Virus and war: Turkish tourism falls under blows of coronavirus and Idlib

Mahmoud Al-Batakoushi

Turkish plans to revive its tourism sector this year will fail and its economy will be hardest hit if it was hit by coronavirus.

Turkey was planning to attract 60 million tourists this year, in the hope that the expected tourism revenues will save its economy, which is suffering from many crises, especially in the recent period, due to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s confrontational policies.

Last year, Turkey attracted more than 52 million tourists, with a total return of 34.5 billion dollars, which contributed to the partial recovery of the Turkish economy, due to the crisis of the lira collapse in 2018.

The Turkish government was hoping to achieve tourism revenues this year of about $40 billion, taking advantage of its strategic location, as well as trying to exploit the coronavirus immediately after its spread in China in December 2019, before the disease turned into an epidemic threatening the safety and security of the world, as it marketed itself as an alternative stop for cruises from Europe, which were heading to China.

The spread of the coronavirus in the world frustrated the dreams of the President of the Turkish Hotels Association, which announced earlier, that his country is on the way to achieving a record number, as the number of arrivals in January jumped by 16 percent to 1.79 million, according to official figures.

The virus also deprived Turkey of 2.1 million Iranian visitors last year, most of them flocking in March to celebrate the start of the Iranian new year, after Iran became the focus of the spread of the virus.

Iranian tourists constituted 4 percent of the total visitors to Turkey last year, in addition to the loss of nearly half a million tourists from China, according to figures released by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

The past two years have witnessed an increasing diversification of Chinese tourists, as it was coming to Turkey. But now more middle-aged and young Chinese prefer their holidays in Turkey, and they spend money on activities that require physical exertion, such as paragliding over the sea in Fethiye resort, hiking and safari trips in Cappadocia and other sites.

It was expected, according to the president of the Turkish Hotels Federation, that the country will witness a significant increase in the coming months in the number of tourists coming from Russia, especially since they are the most visited nationalities to Turkey, as their number last year 2019 reached about 6.887 million, followed by the Germans by 4,835 million then the British about 2.5 million.

Political tensions between Russia and Turkey over the division of the Syrian cake, heralds a crisis between the two countries, threatening to deprive Ankara of nearly 7 million tourists, as happened in 2016, as the number of visitors from Russia fell to less than a million, after the Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian military plane that was flying over the border with Syria and Erdogan’s failure to immediately apologize.

The Turkish Hotels Association confirmed the decline in reservations nationwide amid a slowdown in February 2020 and indications of a further decline in March due to the closure of northern Italy, fearing the spread of the virus from eastern Europe, which led to a relatively high bookings in places such as Majorca and Spain.

For its part, the Turkish Foreign Ministry tried to provide facilities to save tourism, as it decided to exempt the citizens of Croatia, Ireland, Malta, Portugal and Norway from the entry visa.