Recovering from shock
Selma Yilmaz had never experienced such a slump in her 24-year career as a tourist guide in Istanbul. She used to work four to five days a week throughout the year but she had been without work for three months since June.
She finally got work on September 7, albeit for only half a day.
"The number of tourists has decreased by more than 80 percent in comparison to the number of this time last year. Therefore, I could not find work," she told this correspondent in Istanbul.
She worked as a guide for a group of journalists including this correspondent who were visiting.
The tourist industry is gloomy in Turkey as people are scared of visiting the country. Two incidents -- deadly terror attack at Ataturk airport in Istanbul in June, which killed 42 people, and a failed army coup in July, which saw 270 people killed, transformed Istanbul from a tourists hotspot to an almost “tourists no-go”.
Selma had to struggle to find work. She is however hopeful.
"The situation is gradually improving. I believe better days are coming for me," she said, adding, "Everything seems normal now and under the control of the government."
Like Selma, Omer Celal Tabak, media relations specialist of Turkish Airlines, is hopeful of good days ahead for the Turkish national flag carrier.
"We have been badly hit by political instability. We are trying hard to overcome the situation," Tabak told this correspondent at the headquarters of Turkish Airlines in Istanbul recently.
High-profile company Turkish Airlines has taken a hit due to the economic fallout from the attempted coup. The number of tourists had dropped and many passengers were avoiding the Istanbul airport as transit to travel to other countries.
The airline gets 60 percent of its revenue from transit passengers.
The company has been badly hit at a time when it was attempting to carry out an aggressive plan to turn Istanbul into a global transit hub that connects Europe, Asia and the Americas.
According to the plan, the first phase of a new airport was to be opened in Istanbul in 2018, which would serve more than 80 million passengers a year. There were plans to eventually serve 150 million a year at a later stage.
Terror attack and the coup attempt and subsequent brutal clampdown by the government on military officials, civil servants and others for their alleged involvement in the coup have hurt Turkey's consumers and companies, especially those in the tourism sector, said analysts.
It has hurt the Turkish economy in two main ways -- by reducing domestic consumption and tourist arrivals amid political uncertainty, and by making it harder for companies to obtain financing.
"Tourism, a crucial foreign-currency earner for a country in constant need of foreign currency to plug a yawning current account deficit, has borne the brunt of the economic fallout," said news agency AP in a report on September 18.
That's mainly due to a precipitous 89 percent drop in Russian tourist arrivals after a diplomatic fallout between the two countries brought on by Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane last year. Russia was Turkey's second-largest tourist market with 4.5 million Russians visiting places like Turkey's tourism capital Antalya in 2014, it added.
With many Russians holidaying elsewhere, Turkey stands to lose between $8 and $10 billion in tourism revenue by the end of the year, according to Cetin Gurcun, Secretary General of Turkey's travel agency association TURSAB. No amount of deals could fully plug that gap, said AP.
Turkish Airlines was still reeling from the shock. Officials of the airlines said the national flag carrier, as they said Europe's best airline for six years in a row, and flying to more countries and international destinations than any other airline in the world, is now highlighting the continued growth of Turkey as a business and tourism hub.
It touches around 116 countries and 294 destinations, including 243 international, said officials of the airlines.
"I want to make it clear how safe people are here. Our foreign exchange, capital markets and the economy are making great progresses. We are continuing all operations despite all the things that had happened," Ilker Ayci, chairman of the board and the executive committee of Turkish Airlines, told a group of visiting journalists in Istanbul recently.
It is important to dispel fear for building brotherhood and solidarity which will lead to commercial investments and tourism, he said at the headquarters of Turkish Airlines.
He highlighted the all-round growth and the socio-economic progress of Turkey and Turkish Airlines, in addition to the airline's future growth strategies and goals, and its commitment to expand its destination network.
"We successfully welcomed 62 million passengers worldwide in the last year. Our overall strategies will play a key role in reaching approximately 65 million passengers by the end of this year," he told journalists.
At least 80 journalists from 18 countries, including Bangladesh, India, China, Sri Lanka, Singapore, and Malaysia visited Istanbul in early September at the invitation of the airlines.
In early August, another group of journalists from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq visited Istanbul.
Officials of the airlines said another group of journalists from the UK, the US and some other countries would visit soon.
Turkish has been inviting them to tell the world about normalcy prevailing in Turkey.
During The Daily Star correspondent's visit, all they wanted to show was how normal Istanbul was.
There was a sense of insecurity but then again that sense is there in many parts of today's world.
"If you write, going back to your countries, what you saw in Istanbul, this will help reduce misgivings about Turkey," said Omer Celal Tabak, media relations specialist of Turkish Airlines.
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