Turkey’s Interior Minister, Süleyman Soylu, has disclosed that the country has reached deals with Hungary and France to print their biometric passports, with 250,000 copies of the document to be printed for Hungary within a period of one year.
Soylu made this disclosure during a press conference in the capital Ankara to explain the rollout of Turkey’s own new biometric passports, reports Hurriyet Daily News.
Before now, Turkish passports were printed by a European country which could not cope with demand due to chip shortage at some point in the heart of the coronavirus pandemic, notes the outlet.
During the presser, the official displayed a sample copy of the passport saying it has 27 security features, small and large embedded chips, and design features which highlight the tourism and cultural assets of the country.
“There is a photo of the Hagia Sophia Mosque on the middle pages. There are also photos of other landmarks of the country, such as the Çanakkale Bridge, the Çamlıca Mosque, the İshak Pasha Palace, and the famous houses of [the Black Sea province of] Amasya,” said Soylu as quoted by Hurriyet Daily News.
Speaking about demand, the official said about 1.6 million applications have been processed for the new passports already, adding that they have the capacity to issue them in a day in emergency circumstances.
Aside from the passport, Soylu said the government has also made good progress with the issuance of chip-imbedded national ID cards, having delivered about 77 million of them since 2018, including 6.7 million since the start of 2022. During that period, chip supply challenges have affected the issuance of numerous digital ID documents around the world.
The domestically-produced Turkish passport comes after a pilot was concluded early this year.
biometric passport | biometrics | digital ID | France | Hungary | identity document | travel documents | Turkey
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