Travel in Türkiye: a holiday and a homecoming in one count

Who TurkStat counts as a visitor to Türkiye

Turkish tourism statistics are gathered at the border, on the way out. Since 2001 TurkStat has surveyed departing visitors at selected border gates every month or quarter, questioning people aged over 14 who live outside Türkiye and came for a day or a night or longer. Since 2003 a second survey has questioned Turkish residents as they come home from trips abroad. From 2019 the revenue estimate has also drawn on card payment data from the Interbank Card Center, known by its Turkish initials BKM.

The definitions decide what the headline means. A tourist, in TurkStat's usage, stays at least 24 hours in the country visited; a day visitor stays less and spends no night. Nationality is the country named in the passport shown at the exit. Residence is a separate question: the country where the person has lived for more than a year and meets everyday needs such as food, schooling and work. That second rule splits one passport into two categories. A holder of a Turkish passport who lives abroad is a visitor in this count, a citizen resident abroad, and appears in every table beside the foreigners.

TurkStat also takes one group out of the count. From the third quarter of 2013, Syrian nationals leaving through the gates at Karkamış in Gaziantep, at Cilvegözü, Yayladağı and Kumlu in Hatay, at Öncüpınar in Kilis and at Akçakale in Şanlıurfa were removed from the border figures, and the series was revised back to the third quarter of 2012.

Other bodies publish other totals for the same years. UNWTO's World Tourism Barometer, as cited by the government's investment office, recorded 60.6 million international tourist arrivals in 2024 and receipts of 56.3 billion dollars. The Wikipedia article on tourism in Türkiye gives about 52.6 million foreign tourists and 61.1 billion dollars for 2024. TurkStat's count takes in citizens resident abroad and day visitors, which a count of foreign tourists leaves out, so the three totals measure different things.

Why so many visitors hold Turkish passports

TurkStat counted 63,917,057 departing visitors in 2025, 2.7% more than in 2024. Of those, 11,175,394, or 17.5%, were citizens resident abroad. Their reasons for coming differ from everyone else's. In 2025, 67.7% of all visitors gave sightseeing, leisure, sport and cultural activities as their purpose, while 63.4% of citizens resident abroad came to visit relatives and friends. The second quarter of 2026 shows the same split: 71.3% of visitors came for leisure, 16.6% to see relatives and friends and 6% to shop, and 60.3% of citizens resident abroad came for family and friends.

The share moves with the season. Citizens resident abroad made up 19.3% of visitors in the last quarter of 2025 and 16.2% in the second quarter of 2026, when leisure visitors were arriving for the summer. They spend less a night in every period TurkStat has published here, and in 2025 they accounted for 18% of the revenue earned from visitors, close to their share of heads.

The state has addressed this group directly. Arrivals of foreign visitors fell from around 42 million in 2014 to around 30 million in 2016, and in early 2017 the government urged Turkish citizens living abroad to take their holidays in Türkiye. Foreign arrivals recovered to 37.9 million in 2017 and 46.1 million in 2018, with Russian visitors up 444% after relations between the two governments were restored.

Trips abroad by residents are counted too. Residents of Türkiye made 11,897,355 trips abroad in 2025, 4.4% more than in 2024, and spent 807 dollars a head. In April to June 2026 they made 3,434,172 trips, 16.5% more than a year earlier, at 863 dollars a head. Since 2012 TurkStat has taken the number of pilgrims going on the hajj from the Presidency of Religious Affairs, and since the first quarter of 2013 the number going on the umrah as well.

Where package holidays in Türkiye take visitors

Part of the holiday trade is sold as packages. Of the 64,448 million dollars that visitors spent in 2025, package tours accounted for 18,196 million and personal spending for 46,252 million. Package tours took 28.2% of visitor revenue that year, food and drink 21.1% and international transport 12.8%, and spending on food and drink rose 16.1% on 2024 against 4.5% for packages. In April to June 2026 the package share was 30.2% and accommodation took 11.3%; package spending fell 5.5% on a year earlier and accommodation spending rose 11.7%.

Most beach resorts lie on the southwestern and southern coast known as the Turkish Riviera, above all on the Mediterranean near Antalya, which the Wikipedia article on tourism in Türkiye calls the country's tourism capital. The resort towns it names are Bodrum, Fethiye, Marmaris, Kuşadası, Didim and Alanya, and beach holidays and Blue Cruises are central to what the trade sells, particularly to visitors from Western Europe. Further north on the Aegean the beaches sit beside excavated cities. The Wikipedia article on Türkiye's geography lists Assos, Ayvalık, Bergama, Foça, İzmir, Çeşme, Sardis, Ephesus, Kuşadası, Didim, Miletus, Bodrum, Marmaris, Datça and Fethiye as centres of tourism in the Aegean region. İzmir province holds Ephesus and Pergamon, and its beach towns include Çeşme, Mordoğan and Foça.

