Last Week's Attack Hit Turkey Where It Hurts: Tourism

Last week's suicide bombing in Istanbul struck at the heart of Turkey's tourism industry, killing 10 tourists and wounding 15 others near some of the country's most famous sites.

By Saturday afternoon, the barricades that police had erected around the bomb site had been dismantled, and an impromptu memorial had sprung up.

A thick layer of flowers lay at the foot of the ancient Obelisk of Theodosius, while Turkish and German flags were draped over the fence surrounding the monument. This site, located in the middle of what was once the city's Roman hippodrome and near the towering minarets of the Sultanahmet, or Blue, Mosque, and the 1500-year-old Hagia Sophia, is where the suicide bomber detonated himself in the middle of a group of mostly German tourists.

"We pray to Turkey for safety, security, stability and peace," said one sign in Arabic left, among others, atop the flowers.

Hundreds of people visited the memorial, mainly Turks and Syrians, over a half-hour period on Saturday. Among them was a handful of tourists, including 30-year-old Trevor Lawson, a medical marijuana grower from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who had arrived in Istanbul from the US the night before. He said he didn't cancel his plans to visit the city out of principle.

"I felt like if I were to not come because of the bombing, since the desired result of these terrorist attacks is to strike at the Turkish economy, the tourist economy, it would be a great disservice to the people that died to give in to the terror," he said.

Other tourists and tour companies were more cautious. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, some tourists already in Turkey cancelled their vacations and returned home. The world's largest tour operator, TUI, gave clients the option to change their trips to Turkey in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Individual hoteliers gave anecdotal accounts of tourists canceling bookings. And cruise operator Crystal Cruises canceled two upcoming stops in April and May in Istanbul due to security concerns.

But the timing of the bombing may be fortunate for the tourism industry. The suicide bomber struck at one of the slowest periods in the country's tourism calendar — when short days, cold temperatures, and rain and snow keep most tourists away.

"Business is slow at this time of year anyway — it's winter — so we won't know how this attack has affected the situation until the high season arrives this spring and summer," said Erol Karagoz, 28, the owner of a lamp and ceramics shop in the old city, less than half a kilometer from where the bomb went off. "If nothing happens between now and [the high season] — no bombs — then business will be better."

Turkey is the fifth most visited tourist destination in the world, and tourism makes up four percent of the country's economy. The number of foreign visitors increased by 200 percent between 2002 and 2014, when the country received 41 million tourists. The number of tourists fell slightly in 2015.

Some in the tourism industry say the Turkish government is to blame for the decline, due to the country's involvement in, and proximity to, the conflict in Syria. Last year a double-suicide bombing blamed on the Islamic State killed more than 100 people during a political demonstration in the capital, Ankara. Another suicide bombing last January killed a police officer near tourist sites in Istanbul's historic center, not far from last week's attack.

The 30-year conflict between the Turkish government and Kurdish PKK separatists also erupted again last July after a two-year ceasefire. The conflict is isolated in eastern Turkey, far from Istanbul's tourist sites, but it has killed hundreds.

The event with the potential to most affect Turkey's tourism sector involved Russia: the shooting down by the Turkish air force of a Russian warplane involved in Moscow's operations in Syria near the Turkish border in late November.

Russian tourists made up 10 percent of Turkey's annual visitors in 2015. After the shoot-down, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended visa-free travel, stopped tour operators from selling Turkish vacation packages, and banned charter flights from Russia to Turkey.

But the Turkish Hoteliers Federation says any decrease in Russian tourism to the country, which was down by 18 percent in 2015 from the year before, had more to do with Western sanctions and a decrease in oil prices putting a pinch on Russian pocketbooks than the plane incident.

"The decrease is caused by the devaluation of the ruble in the past year," Turkish Hoteliers Federation's Necip Boz wrote in an email.

Boz added that it was impossible to tell how the bombing would effect Turkey's 2016 tourism market.

"We should wait for the new season," Boz said. "We cannot see its effects now."

The effect of the attack may not be evident in tourist numbers or revenues yet, but the attack has clearly changed the posture of the Turkish security forces. Whereas before the attack security was sparse around the main tourist areas in Istanbul, this week pairs of soldiers with automatic weapons stood at attention in front of the entrances to many tourist attractions, and security guards checked bags and purses.

Canadian Ibi Venczel, 48, and her husband Colin Webster, 47, said they actually felt safer after last week's attack.

"We've been in other places with security risks and normally after something happens that's when it's actually at its safest," Venczel said, as she and her husband guided their two young children through a gate connecting the Ottoman sultan's old palace grounds to the sprawling square in Sultanahmet on Saturday.

"Many of these cities are safer than American cities downtown at night," said Webster, who heads an international school in Azmat, Eritrea. "Besides, people are also not going to avoid San Bernardino, California, because there was a shooting there, so why would you avoid this for the same reason?"

Follow Benjamin Gilbert on Twitter: @benrgilbert