The first group of Taiwanese returning home from Turkey since Ankara lifted its two-month ban on international flights on June 11 were expected to arrive last night.
The 28-strong group of students studying in Turkey, tourists and businesspeople, took off from Istanbul on a Qatar Airways flight on Monday night and made stops in Doha and Hong Kong.
When the flight ban was first imposed, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Mission in Ankara received requests from Taiwanese to help them return home.
Photo: Screen grab from the Facebook page of Taiwan in Turkey
Employees at the Ankara office said they had contacted Turkish Airlines about the possibility of a charter flight at that time, but since fewer than 30 people had applied, the airline declined due to the cost.
Earlier this month, the office tried to reserve seats on a charter flight that Japan was organizing for its citizens, but the plan fell through after Turkish Airlines moved the flight up a day, which would have left the Taiwanese with no connecting flight home from Tokyo.
One of the returning travelers, identified only by her English first name Ariel, had planned to travel in Turkey for three weeks in March before starting a new job.
When the Tainan resident left on her trip, Ankara had not reported any cases of COVID-19 nor had any Taiwanese returning from trips to Turkey been confirmed to have the disease.
However, the flight ban imposed in late March left her stranded, and she ran out of her allergy medication as a result, she said.
However, she was able to contact a hospital in Istanbul through a local friend, and received the medicine she needed after three appointments with a doctor via Skype, she said.
A Soochow University student identified as Michelle went to Turkey on an exchange program at the Middle East Technical University.
Although she was unable to travel around Turkey, Michelle said she was still able to learn about the local culture through her Turkish roommate, Dilay, who cooked local dishes for her and shared local customs.
Before Turkey’s flight ban was implemented, 17 Taiwanese who had been on tour group trips to the country tested positive for COVID-19 after returning home.
Turkey has reported 188,897 cases of COVID-19, with 4,974 deaths, the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 dashboard showed yesterday.
As with all other arrivals in Taiwan, the group returning from Turkey face a 14-day quarantine period before they can return to their homes.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the
RSS