ISTANBUL
Most of the European countries have started to take steps for easing the visa procedures for Turkish businessmen through consulates and chambers of commerce.
Chairman of Turkish-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Marc Landau, said, "Members of our chamber are able to apply for business visas without going to consulates. They do not need for booking a visa session nor being at the consulate, more visa officials require less documents."
Replying the questions of AA, Landau said, "It does not matter in what region our members of the chamber are, they apply for visas without going to the consulate. All they need to do is to apply to our chamber. A couple of days after the application, they receive their passport back."
Landau pointed out the rapidly growing economic and commercial relations of Turkey and Germany, and said that there are 5 thousand settled Turkish firms in Germany as of 2012.
Landau also said that he finds Turkey's economic growing in the past few years successful and added, "Turkey's economic performance for the past decade is impressive. We can see it from Turkey's direct investment figures. Before 2006, direct investment was under 10 billion USD and now it goes over 20 billion USD."
In the first eight months of 2012, Turkey's exportation to Germany was 8.7 billion USD and importation from Germany was 13.8 billion USD.
Reporting by Gokhan Kurtaran