The investment office measures the capacity. It counted 21,935 tourist accommodation establishments with more than 1,019,000 rooms in August 2025, and 83.2 million arrivals at tourism facilities with 216 million overnight stays in 2024. It put average spending per visitor at 972 dollars in 2024, 23.5% more than in 2019.

A third kind of trip is counted separately. TurkStat defines health tourism as travel for treatment at health centres and spas, from cosmetic and surgical operations and organ transplants to dental work and rehabilitation. The Wikipedia article on tourism gives revenue from medical tourism in 2021 as 1.05 billion dollars from 642,000 visitors, with hair transplants, rhinoplasty, cosmetic dentistry and bariatric surgery among the procedures sought.

How the inscribed sites spread across Anatolia

Türkiye ratified the World Heritage Convention on 16 March 1983. UNESCO's list for Türkiye, as read in September 2026, holds 22 inscribed properties, 20 cultural and two mixed, with 80 more on the Tentative List. The first three were inscribed in 1985: the Historic Areas of Istanbul, the Great Mosque and Hospital of Divriği, and Göreme National Park and the Rock Sites of Cappadocia. Nine were on the list by 1998. The other thirteen came from 2011 onwards, the latest being Sardis and the Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe in 2025, so most of what is inscribed today was added within the past fifteen years.

Which sites record the earliest settlements

The oldest material on the list is Neolithic. Çatalhöyük was inscribed in 2012 and Göbekli Tepe, close to 12,000 years old, in 2018. Arslantepe Mound followed in 2021. Hattusha, capital of the Hittite kingdom in Central Anatolia, was inscribed in 1986, and Gordion in 2023. Troy, inscribed in 1998, has layers going back to around 4500 BC and stands on the plains of the Troad.

The classical and Lydian layer follows. Xanthos-Letoon and Hierapolis-Pamukkale were both inscribed in 1988, the second as a mixed site, and Nemrut Dağ in 1987. Pergamon and its Multi-Layered Cultural Landscape followed in 2014, Ephesus in 2015 and Aphrodisias in 2017. Sardis was the western end of the Royal Road that Darius I built in the 5th century BC to link it with Susa.

What the medieval and Ottoman sites cover

The Ottoman sites run from the empire's first capital to its architect's late work. Bursa and Cumalıkızık, inscribed in 2014 as the birth of the Ottoman Empire, and the Selimiye Mosque and its Social Complex in Edirne, inscribed in 2011, were the next Ottoman inscriptions, and the Selimiye is counted among the major works of Mimar Sinan. The City of Safranbolu was inscribed in 1994. In Istanbul itself, the attractions the Wikipedia article on tourism lists from the city's time as Byzantine and Ottoman capital include the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, the Topkapı Palace, the Basilica Cistern, the Dolmabahçe Palace, the Galata Tower, the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar.

Three more inscriptions date from 2015 onwards. The Archaeological Site of Ani was inscribed in 2016, Diyarbakır Fortress and Hevsel Gardens in 2015, and the Wooden Hypostyle Mosques of Medieval Anatolia in 2023. The investment office describes Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia as having "untapped potential for cultural tourism". The Wikipedia article on tourism records that visitor numbers in the Diyarbakır region fell during the fighting between the PKK and the government in the 1990s and have risen again since the start of the 21st century. Ankara, the capital, adds Anıtkabir, the mausoleum of Atatürk, and the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, whose collection runs from the Paleolithic through the Hittites, Phrygians and Urartians to Rome.

When the coasts and the plateau suit travel

Türkiye's climate is set by the seas on three sides and by the mountains that cover much of the country, and Britannica divides it into six regions. The coastal fringes are mild in winter, with January means above 5 °C. Inland, January means are below freezing across the whole interior and below −5 °C over a large area of the east, with extreme minima from −20 °C in the west to −40 °C in the east. Snow lies for two weeks in the warmer areas and for up to four months in parts of the eastern mountains.

