We investigate the effect that the turbulent mixing strength parameter α turb plays on near-infrared polarimetric and sub-millimetre interferometric imaging observations of transitional discs with a gap carved by a planet. We generate synthetic observations of these objects with ALMA and VLT/SPHERE-ZIMPOL by combining hydrodynamical, dust evolution, radiative transfer and instrument models for values of α turb = [10 −4 , 10 −3 , 10 −2 ]. We find that, through a combination of effects on the viscosity of the gas, the turbulent mixing and dust evolution processes, α turb strongly affects the morphology of the dust distribution that can be traced with these observations. We constrain the value of α turb to be within an order of magnitude of 10 −3 in TD sources that show cavities in sub-mm continuum images while featuring continuous distribution of dust or smaller cavities in NIR-polarimetric images.