Turkey hosted more than 3.2 million foreign tourists in the first two months of this year, the Culture and Tourism Ministry announced Friday.The number of foreigners visiting Turkey rose 7.4 percent year-on-year in the period, official figures showed.

Turkey's largest city by population and a top tourist destination, Istanbul attracted nearly 59 percent of all visitors – 984,689 – in the January-February period. The northwestern province of Edirne, which borders both Bulgaria and Greece, welcomed the second-highest number of foreigners – over 203,498 – in the same period. It was followed by Turkey's Mediterranean resort city of Antalya with over 135,000 foreign visitors. Bulgarians made up almost 8.55 percent of foreign visitors, followed by German citizens at 7.34 percent and Georgians at 7.25 percent.

Official data showed that air travel was the most preferred way of travel for foreign visitors to reach Turkey, with 2.3 million foreign travelers flying in, while over 850,000 used roads. The data showed that the visitors in February recorded a 9.38 percent increase compared to the same period last year. A total of 1.6 million tourists visited Turkey last month.

Last year, some 39.5 million foreigners visited the country, up from 32.4 million in 2017.