Yesterday, December 30, was the day that Turkey started requiring negative PCR tests taken 72 hours before the flight to Turkey. This had included transit passengers but that has been changed.
Turkey Will NOT Require Covid Tests for Transit Passengers
While I understand that requiring all passengers that will land in Turkey to have negative PCR tests (which people have come to call Covid tests), it was a big strain on passengers that were merely transiting Turkey and not required to take a test for their final destination.
Obviously, Turkey had been receiving some feedback about this new policy since the original date, December 28, was pushed back to December 30 due to the weekend curfews and inability for many to get tests done on the weekend. Now, this latest shift seems to indicate that they have been getting a lot of feedback from passengers (and likely Turkish Airlines since I have heard of many changing/canceling upcoming trips due to this new testing requirement) as they will not require negative PCR tests to board a flight to Turkey – if you are merely transiting Turkey and are not entering the country.
Turkey is now leaving it to the destination country to have a requirement of testing or not. This certainly should cause less confusion since, for example, if you were to fly to Greece via Turkey, you would need to have a negative sample taken within 72 hours of arrival in Greece while Turkey had required a sample taken 72 hours before the flight to Turkey. This could have caused some headaches in the planning for these tests.
