“Oh, no,” a Turkish travel agent bemoaned, as yet another pre-sold tour package cancellation appeared on his screen while he was speaking to Middle East Eye on Friday.
“I hope this war doesn’t last long. Otherwise, we don’t know how to survive,” said Levent Nizamoglu, the executive at an Istanbul-based tourism agency that organises tour packages for Russian tourists in Istanbul and its adjacent regions.
“We don’t know what to do. We don’t know what to tell the hotels. We don’t know who will compensate us for these losses, and how,” he said.
Nizamoglu is one of many in Turkey’s tourism sector who are feeling anxious after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
There are many causes for concern: the closure of airspace in Ukraine, the fear that Turkey will not maintain its neutral stance in this conflict, as well as the memories of 2015, when Turkey downed a Russian jet for allegedly violating Turkish airspace, triggering a political and economic crisis with Russia.
“This war will be a huge blow to us,” Nizamoglu said, fearing that Russian state employees were now no longer allowed to leave their country.
But it’s not just the tourism sector in Turkey that will be stung by the fallout of the war.
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