UK Girl Passes Through Turkish Immigration With Her Toy Unicorn’s Fake Passport

by Gary Leff

No idea how I managed to miss this.

A couple were left stunned after their nine-year-old daughter managed to pass through Turkish customs officers – with a passport identifying her as a UNICORN.

Emily Harris had taken a toy passport she had made for her toy unicorn, Lily, on holiday with her.

And when the family passed through customs at Antalya airport to start their one-week holiday, flustered mum Nicky accidentally handed over the toy’s passport instead of Emily’s.

…passport officials had even STAMPED the unicorn’s passport, granting it access to the country.

…”The picture ID wasn’t even of Emily, it was of a pink unicorn.


    Original photo credit B. Matthews/Caters

(HT: Reid)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  2. Good luck to families entering Turkey in the next year or so… The children’s passports will be scrutinized for fear of this “accident” happening again.

  3. I wonder what kind of issues that would cause when they don’t see an entry stamp in her actual passport. “Sorry, the immigration officer mistakenly stamped my child’s stuffed unicorn’s pretend passport…” That would get a look, all right!

  6. My favourite line:
    “And to make it worse, the unicorn wasn’t even on holiday with us.”

    Classic!

    PedroNY

  8. This seems a bit weird…because US and UK citizens must purchase an entry visa stamp at the desk next to passport control. For UK citizens, the cost is £10. The stamp is applied to the passport page and the passport police apply the entry stamp on top of the visa stamp. And the police are very exact, some portion of the ink must touch the visa stamp. So I find it very strange that passport control would just ink a blank page that didn’t have a visa stamp. Possibly children under a certain age do not need a passport to enter Turkey or the police stamped the kid’s real passport and also the unicorn for fun. I think there is more to this story.

  9. We don’t know if he stamped it unaware…he might have did it for the child. I have been through customs where they gave my son a stamp on something other than his passport.

  10. This story originally came out in the British media some months ago and the mother of the child subsequently clarified that there was ALSO a legitimate visa and stamp in the child’s real passport. A total non-story.

  11. Off with you. Facts have no place in Gary’s realm. This is journalism / blogging of the highest order. Who can be bothered to check the veracity? Much better to just cross-post from junky sources like the NY Daily News and other BA blogs (the latter seems to be TPG’s latest strategy – he just recycles stale news from other BA blogs 2 days later).

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