Agence France-Presse put out a story on Istanbul’s tourism industry saying the city is eerily quiet nearly a week after the deadly airport bombings.
The magic of Turkey’s biggest city has been seducing visitors for centuries, from its array of historic mosques and palaces to its stunning views over the sparkling Bosphorus, AFP reported.
But for people working in the once-thriving tourist trade, Tuesday’s gun and suicide bomb spree represents one more nail in the coffin for an industry already reeling from a string of attacks this year.
“It’s disastrous,” said Orhan Sonmez as he stood hopelessly offering tours of the Hagia Sophia, the cavernous former mosque and church that is now a museum. “All my life I’ve been a tour guide. Most of us have come to a turning point where we don’t know if we can go on. It’s tragic.”
Restaurants sit empty in the Sultanahmet tourist district, and five-star hotel rooms can be booked for bargain prices. In happier years the queues outside the Hagia Sophia might have stretched an hour or longer at this time of year – today you can walk straight in and share the place with just a smattering of other visitors.
Nineteen foreigners were among the 45 people killed at Ataturk airport by suspected Islamic State jihadists, and analysts say the attack may have been a deliberate attempt to weaken the Turkish state by hitting its tourist industry.
The TAK, a radical Kurdish group that has carried out several attacks in Turkey this year, also warned foreign tourists to stay away after it killed 11 people in an Istanbul car bombing in June.
The United States, Germany and several other countries have warned their nationals against threats in Turkey, which is a candidate to join the European Union.
In May, Turkey suffered its worst drop-off in visits in 22 years – down 35 percent from a year ago — as an industry which ordinarily brings in 30 billion euros (US$33.2 billion) went into free fall.