Estimated Schengen acceptance rates for Turkish citizens in the last decade

I have asked Perplexity to collect information about Schengen visa application rates. Here is what we found:

For the ten most recent fully published years (2015–2024), the acceptance rate for Schengen short-stay visa applications lodged in Türkiye fell markedly overall—from roughly 96% in 2015 to 85.5% in 2024—with the sharpest deterioration occurring after 2017 and around the pandemic period. The 2024 result was an improvement on 2023, but it remained far below the mid-2010s level.[jp.reuters][home-affairs.ec.europa]

Türkiye: Estimated Schengen acceptance rates

Acceptance is calculated as:

\text{Acceptance rate} = 100\% - \text{refusal rate}

The early values are often reported with slight variation—e.g., 2015 as either 3.9% or 4.0% refusals—because secondary summaries may aggregate or round the European Commission’s consular statistics differently. The broad pattern, however, is unambiguous: rejection rates rose substantially from the middle of the 2010s onward.[jp.reuters][turkiyetoday][dailysabah]

What the trend shows

• 2015–2016: Turkish applicants had comparatively strong outcomes. Approximately 19 out of every 20 applications were approved.
• 2017–2019: Refusals gradually increased, reducing the estimated acceptance rate from around 95–96% to roughly 90%.
• 2020–2021: The biggest deterioration occurred during the COVID-19 disruption period. In 2021, the refusal rate reached 16.9%, implying approval of only about 83 applications per 100.
• 2022–2024: The result stabilized in the mid-80% range, rather than returning to pre-2017 levels. The 2024 refusal rate of 14.5% was lower than 2023’s 16.1%, but it still meant about one in seven applications lodged in Türkiye was refused.[home-affairs.ec.europa][home-affairs.ec.europa]

Important qualification

These are application-level figures, not necessarily unique-person figures. A single person may submit more than one application in a year; results also vary greatly by destination country, consulate, applicant profile, purpose of travel, supporting documents, and whether a multi-entry visa is requested.

Also, “accepted” should be read as not refused / positively decided in the statistical sense. It does not tell us the duration of the visa issued, the number of permitted entries, or whether the applicant received the length of validity they requested.

Latest context

For 2024, Türkiye recorded roughly 1.17 million Schengen visa applications and 170,129 refusals, producing a 14.5% refusal rate and an estimated 85.5% acceptance rate. The European Commission noted that this was an improvement from Türkiye’s 16.1% refusal rate in 2023; the 2024 rate was also slightly below the worldwide average refusal rate of 14.8%.[home-affairs.ec.europa][turkiyetoday]

For completeness, the subsequently released 2025 figure was approximately 14.6% refused, or 85.4% accepted—essentially unchanged from 2024 rather than evidence of a return to the more favorable rates of a decade earlier.[home-affairs.ec.europa][en.haberler]

Latest country comparison

For the latest fully published European Commission year, 2025, the overall refusal rate for applications lodged in Türkiye was about 14.6%, meaning an acceptance rate of about 85.4%. Country-level outcomes varied substantially.[cumhuriyet.com][getvisaodds]

Portugal therefore appears to have had the highest acceptance rate among the commonly reported destination-country figures for Türkiye in 2025, followed by Slovakia and Romania. At the opposite end, Lithuania, Malta, and Estonia had the highest refusal rates.[cumhuriyet.com][sozcu.com][linkedin]

Large destinations matter most

A low refusal rate based on a few thousand applications is not automatically more informative than the outcome at a very high-volume destination. In 2024, for example, consulates in Türkiye received approximately:

These numbers explain why country rankings should not be interpreted as a simple measure of “friendliness.” Different destinations attract different travel purposes, applicant profiles, document patterns, and appointment systems.[visaverge]

Germany and Greece

Germany and Greece are especially important because Turkish residents submit many applications to their consulates.

• In 2025, Germany was reported to have received approximately 217,627 applications from Türkiye and refused 21.1% of them—an estimated acceptance rate of 78.9%.[sozcu.com]
• Greece was the top destination by number of Turkish applications. One country-of-application comparison reports a 28.5% refusal rate for Greek consulates in Türkiye in 2025, equivalent to about 71.5% acceptance.[getvisaodds]
• However, geography within Türkiye can distort a national country figure: reporting on the 2025 data indicated that refusals for applications for mainland Greece could reach 38.5%, while island-related application patterns may be different.[en.haberler]

Important limitations

1. Apply to the correct country. Under Schengen rules, the application should go to the country where you will spend the most time, or—if stays are equal—to the country of first entry. Applying through a statistically “easier” consulate without that country being the real principal destination can cause refusal, cancellation at the border, or difficulties in later applications.
2. Acceptance rate is not visa quality. A country may grant a visa but issue a short-validity, single-entry visa. The refusal-rate statistics do not show duration, entries, or whether the visa matched the applicant’s request.
3. A national figure aggregates individual consulates. Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Edirne, and Bursa can show sharply different outcomes. In 2025, the reported overall refusal rate across Schengen consulates was about 21% in Ankara, compared with 13.7% in Istanbul and 12.4% in İzmir.[linkedin]
4. The data describe applications lodged in Türkiye, not necessarily Turkish citizens alone. European Commission tables are generally organized by the country where the application was lodged. They are highly relevant to Turkish residents, but should not be read as a perfectly pure citizenship-based dataset.[home-affairs.ec.europa]