Germany has been placed first in official tourism figures for January released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism that break down the nationality of tourists visiting Turkey.
The number of German tourists increased by 1.58 percent to 113,055 year-on-year in January, while the overall number of tourists increased by 0.6 percent compared to January 2011. German tourists constituted 11.5 percent of a total of 981,611 visitors to Turkey in January 2012. Georgian tourists ranked second with 96,978, followed by Iran, which saw 84,531 people visiting Turkey. The number of Georgian tourists rose by 8.8 percent
year-on-year in January, while the number of Iranian tourists increased by 17.8 percent.
Russian visitors increased by 14.7 percent in January, to 51,918. The number of Bulgarian tourists decreased by 10.3 percent to 78,432 in January 2012 compared to the same period of 2011, while Syrian tourists fell by 16.7 percent, to 53,413. The number of visitors from Greece, currently going through a deep economic crisis, dropped by 2.9 percent to 38,172. The number of Israeli tourists, which was 9,000 in January 2010, decreased by 50.1 percent to 4,494 in January 2012.
