From the beginning of January through the end of July this year, the number of foreign visitors to Turkey increased by 128 percent compared to the same period last year.
The data provided by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism show that taking into account this increase, the number of tourists has increased to 23.3 million, VisaGuide.World reports.
In addition, in the seven months, German tourists were the leading largest number of tourists in Turkey.
In second place came the Russians, with an increase of 41.36 percent to reach 2.1 million, while the United Kingdom took third place with an increase of 20.36 percent of British tourists traveling to Turkey, reaching 1.8 million tourists.
At the same time, Britain was followed by Bulgaria and Iran, respectively.
According to data published by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), a total of 26.1 million visitors were received in this period, along with 3.1 million Turkish citizens residing abroad.
In July alone, Turkey welcomed around 6.6 million foreign visitors, with an increase of 52.84 percent compared to the same month of 2021.
The data also reveals that Germany again ranked first in July with 962,003 visitors, followed by Russia and the UK with 741,419 and 545,973 visitors, respectively.
As industry officials have explained previously, the number of tourists coming from Russia and European markets is already growing quickly, causing seasonal expectations in Turkey to be revised upwards.
Last month, Turkey raised its targets to $37 billion in tourism revenue and 47 million tourists for this year.
As for the war in Ukraine, Turkey has shown its support and also has encouraged Ankara to send armed drones there and, at the same time, has asked to facilitate talks between the two parties.
On the other hand, Turkey is among the few countries that maintained reciprocal flights with Russia. In 2021, Russians and Ukrainians were the first and third largest sources of visitors to Turkey.
As a result, Russians accounted for 19 percent of foreign visitors, with 4.7 million people, while Ukraine was the third largest at 8.3 percent, with 2.1 million people.
Compared to 2020, the number of foreign visitors increased by 94.1 percent to 24.71 million when the measures for COVID-19 were eased in 2021. In addition, tourism revenues doubled to almost $25 billion, recovering from the bad impact of the pandemic but remaining well below the level recorded in 2019.