The Grey passport scandal refers to a human trafficking scheme facilitated through the issuing of so-called Grey passports usually provided to Turkish diplomats and other civil servants to travel abroad without fulfilling the visa requirements.[1] With such passports, it is estimated that several thousand Turkish citizens travelled abroad disguised as public civil servants and did not return.[2] The scandal began with an article focusing in a case of 43 people who have been smuggled out of Turkey over the Municipality of Malatya by means of this scheme, published in the Turkish newspaper Habertürk in April 2021.[2] The Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu admitted that several hundred of the recipients of Grey Passports did not return after their passports were invalidated[1] and the Ministry of the Interior suspended the issuing of Grey Passports in order to prevent further human trafficking.[2][3]