa Empire” investigative series, the Turkey leg of an international reporting project coordinated by Lighthouse Reports and conducted with 14 media organizations across 12 countries.
The İstanbul 9th Criminal Court of Peace ordered the access ban under Article 8/A of Law No. 5651, citing national security and public order grounds. The ruling covered multiple articles in the series as well as related social media posts by journalist Canan Coşkun.
The Kısa Dalga investigation examined the operations of global visa outsourcing company VFS Global and its Turkey-based subcontractor, Gateway Visa Services, focusing on the structure of outsourced visa processing systems and the role of intermediaries in appointment allocation.
The reporting also included allegations of monopolization in visa services, the use of third-party intermediaries and automated tools to secure appointments and claims that applicants were steered toward paid add-on services that increased overall costs.
The series further examined alleged connections between actors in the visa outsourcing sector and political figures, including former foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu whose ties to Gateway Visa Services were among the issues explored in the reporting. Those allegations were not addressed in the parliamentary response.
Neither the Trade Ministry nor the Foreign Ministry has publicly responded to the broader allegations raised in the investigative series.
