"Turkey faces a drop of at least 40% in tourist arrivals this year, with political and security issues to blame."
It is a picture repeated across Antalya and throughout the country: Turkish tourism is in crisis. A country that welcomed 37 million visitors in 2014 - then the sixth most popular tourist destination in the world - is expected to see a drop of at least 40% this year.
The main decline is the Russian market, the four-and-a-half million Russian tourists who were coming have fallen in number by around 95%. The trigger was Turkey shooting down a Russian military jet which violated Turkish airspace last November, sparking a diplomatic crisis between the two countries. The Kremlin seethed, barring Russian tour companies from selling package deals to Turkey. President Vladimir Putin told Russians to holiday elsewhere.
I'm so glad that National Geographic found such an exotic specimen in the wild and that the US government graciously put its technology to use to catalog her..... seriously the Western fascination with the image of this Afghan woman, 1 of insanely many, is something I don't get. I think it makes us all feel "cultured" and "informed" when we can sit in the comfort of a dentist or doctor's waiting room and breeze through a Nat Geo cover to cover. A cheap thrill.
Her face was a publicity stunt. Her story is sad and is brutal. She was in a refugee camp but her story is only one of many. She didn't know she was the face of National Geographic and people have the image of her in their minds when they think of Aghani women.