No appointment slots available in Turkey

Hey everyone!

It’s been a nightmare trying to get a visa appointment in Turkey for the past two years. Currently, Schengen visa appointment slots are fully booked in nearly all countries, and new ones are snatched up within seconds. Some agencies even sell these appointments on the black market for hundreds of euros.

Because of this, Germany (through iData) has switched to a waitlist system for visa appointments. You pay to join the list, and after waiting around four months, the system assigns you a random date and time — which, in some cases, ends up being after the intended travel dates.

On top of all that, we’re facing technical issues with buggy websites.

For example, France (via VFS) uses Cloudflare security to prevent agencies and bots from automatically booking all appointments. However, their site often fails at the signup stage: it says “the email is not activated” and provides a link to activate it. But when you enter your email and click “Send activation,” it replies with “email not in the system, please sign up.”

This whole situation has turned into uncontrollable chaos here. I’m curious — is it the same in your countries?