Hi everyone. As you probably know, all Turkish males must complete their mandatory army duty. My fiance has not yet done his service (he was able to delay due to attending University), but will be eligible late summer/early fall 2008. We filed for our K1 in November 2007 and we are worrying that if his visa is not approved in time he will not be allowed to leave the country due to the fact that his army service delay is coming to an end and he must enroll. Does anyone know anything about this? Will they physically prevent him from leaving the country? Of course we don't want to create a situation where he isn't able to return to Turkey in the future.

If anyone has any experience, advice or insight into this matter I would greatly appreciate it!

Thank you so much!

~Julia

If he gets the K1 and leaves before completing his military requirement he will have problems in the future wanting to go back to Turkey. I have a friend who is/was in the situation and asked in the "Just Turkish" thread, so you may want to read in there. If your fiance (by then husband) will want to go to Turkey he'll have to get a "military postponement" and apply for it at the Turkish Embassy here in the US. If he would leave the US without it, upon entering Turkey they'd make him serve the military requirement. So either he serves it now, or later... or he waits to until he has his US Citizenship and travels there on that passport, and the military requirement wont apply to him anymore.

I can't answer the part on the leaving right now with the K1, depends what the date he has to enlist is, I believe. But someone hopefully will provide more insight.