11/02/12, 00:20:57 EST

  e-mail this article

Tourism Summit

turkishpress.com

PM Erdogan attended the "restructuring and new openings in Turkish Tourism" summit at the Belek district of the southern city of Antalya.

"We are calling the NGOs in our country to bring forth their suggestions whatever opinion they may have. We are keen on changing this, but we won`t remove it," said PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code(TCK). Underlining that the tourism sector in Turkey ranked number one in service industry since 90s with an average growth rate of 6,8 percent in the last 20 years Erdogan said the tourism revenues constituted 5 percent of the GNP and added that they did not see tourism just as an element supporting the economic development. "To look at tourism just with the economy perspective is wrong. Tourism has a political dimension, tourism has a cultural dimension, one that brings the peoples of the world together. Tourism contributes to the world peace," said Erdogan. Reminding that they have united the ministries of culture and tourism under one roof, PM Erdogan said they have restored around 2,000 of the 10,000 historic structures (that were in bad shape) belonging to the nonprofit foundations. Erdogan continued his speech with some info about initiatives about belief and cultural tourism and said, "we want to enliven the belief and culture tourism. Our ministry of transportation is working hard about the ports. The privatization process is continuing. We open new tenders. Then, these tenders are cancelled. We want to go faster, but we are being hold back," said Erdogan. Erdogan said they were expecting the 2007 hotel reservation rate to be higher than that of 2005 and 2006 and noted that they have prepared the "2023 tourism strategy." Erdogan stressed with the new incentive system, they have started the allotment of tourism areas to foreign and local investors and said "with the actualisation of `Tourism Cities` project, we are aiming an income of 85 billion USD with 65 million tourists."

 Printable Version  | published Mar 06, 2007