The number of foreign visitors coming to Turkey tumbled 10 percent in February, the biggest drop in a decade, data showed on Tuesday, as widening security concerns ate into a major source of revenue for the economy. Turkey has been hit by a spate a bomb attacks this year, including two blamed on Daesh in Istanbul, its biggest city and traditional tourist draw. In January a suicide bomber blew himself up in the city's historic heart, killing 12 German tourists. Tourist interest in Turkey could drop further after another suicide bomber blew himself up on Istanbul's most popular shopping thoroughfare this month, killing three Israeli tourists and an Iranian. This week Israel warned its citizens visiting Turkey to leave "as soon as possible", predicting possible follow-up attacks. Tourism fell by 10.32 percent year-on-year in February, to 1.24 million people, the data from the Tourism Ministry showed. The decline was the biggest since October 2006. The industry is also suffering from a chill in relations with Russia — typically a major source of tourism revenue for Turkey — and Russian visitors fell by more than half during the month. Relations between Moscow and Ankara have worsened after Turkey shot down a Russian jet over Syria last year. Economists have forecast that tourism revenue will drop by a quarter this year, costing the country around $8 billion. Turkey, as a country shaken through consecutive massive terror activities, is currently in the middle of a ring of fire, the Turkish prime minister has said, adding its security starts off its Syria-Iraqi borders and over a line passing through Syria's Latakia, Aleppo and Iraq's Mosul and Sulaymaniyah. "We are in the middle of a ring of fire. I will not announce the number of terrorist attacks we have foiled," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a group of journalists who accompanied him on his two-day trip to the Jordanian capital of Amman on March 27. Suicide bomb attacks carried out by outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Daesh in recent months have pushed Turkish authorities to rethink their security policies both inside and outside the country. The PKK has its headquarters and training camps in northern Iraq, while its offshoot, the Democratic Union Party (PYD,) is settled in northern Syria, while ISIL controls a good size of territory in both Iraq and Syria. "Turkey's security zone starts from Latakia and through Aleppo, Mosul and Sulaymaniyah," Davutoglu stressed, in remarks which coincided with the Iraqi army offensive launched to liberate Mosul from Daesh. Upon a question on Turkey's approach to this ongoing campaign for Mosul, Davutoglu said Turkey would welcome the liberation of even the tiniest piece of land from Daesh, recalling it was the common objective of the anti-Daesh coalition. The fate of the Middle East is in the hands of two towns, Davutoglu said, naming them as Syria's Aleppo and Iraq's Mosul. "If Aleppo would fall into the hands of either Daesh or the (Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad) regime, then it would mean the end of hopes for Syria. Likewise if Daesh continues to control Mosul, Iraq will not be a peaceful country. But if Daesh would be replaced by extreme Shiite groups, then it would mean that civil war in Iraq will never end," Davutoglu said. Therefore, for Mosul, it's not important when Iraq's third largest city is liberated but rather by whom it will be freed, the Turkish prime minister stressed, adding, "Mosul should be liberated by the people of Mosul. That's why we have established the military base in Bashiqa." — Agencies
