Proving last year’s predictions wrong, international tourists were not deterred by president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s polarising internal and external politics with arrivals breaking all records between January and March 2018.

In spite of the leader of the pro-Kurdish party being imprisoned alongside another 13 of the party’s elected deputies, more than 80 mayors of Turkish cities and hundreds of journalists journalists also jailed, not to mention regular waves of political asylum seekers streaming into Europe, arrivals of foreign visitors have actually grown by 34.9 per cent reaching 5.13 million.

Turkey has received 1.3 million more tourists compared to the same period in 2017, according to data from the local Tourism and Culture Ministry. Taking into consideration the fact that Turkey separates the arrivals of foreign tourists from those of Turkish nationals living abroad who visit Turkey regularly the increase translates into a whopping 50.5 per cent.

Meanwhile, Greek tourists visiting Turkey has also seen a good 16.2 per cent increase, regardless of the tensions between the neighbouring countries.

It is worth noting that 76.1 per cent of Turkey’s income (excluding GSM roaming and marina service expenditures) was obtained from foreign visitors and only a 23.9 per cent was obtained from Turkish citizens living abroad.

Turkey’s top five source markets in the first quarter came from China, Russia, Britain, Germany and Italy.

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