The Turkish specialized tourist press, usually relatively “inert” on the weekend, turned out to be rich in publications on Saturday: tourism in Turkey was watching the “Wagner march” by Russia with trepidation, and hotels have already started saying goodbye to Russian tourists.
At once, several publications — among them Turizm Ajansi and Turizm Guncel — described the situation in Russia in detail. “Since yesterday, Turkey and the world have been fixated on the activities of Wagner’s mercenary company, which challenges the Russian state,” Turizm Guncel reported at the beginning of its article.
And the first edition of Turkey presented such considerations. “There are fears that the tension between Wagner and the Russian army, and precisely at the height of the tourist season, may affect the arrival of tourists from Russia, the main market for Turkey, to Antalya. At the same time, in the list of countries that send the largest number of visitors to Turkey in the first 5 months of 2023, Russia took first place with an increase of 110.12% compared to the same period of the previous year,” the Turks said. Even in May, when the decline was recorded, Russia remained in first place, with an increase of almost 77%. “There are 1,200 flights a week from Russia to Turkey in the summer. Of course, the Turks feared that this tourist flow would be reduced to a minimum, similar to the Ukrainian one.
Russian experts, we should add, “added fuel to the fire” by declaring that the prices for air tickets from Russia instantly skyrocketed. New records in the growth of prices for air tickets abroad were recorded by experts in the travel market on Saturday evening: According to air ticket aggregators, prices to Istanbul have already risen by more than 35 thousand ($450) one-way tickets with multiple transfers. Similarly, prices are high for all other foreign flight destinations.
However, on Sunday, the panic seems to have subsided. As quoted by the Turks, “During the meeting mediated by the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, it was announced that an agreement had been reached.” According to the official statement of the press service of the Belarusian president, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the “Wagner” PMC, “accepted the proposal of the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, to stop the movement of his fighters on the territory of Russia and take further steps to de-escalate the tension,” Turkish publications write.