Antalya becomes Armenians’ top summer destination

Despite the acerb relations amid Turkey and Armenia, the accepted Mediterranean resort city-limits of Antalya ranks as Armenians’ number-one summer vacation destination, appear EurasiaNet.

According to the report, Antalya’s acceptability for low prices and high-quality chump account outweighs for abounding barter the actuality that it is amid aural the borders of “longtime foe” Turkey.

Tez Tour’s Armenia appointment director, Narine Davtian, told EuraisaNet that by summer’s end her Russian-owned bureau will accept alert the amount of Antalya-bound barter as the 8,000 who chose to biking to the Turkish city-limits in 2008. Armavia’s four absolute flights to Antalya anniversary anniversary from Yerevan, a account offered by Tez Tour, are consistently full, she said.

“I am a patriot, but let’s not mix tourism and politics,” Daytian was quoted by the Web site. “No added country can accommodate the aforementioned ambit [of biking options] and quality. Humans wish a acceptable vacation and they get it.”

Another biking aggregation administrator agrees.

“We action tours to altered destinations — Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Georgia, Jordan — but the hottest tours are to Antalya in Turkey,” Flight bureau administrator Marine Ayvazian told the EurasiaNet reporter, who estimated that the city-limits is the best of 70 percent of Flight’s customers.

The Armenian government has no abstracts on the amount of it citizens who biking to Turkey. Armenian biking agencies, it says, will not allotment the information.

However, Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry announces the amount of foreigners entering to the country account on its Web site. According to that data, 19,209 Armenians visited Turkey in 2007, including circadian visits. The amount went up to 24,496 in 2008 and is 21,231 for the aboriginal six months of this year, advertence a audible increase.

While abounding Armenians are blessed to appointment Antalya to account from the sun and the Mediterranean, some accede it as a “betray to the country.”

A adolescence accumulation associated with the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutiun has requested the Yerevan mayor’s appointment abolish all artery posters commercial Antalya and “to accord seriously” with the issue. The mayor’s appointment has not yet acted on the request.

“Advertisements for a vacation in Antalya are arising up like mushrooms and, instead of spending their vacations in Armenia, humans are abrogation for Turkey. Is this normal?” Haroutiun Melikian, who runs an anti-Antalya beef attack for the Armenian Revolutionary Federation’s Nikol Aghbalian Student Union, was quoted in EurasiaNet story.

“The money that goes to arm and strengthen Turkey [via tourism] could abide in our country and accord to our own strength,” he argued.

To action Antalya’s popularity, the Nikol Aghbalian Student Union has afraid posters throughout Yerevan that acknowledge that “Armenians who absorb their vacation in Antalya are arming the Turkish army.”

Employees of several government ministries told EurasiaNet that accepted rules forbid accompaniment advisers from spending their vacations in Antalya — this admitting the contempo official advance appear some anatomy of rapprochement with Turkey.

But the disapproval tactic does not consistently work.

“If I accept to accept amid the top prices of Armenian resorts and an all-embracing vacation at the bank in Antalya, I’ll aces the sea for my ancestors and me, abnormally if the aberration in prices makes no sense,” said one Yerevan citizen booking an Antalya cruise in a biking agency.

On average, biking agencies allegation as low as $450 per getting for a week-long amalgamation bout in Antalya, while a agnate vacation at Armenia’s Lake Sevan, the abundance resort of Tsaghkadzor or the mineral baptize spa of Jermuk alpha at about $700.

Yerevan Accompaniment University analyst Nelly Haroian believes that, absorbed by the adorable prices, Armenians are able to put abreast misgivings about the accomplished and feel “comfortable” visiting Turkey back “Turks are confined them.”

Given the crisis-friendly prices for tours to Antalya, assured any added acknowledgment is not realistic, commented sociologist Aharon Adibekian. “There are abounding questions affiliated to civic self-esteem, but humans are chargeless to adjudge area to accept a vacation and what to do,” Adibekian said.

“We all are patriots,” Tez Tour’s Daytian told EurasiaNet. “And spending a vacation in Turkey does not beggarly getting beneath Armenian.”