Antalya, Turkey (dpa) – Antalya, often called Turkey’s tourism capital, is enjoying a “golden year”, having recovered from the setbacks of 1999 following the arrest of the Kurdish separatist chief Abdullah Ocalan.
Now tourists are again streaming back to Turkey’s south coast, with the governor’s office reporting that almost 495,000 visitors arrived there by plane in August alone.
Added to the 2.1 million who arrived at the airport in the preceding months, that is over 240,000 more arrivals than the same period in 1999. Experts are expecting three million visitors for the whole of 2000.
“This will be a very good year for Antalya,” says Osman Ayik of the association of Turkish Mediterranean hoteliers, AKTOB.
The association’s deputy chairman expects the coming year to show further growth of between 10 and 15 per cent. But tourists do not only want sun, beaches and sea. They look for restaurants, shops and discos – and in this respect, there are serious gaps in the region.
At the moment, the holiday camps are often far away from the nearest bars or shops.
The mayor of Antalya, Bekir Kumbul, also says that there are not enough leisure activities on offer. He dreams of theme parks like Seaworld or Disneyland. “That would attract many people,” agrees Ayik.
To cope with the huge numbers – in the peak season, an average of 300 foreign planes land in Antalya every day – a second runway is now being built. South Turkey is especially popular with tourists from Germany, who make up around 80 per cent of all visitors to the area.
There are many Germans who regularly come here during the off season as well. Alanya, around 130 kilometres south-east of Antalya, is a prime example, having many German residents. In Antalya too, many Germans own a flat or a house.
The Bartels family from Moenchengladbach, who ran a restaurant in Germany, came to Antalya seven years ago, with nothing more than a few suitcases. The three children, aged 18, 15 and 9, go to school in Antalya and speak perfect Turkish.
The family’s lifestyle is relatively modest, the money mostly coming from tenants’ rents. “We always worked so hard in Germany, we just didn’t have enough time for the children,” says Willi Bartels, 43. “Now it’s really all leisure time,” says his wife.
When the family first rented a house in 1993, the area was only sparsely built up. “Now there’s building going on everywhere,” say the Bartels. It’s true. Just about everywhere you look, there are apartment blocks springing up.
Besides the many tourists who come here, the city, with its 750,000 residents, also has to find room for 60,000 holidaymakers a year.
“Many Turkish pensioners come here and many who looking for work in the tourism industry,” says Mayor Kumbul. “We are trying to cope with the growth without destroying the city. I suppose that’s the drawback with beauty.”
