TEHRAN – Turkey has agreed to drop mandatory PCR tests for fully vaccinated Iranian travelers, ILNA reported.

Travelers are considered fully vaccinated 14 days after receiving their final dose of a vaccine approved by the World Health Organization (WHO). This applies to the last dose of the two-dose Pfizer vaccine and the single-dose Johnson & Johnson (J&J) jab.

According to new announcements, as of November 15,  travelers of Iranian nationalities who want to travel to Turkey from the homeland will be allowed to enter without the need for PCR testing if 14 days passes from the injection of the second dose of vaccines approved by the WHO including Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Sputnik, Sinopharm, Sinovac, Sinofarm, Sinovac (or 14 days after a single dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine), the news agency said.

Passengers between the ages of 12 and 18, who are not vaccinated, will need to be tested for COVID-19. If the test is negative, they can proceed with their travels in Turkey. If the test is positive, they will be required to quarantine.

All travelers arriving in Turkey also need to submit a Passenger Locator Form, which requires the passenger’s personal information and passport details.

Neighboring Turkey is one of the major destinations for Iranian passengers, according to data compiled by Iran’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts.

In that regard, some Iranian travel experts have emphasized the need to attain a balance in tourist flow rates between the two nations, saying the Islamic Republic should reach a balance with Turkey in the movement of tourist flow.

Months before the pandemic, Iranian travel agencies introduced a plan to offer stimulus packages and hold familiarization tours for Turkish agencies, tour operators, journalists, and influencers in a bid to attract more travelers from the neighboring country. “Iran will be organizing familiarization tours for about 100 Turkish tourism agencies after the [complete] reopening of joint borders and resuming [mutual] tourist relations,” according to Mehdi Rezaei, the secretary of the Turkey consortium at the Association of Iranian Travel Agents.

“Fam tours had been planned for Turkish [travel] agencies and media for a period before the virus pandemic. Unfortunately, at the outset of the outbreak, the tours were postponed to another time when mutual travels are resumed,” the secretary explained. “We must go to the heart of Turkey and introduce our country to them. In Iran, there are places that Turks wish to visit, such as the shrines in Neyshabour and Kashan. Many Turks are familiar with Iranian literature and poets, and Hafez’s poems are etched in the memory of many of them. We must develop these capacities.”

Travel is going to rebound globally after the virus spread plunged the tourism industry and economy in the global scene for more than a year when passenger traffic on airlines and hotel occupancy rates fell off a cliff compared to the same periods in previous years.

AFM