Turkey attracts nearly 4M foreign tourists in August

ANKARA

The number of foreigners visiting Turkey hit nearly 4 million in August, according to the Culture and Tourism Ministry on Friday.

Despite posting a year-on-year rise of 119%, the figure was 37% down from its pre-pandemic level in August 2019, the ministry data showed.

The Mediterranean resort city of Antalya welcomed some 46% of all foreign visitors, some 1.8 million, this August.

It was followed by Istanbul, Turkey's largest city by population and a top tourist draw, and Edirne in northwestern Turkey, which borders both Bulgaria and Greece, with 1 million and 353,088 foreign visitors, respectively.

Russia topped the list of visitors by country in last month with 906,060, followed by Germans with 611,025, Ukrainians with 324,272 amid the travel restrictions from some other countries.


In the January-August period, more than 14 million foreign visitors entered the country, a rise of 94% from the same period last year and a decrease of 55% from 2019.