Every year, hundreds of thousands of Turks queue in front of EU consulates, spending time and money in exchange for a chance to travel to the EU. In 2010, their number was 625,000. Often they receive a single-entry visa valid for only a few days. Sometimes they are denied entry outright. So was Leyla Demirkan, a Turkish teenager who wanted to visit her sick stepfather, a German national who was hospitalised, and her (Turkish) mother in Stuttgart in 2007.
The visa barrier erected around ...
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