Turkey sees sharp decline in foreign arrivals from Russia

The number of foreign arrivals from Russia to Turkey declined significantly in the first month of 2016, according to temporary data released by the Ministry of Tourism on Feb. 29.

A total of 22,106 people from Russia visited Turkey in January with a decline of 56.7 percent compared to the same month of the previous year.

Tourism representatives from the southeastern province of Antalya, dubbed as Turkey's tourism capital, have claimed the worse is yet to come.

"Antalya hosted just 55 Russian tourists in February. This is a huge loss. We have seen a decline of almost 100 percent in the number of Russian tourists over this year. The number of German visitors also decreased by around 30 percent in February due to rising security concerns after the suicide bomb attack in Istanbul last January," said Recep Yavuz, the head of the Antalya Urban Council Tourism Work Group. This number was over 8,000 in February 2015.

Russia has been the second largest source of foreign tourists visiting Turkey, but the number of Russian tourists began to decline after a diplomatic crisis between the two countries, as a Russian pilot was killed when a Su-24 bomber jet was downed by Turkish F-16 jets for breaching its airspace.

The number of Russian tourists visiting Turkey dropped from 4.48 million in 2014 to 3.65 million to 2015. However, this decline mostly resulted from economic sanctions on Russia from the West due to the Ukraine crisis. The spat among two countries is expected to take its toll this summer.

The number of foreign arrivals dropped by 6.44 percent to 1.17 million in January compared to the same month of the previous year, according to the ministry data.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu announced an action plan on Feb. 22 to support Turkey's tourism sector, which has been negatively affected recently by tensions with Russia and security concerns.

The support package included a TL 255 million ($87 million) grant and several mechanisms which will enable tourism firms to restructure their debts, which is expected to amount up to TL 300 million.