Oh, c'mon! Istanbul has always been in Europe, and whether Turkey will ever be part of the EU (not Europe) is something that we can't foresee, as much as most of us, thirty years ago, never thought that the Iron Curtain would "open".

At any rate, questions on Turkey are always being discussed in this forum so asking a transit visa question for Turkey (not needed )in the forum on middle-east-including-egypt brings us back to the Ottoman times. Let's not get political!