Minister Angelkova held a working meeting with the General Manager of the Turkish airlines for Bulgaria

Minister of Tourism Nikolina Angelkova held a working meeting with Mehmed Gurkaynak, the General Manager of Turkish Airlines – Bulgaria. Both of them discussed the prospects for mutual cooperation, which will increase the exchange of tourists between the countries. The trend for the development of the tourist contacts between the two countries is positive. The data show that for the period January - June 2017 the visits to Bulgaria from Turkey were nearly 534 thousand, which is a growth of 6 % compared to the same period a year earlier. This ranks our south neighbour third among the foreign markets according to data of the National Statistical Institute.

Over 293,5 thousand of the visits of Turkish citizens to Bulgaria were for the purpose of tourism. The growth in this category is 8%. Nearly 202 ths. Turkish citizens travelled to Bulgaria only for recreation and vacation. They are by over 10% more compared with the first 6 months of 2016. In the last year Turkish citizens made over 1.3 mln trips to Bulgaria, of them 565 ths were for tourism, which is a growth of 8.9%.

At the same time for the first 6 months of 2017 the Bulgarians who travelled to Turkey were more than 643 ths., which is a 5.7% growth compared to the same period last year. For the entire 2016 the number of Bulgarians, who travelled to Turkey, were more than 1.2 mln.

Mehmed Gurkaynak has occupied the post in Bulgaria since February 2017 and he is director of both the Sofia and Varna offices of the airline company. He has worked for the company since 2011. He is a mechanical engineer with a master's degree in the major “Finance” from the USA.