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itarian residence permit may be granted and renewed by the gover-
norates without seeking the conditions required for other types of res-
idence permits. A related permit is generally issued in cases of extra-
ordinary circumstances. Subject to the approval of the Ministry, the
humanitarian residence permit shall be cancelled and shall not be
renewed by the governorates in cas-es where the compelling conditions
no longer apply.
A residence permit for victims of human trafficking
is, as per
Article 48 of Law No. 6458, a residence permit valid for thirty days
which shall be granted to foreigners who are victims of human traf-
ficking or where there is strong evidence that they might be victims of
human trafficking in order to allow them to mitigate the impact of their
negative experience and decide on whether they would like to cooper-
ate with the competent authorities or not. The conditions required for
issuing other types of residence per-mits shall not be required for the
issuance of such permit. Such a residence permit is granted to allow for
the recovery of the victims and may be renewed for periods of six
months for reasons of safety, health or special circumstances of the vic-
tim. However, the total duration shall not exceed three years under any
circumstances.
Application for Residence Permit
Applications for residence permit may be made to the consulates
of Turkey in the foreigner’s home country or, in certain cases, the
application may be filed in Turkey.
In principle, applications for residence permits shall be filed to the
consulates of Turkey in the foreigner’s country of citi-zenship, or legal
residence, as per Article 21 of Law No. 6458. Consulates shall convey
the residence permit applications, together with their remarks, to the
General Di-rectorate. The General Directorate shall, after finalizing the
assessment of the applications, inform the consulate to issue a resi-
dence permit or to refuse the application, seeking the opinion of the
relevant institutions when and if necessary. The assessment of the
applications shall be finalized within ninety days at the latest.
Applications for residence permits may be filed to the gover-
norates in Turkey in certain exceptional cases. Where the related appli-
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NEWSLETTER 2014