Number of museum visitors increases in Turkey in 2019
ISTANBUL
Museums in Turkey drew 35.4 million visitors in the year of 2019, a significant increase from the year before, statistics have shown.
According to information obtained from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK), there are 199 museums under Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Ministry as opposed to 268 private museums.
As of the year 2000, Turkey had 89 private museums. But this number reached 193 as of 2014.
The number of works in museums within the ministry decreased by 2.2 percent in 2019 compared to the previous year and reached 3.2 million.
However, the number of visitors has increased in contrast to the declining number of works.
TÜİK has not indicated whether the number included that of online visitors to museums.
35.4 million visitors in 2019
Some 35.4 million people visited ministerial museums and archaeological sites in 2019, while this number was 28.3 million in 2018, according to the data.
The number of people visiting paid ministerial museums and archaeological sites in Turkey increased by 18.2 percent in 2019 compared to the previous year with 21.8 million, and their share in total visitors was 62.4 percent.
The number of people visiting free ministerial museums and archaeological sites in the country increased by 18.2 percent in 2019 compared to the previous year with 13.1 million and their share in total visitors was 37.6 percent.
Ministerial museums mostly focus on archeology and ethnography, as private museums vary from such topics as arts, kitchen culture, agriculture, stockbreeding, media and industry.
The number of works in private museums increased by 3.1 percent in 2019 compared to 2018, reaching some 408,000.
The number of private museum visitors increased by 30.3 percent in 2019 compared to the previous year, reaching 16.2 million.
Within this scope, the ministry incites legal entities to build, remodel and manage places where artistic events take place along with collecting, documenting, archiving, publishing, training, promoting and conducting research on cultural values and abstract cultural heritage.
Hence, these legal entities get discounts on taxes, insurance premiums and energy expenses.
The number of immovable cultural assets under the responsibility of museums increased by 4 percent to 113,000 in 2019 compared to the previous year.
The province with the highest number of immovable cultural assets under the responsibility of museums was Istanbul with 32,000, followed by the Aegean provinces of İzmir and Muğla, and then the northwestern province of Bursa, respectively.
While the number of national parks did not change in 2019, the number of nature parks increased by 1.6 percent.
In 2019, the number of nature parks increased to 247, while the nature park area increased to 106,000 hectares.
Areas suitable for public entertainment and recreation with wild animals and vegetation in the integrity of the landscape can be declared as a nature park, according to the regulation.
The number of natural monuments increased by 3.6 percent in 2019 compared to the previous year and reached 116.
The natural monuments, on the other hand, are called the protected parts of nature due to their scientifically valuable properties created by natural events.
