Deputy Minister of P2MI and Turkish Ambassador Discuss Surge in Migrant Worker Visas to Turkey

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Deputy Minister for the Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (P2MI) Christina Aryani, Turkish Ambassador to Indonesia Talip Küçükcan, and Director General for the Americas and Europe at the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Grata Endah Werdaningtyas discussed the surge in visas for Indonesian migrant workers to Turkey.

The meeting, which also addressed solutions to the increase in applications for Indonesian migrant worker (PMI) visas, took place at the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs office in Jakarta on Monday.

“Applications for work visas for Indonesian migrant workers to Turkey have increased sharply over the past year, nearly doubling compared to the previous period,” said the Deputy Minister in a press release from the Ministry of P2MI in Jakarta on Monday.

She explained that based on data provided by Ambassador Talip, for the period November 2024-April 2025, around 6,700 work visa applications were recorded.

Meanwhile, for the same period, November 2025-April 2026, the number rose to around 12,000 applications, with 6,500 of them still in process.

According to the Deputy Minister, this increase needs to be addressed with strategic steps to ensure that the placement process runs smoothly and does not create obstacles for the PMI.

Through facilitation by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she said, the Indonesian and Turkish governments also have cooperation through a joint working group under the framework of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that was previously agreed upon.

“Through that forum, we are working to formulate anticipatory and mitigation steps so that in the future the placement process can run better and the current obstacles can be minimised,” she said.

In the meeting, the Turkish Government acknowledged the contributions of PMI, particularly in the tourism sector, which is one of the backbones of the country’s economy.

Turkey’s tourism sector has shown significant growth, with the number of tourist visits reaching around 63.9 million people in 2025.

“This shows that the need for labour in the tourism sector there is quite large, and Indonesian migrant workers have opportunities to contribute in that sector,” she said.

The Deputy Minister hopes that the meeting can produce concrete solutions so that PMI currently waiting for visa processing can be dispatched soon.

“We hope there will be concrete solutions from this meeting, so that our migrant workers who are already waiting can be served soon and depart to work in Turkey in a safe and procedural manner,” she said.