{"id":45350,"date":"2011-10-16T04:38:50","date_gmt":"2011-10-16T01:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=45350"},"modified":"2014-01-06T16:20:23","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T14:20:23","slug":"at-turkish-resort-arabs-fill-israeli-rooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2011\/10\/16\/at-turkish-resort-arabs-fill-israeli-rooms\/","title":{"rendered":"At Turkish resort, Arabs fill Israeli rooms"},"content":{"rendered":"
By ROB L. WAGNER \/ THE MEDIA LINE
\n10\/15\/2011 19:57<\/p>\n

While upheavals in the Middle East have increased Turkey’s popularity as a holiday destination for Arabs, Israeli tourists have vanished.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"ANTALYA, Turkey \u2013 Old Town at dusk in this resort city on the Mediterranean coast is filled with hawkers selling jewelry, clothes and souvenirs. Shopkeepers easily transition from speaking Turkish to Russian, Polish and German as they spy tourists tentatively approaching their shops. Yet Hebrew, once among the languages mastered by bazaar sellers, is virtually non-existent.<\/p>\n

The annual number of Israeli tourists to Turkey has always been modest. However, resorts and shop owners recognize the potential for a greater Israeli presence on the beaches and in hotels. Israeli tourism to Turkey remains a fledgling enterprise, but the worsening diplomatic crisis between the two countries has damaged the progress made in recent years to attract more visitors.<\/p>\n

Israelis accounted for no more than 3% of the tourists visiting Turkey before 2009. Since 2009, only 0.05% of the total number of tourists visiting Turkey are Israeli, according to Turkey\u2019s Ministry of Culture and Tourism.<\/p>\n

Whether Turkey can attract Israeli tourists to at least 2009 levels is the \u201cmillion-dollar question,\u201d Danny Zimet, spokesman for Turkey\u2019s tourism ministry office in Tel Aviv, told The Media Line.<\/p>\n

\u201cTurkey as a tourist destination is disappearing because of the constant problems between the two countries,\u201d says Zimet, who is also a senior fellow at the Center for International Communication at Bar Ilan University at Ramat Gan.<\/p>\n

Zimet says that a record number of 560,000 Israelis visited Turkey in 2008. Turkey and Israel enjoyed warm relations until Israel launched its Gaza campaign against Hamas in December 2008. A month later, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed off the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos after saying \u201cyou kill people\u201d to President Shimon Peres in a heated exchange.<\/p>\n

The very public confrontation had a chilling effect on the Israeli and Turkish tourism industries. Israeli tourism to Turkey fell dramatically to about 300,000 visitors in 2009. Zimet says the number of Israeli tourists to Turkey further dropped to 110,000 in 2010. The numbers decreased again to about 62,000 between January and August of this year.<\/p>\n

Relations between the two countries reached a breaking point when Israeli commandos killed nine people aboard the Mavi Marmara in May 2010 as the Turkish-flagged ship attempted to break the Israeli blockade at the Gaza Strip. The United Nations later determined Israeli armed forces used \u201cexcessive force,\u201d but commandos also faced an \u201corganized and violent resistance\u201d from members of the flotilla.<\/p>\n

Last month, Ankara expelled the Israeli ambassador and terminated all bilateral military agreements after Israel refused to apologize for the Mavi Marmara incident. Deteriorating relations between the two countries prompted Israeli tour companies to cancel charter flights to Turkey due to lack of demand. Turkish charter airlines, meanwhile, scaled back weekly flights to Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost vacations are done via charters,\u201d Zimet says. \u201cIt is the most practical way to go on vacation. It is the most affordable way. Most tourists going to Turkey now are Arab Israelis who are taking Turkish Airlines or Israelis going to Turkey for business purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, bilateral trade relations between the two countries appear to be untouched by the crisis. \u201cThere has been no clear impact on civilian trade,\u201d Zimet says. Menashe Carmon, chairman of the Tel Aviv-based Israel Turkey Business Council, a non-profit organization with an extensive Israel\/Turkey entrepreneurial membership, told The Media Line that business owners \u201cdon\u2019t speak politics.\u201d He says it\u2019s business as usual for Turkish and Israeli business owners forging civilian bilateral trade agreements.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe private sector has been unaffected,\u201d Carmon says. \u201cThe private sector operates under different conditions and different criteria. Our organization is still intact.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the loss of Israeli tourists in the resort cities of Antalya and Alanya appear to have minimal impact on the local economies, their absence has not gone unnoticed. And whatever animosities exist between the two governments, the tension has not interfered with local commerce.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t get many Israelis here, but we always welcome their business,\u201d says Mustafa Saydam, who hawks day tours for Pacho Tours on the sidewalk of Ataturk Street in Alanya. \u201cPolitics is politics,\u201d he told The Media Line. \u201cIt has nothing to do with showing people how to have fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zimet agrees. \u201cFrom my personal perspective of Turkey and what I am hearing from my colleagues, there is no obvious change [in attitude toward Israelis] in the civilian population of Turkey,\u201d he says. \u201cThe Turks don\u2019t have the same feelings as their president expressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

An Israeli-Arab citizen vacationing with his family at Antalya\u2019s Club Hotel Sera luxury resort told The Media Line the city has been his destination of choice for the past five years. The man, who spoke on the condition that his name not be published, said he has not come across any problems. \u201cI am always treated well here, although I am not Jewish and I cannot speak for Israelis. But even so, like any tourist place, doing business crosses all cultural and religious lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what is Israel\u2019s loss may be Turkey\u2019s gain. Turkey\u2019s tourism ministry recently announced that an estimated 1.4 million Arabs visited Turkey so far in 2011, a jump from about 912,000 in 2009.<\/p>\n

Mehmet Habbab, chairman of the Turkish-Lebanese Business Council, told Agence France Presse recently that he expected the number of Arab tourists to hit 1.7 million by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Part of the trend for Arabs to visit Turkey is the growing popularity of Erdogan in Gulf countries for his hardline stance over the Mavi Marmara incident. The success of wildly popular Turkish soap operas, long a staple on Arab television, has attracted more Arabs to Istanbul to visit the city\u2019s sites. Traditional Arab tourist destinations like Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and Syria are in upheaval. Turkey provides an alternative.<\/p>\n

In addition, the Turkish tourism ministry reported that an estimated 1.2 million French tourists traveled to Turkey from January to September in 2011, a 45% leap from the same period in 2010. France now ranks sixth behind Germany, Russia, Britain, Iran and Bulgaria in the number of tourists visiting Turkey.<\/p>\n

Zimet says that despite the crisis Tel Aviv\u2019s Turkish tourism office \u201chas no intention of closing its doors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSlowly, Israelis will be drawn to Turkey,\u201d says Zimet. \u201cDespite boycotting Turkey now, it\u2019s still attractive. Israelis will come back once there is a better political atmosphere and a practical way to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By ROB L. WAGNER \/ THE MEDIA LINE 10\/15\/2011 19:57 While upheavals in the Middle East have increased Turkey’s popularity as a holiday destination for Arabs, Israeli tourists have vanished. ANTALYA, Turkey \u2013 Old Town at dusk in this resort city on the Mediterranean coast is filled with hawkers selling jewelry, clothes and souvenirs. Shopkeepers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":45351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148,1094],"tags":[3253,5645],"class_list":["post-45350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","category-tourism","tag-arab-tourists","tag-jewish-tourists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}