Turkey’s Culture Ministry to boost promotion of museums

ANKARA - Anadolu Agency

Culture Minister Nuri Ersoy has said his ministry will allocate a certain portion of its revenue to promote the country’s museums to visitors starting from next year.  

“We will advertise the museums across Turkey starting from March [2019]. Tourists will begin to see ads of museums as they get off the plane,” he said. 

Speaking about the increase in entrance fees of museums and ancient sites, Ersoy said 85 percent of museum revenues were obtained from foreign visitors. 

“Some 7-8 percent comes from the Museum Card system and the rest from individuals,” he added, referring to the museum pass which provides free access to most museums across Turkey. 

Ersoy said the Museum Card system was designed specially to benefit local visitors, who can visit almost all museums for a total price of 70 liras for a year. 

“With the Museum Card, if you visit a museum every month, the average price amounts to approximately 6 liras. There is no museum which you can enter at this price anywhere in the world. You won’t find such a system anywhere in the world,” he said, adding that the price increase in museum fees were important for the development of museums. 

Ersoy said the museums were free for people under the age of 18 and above 65 and that teachers will also be able to visit museums for free starting from Nov. 24. 

When asked if museums were sufficiently introduced and presented to locals, Ersoy said, “We are working on it. We will allocate a certain portion of museum revenues for promotions from next year. You will see them as of March. We carried out a statistical work on the issue and saw that the average number of tourists visiting museums is half of Europe’s average. This is our biggest problem.”