{"id":28553,"date":"2010-12-09T00:49:35","date_gmt":"2010-12-08T22:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=28553"},"modified":"2014-01-06T00:25:42","modified_gmt":"2014-01-05T22:25:42","slug":"west-balkans-become-visa-free-for-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2010\/12\/09\/west-balkans-become-visa-free-for-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"West Balkans Become Visa-Free For Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"All the West Balkans has become a visa-free region for Turkish visitors as the latest visa exemption agreement signed by Turkey and Serbia came into effect a couple of days ago.<\/p>\n

Turkey’s peace-focused policies in the Balkans yield to positive results as countries of the region solve their bilateral problems thanks to Turkey’s mediatory efforts and keep opening their doors to Turkey, a country they describe as a “super power” both in economic and political terms, officials told AA on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Serbia has become the latest country that stopped implementing visa procedures for Turkish citizens, following Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo.<\/p>\n

The visa exemption agreement between Turkey and Serbia, which was signed on July 12, 2010 as part of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to this country, has taken effect at border gates 4 days ago, officials said.<\/p>\n

Commenting on the agreement’s taking effect, Turkish Ambassador in Belgrade Ali Riza Colak said Serbia had a remarkable potential both in terms of economic opportunities and tourism.<\/p>\n

“Lifting of visas with Serbia will provide major advantages especially for our businessmen and citizens who live in European countries and travel to Turkey via land route,” Colak said.<\/p>\n

The ambassador noted that Turkish businessmen would be able to pay one-day visits to Serbia and the rest of the region thanks to the latest visa exemption deals.<\/p>\n

Colak also said that Serbia had a certain significance for Turks due to its Ottoman history, so the visa exemption agreement would contribute to the country’s tourism as well.<\/p>\n

“There is a 500-year-old Ottoman history here. A journey to this region will be like experiencing a history book about the Ottoman empire,” he said.<\/p>\n

Speaking to AA, Serbian State Minister Sulejman Ugljanin also stated that mutual lifting of visas by Turkey and Serbia would contribute remarkably to international friendly relations and economic cooperation.<\/p>\n

AA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All the West Balkans has become a visa-free region for Turkish visitors as the latest visa exemption agreement signed by Turkey and Serbia came into effect a couple of days ago. Turkey’s peace-focused policies in the Balkans yield to positive results as countries of the region solve their bilateral problems thanks to Turkey’s mediatory efforts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":28557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[231,195],"tags":[2924],"class_list":["post-28553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-balkans","category-serbia","tag-visa-free"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}