Israeli visits drop after Davos spat

Agence France-Presse

Turkey attracted only 64,200 tourists from Israel between January and May, compared to 162,600 in the same period last year, the tourism ministry said late Wednesday. A total of 558,200 Israelis traveled to Turkey in 2008, making it their top holiday destination.

The drastic decline was blamed largely on Ankara's almost daily outbursts against Israel during the devastating offensive on the besieged Gaza Strip in late December and January. The tensions climaxed in a public row between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Israeli President Shimon Peres at a high-profile international gathering in Davos, Switzerland.

"The incident at Davos played a determining role in the Israelis' shunning of Turkey," Timur Bayındır, the head of Turkey's Tourist Hotels and Investors Association, told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

On Jan. 29, Erdoğan stormed out of a heated debate on the Gaza conflict at the World Economic Forum in Davos, after accusing Israel of "barbarian" acts and telling Peres, "you know well how to kill people."

His reaction was unprecedented for Turkey, a predominantly Muslim but non-Arab country that has been Israel's chief regional ally since the two signed a military cooperation deal in 1996. Daniel Zimet, head of Zimet Marketing Communications, which handles the promotion of Turkey in Israel, said that the country's powerful trade unions had introduced a virtual boycott in holidays they organized for workers. "The unions normally decide in January on the destinations, and this year it coincided with Davos," he said. "Turkey was simply erased from the catalogues." According to the Turkish hoteliers' federation, union-organized trips account for nearly half of Israeli tourist arrivals in Turkey.