Government Response

The Government responded to this petition on Thursday 24th June 2021

Turkey was placed on the red list on 12 May to help prevent the importation of variants of concern and to protect the roll out of the COVID-19 vaccination programme at a critical time.

The government took decisive action to place Turkey on the “Red List” of high-risk countries on 12 May. International visitors will be denied entry to England while British, Irish and third country nationals with residence rights who have departed from or transited through Turkey in the 10 days prior to their arrival in England will be required to quarantine in a government approved facility for 10 days.

The decision to impose additional measures on Turkey was taken to prevent the importation of variants of concern and to protect the roll out of the COVID-19 vaccination programme at a critical time. These are temporary measures that are kept under constant review and the government maintains that they will only be kept in place whilst the level of risk justifies the measures.

On 17 May, the government introduced the traffic light system to provide a framework for a safe and sustainable return to international travel. The traffic light system categorises countries based on risk to protect public health and the vaccine rollout from variants of COVID-19. The Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC) produces risk assessments of countries and territories. Decisions on Red, Amber or Green List assignment and associated border measures are taken by Ministers, who take into account the JBC risk assessments, alongside wider public health factors.

Key factors in the JBC risk assessment of each country include:
- genomic surveillance capability
- COVID-19 transmission risk
- Variant of Concern transmission risk
A summary of the JBC methodology is published on gov.uk, alongside key data that supports Ministers' decisions.

As with all our coronavirus measures, we keep the Red List under constant review and our priority remains to protect the health of the UK public.

Department for Transport