Dutch newspaper:

Istanbul: Turkey welcomed in 2006 for the first time in years less tourists than the year before. The number of holiday go-ers decreased from 21 million to 19,8 million, a percentage of 6,2. That announced the Turkish Statistics bureau yesterday. The years before the touristic sector broke record after record.

The decrease of the number of tourists from member states of the OECD (Organisation of Economical Co-operation and Development) was even more high: 11,8 percent.

According to Turkish press the most important reasons for this decrease are birdflu, tensions in the Middle East, World Championship Football in Germany and the articles about the cartoons of Mohammed in several European newspapers.

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None of these reasons were to important enough to me for not going. Did they occur to you while planning a holiday?

I know some people who were supposed to go to Istanbul with their history class but cancelled it because if the bird flu. I told them they were crazy, that there's close to zero percent chance of catching it but they were really paranoid about it.

And during the cartoon issue nobody ever gave me a hard time because I'm danish so the whole thing was intirely overrated.

Maybe first time tourists worry about going to Turkey for these reasons but I think if they have come there several times before they don't worry so much about it.

Oh well the bird flu is in uK now so......................