Summer reverses the pattern. July means pass 25 °C along the Aegean and the Mediterranean, 28 °C at sea level on the Mediterranean and 30 °C in the southeast, and the Mediterranean summer months are almost rainless at sea level. Ankara, on the plateau, averages −2 °C in January and 23 °C in July. The Black Sea coast is the exception to the dry summer: rain falls there all year, and annual totals reach 2,438 mm in the east. Konya, on the plateau, receives barely 305 mm a year.

The plateau has its own hazards for a traveller. In summer frequent dust storms blow a fine yellow powder across it. In the Anti-Taurus mountains of the east, winters bring frequent heavy snowfall and villages can be cut off for several days in winter storms, and in spring and autumn sudden hot and cold spells are common.

The averages have shifted. The World Bank's climate portal gives Türkiye an annual mean temperature of 11.67 °C and annual precipitation of 701.17 mm over 1995 to 2014, and records warming at 0.43 °C a decade since 1970, with precipitation falling by 9.47 mm a decade.

How travellers cross between Europe and Asia

The Turkish Straits, the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles, divide European Thrace from Anatolia and are the only outlet from the Black Sea. Istanbul sits on both shores of the Bosporus, so the crossing between the continents happens inside one city. The Marmaray and Eurasia tunnels run under the Bosporus, the Çanakkale 1915 Bridge crosses the Dardanelles and the Osman Gazi Bridge spans the Gulf of İzmit. The Istanbul Metro carried around 704 million passengers in 2019.

Air travel runs through 115 airports, the count for 2024. In January 2013 the government announced a new airport for Istanbul, with 7 billion euros invested in its construction.

On land, the country had 3,726 kilometres of controlled-access highways and 29,373 kilometres of divided highways in 2023. Turkish State Railways runs conventional and high-speed trains, and the high-speed lines radiate from Ankara to Istanbul, Konya and Sivas. Traffic drives on the right, and the international vehicle code is TR.

Entry for many nationalities is by electronic visa. Türkiye issued 16,199,968 electronic visas between April 2013 and 1 January 2017, from 18,452,733 applications, an acceptance rate of 87.79%. Nationals of the United Kingdom received 4.6 million of them, Iraqis 2 million and Dutch nationals 1.8 million.

When Turkish public holidays shut offices

Public holidays are fixed by Law No. 2429 of 17 March 1981. The one national day is 29 October, the anniversary of the proclamation of the republic in 1923; it begins at 13:00 on 28 October, it is the only day on which ceremonies are held in the name of the state inside and outside the country, and private workplaces must close. Three official days follow the civil calendar: 23 April, National Sovereignty and Children's Day; 19 May, Commemoration of Atatürk and Youth and Sports Day; and 30 August, Victory Day. In the wording amended on 25 October 2016, 1 January, 1 May and 15 July are general holidays as well, the last of them as Democracy and National Unity Day.

The two religious festivals move. The law gives Ramazan Bayramı three and a half days and Kurban Bayramı four and a half, each starting at 13:00 on the eve. They are dated in the Islamic calendar, which the Presidency of Religious Affairs publishes in months such as Ramazan and Zilhicce, so they arrive ten or eleven days earlier each Gregorian year. In 2026 the first day of Ramazan Bayramı was 20 March and of Kurban Bayramı 27 May, and public servants were also given 25 and 26 May off; for 2027 the tentative dates are 10 March and 16 May. When a holiday ends on a Friday evening, the following Saturday is a holiday as well.

The weekly day of rest is Sunday, and under the same law it begins no later than 13:00 on Saturday and lasts at least 35 hours. Shops selling food, drink and clothing are exempt from the Saturday rule.

What clock and currency visitors to Türkiye meet

Türkiye keeps UTC+3 all year. The Council of Ministers voted on 7 September 2016 to stay on summer time permanently, after Decision No. 24005 of 6 September 2016 amended the law on the 24-hour day and cancelled the change back that had been set for 30 October. An identical proposal had been put forward in March 2012 and did not pass. The practical effect is that the clocks in Istanbul and Antalya stand an hour further ahead of western Europe in winter than in summer.

The currency is the Turkish lira, whose symbol is ₺. Consumer prices rose 34.9% in 2025, and TurkStat calculates tourism income in thousands of US dollars. Mains electricity is 230 volts on the Europlug and Schuko sockets used across continental Europe. The international dialling code is +90 and the internet domain is .tr.

Turkish is the language of the state. Türkiye: culture covers what the reform laws of the 1920s changed in it, and Türkiye: geography covers the plateau, the two fault lines and the straits that a route across the country meets.