Antalya

Saudi Airlines is expected to resume its flights to Istanbul this week after two years of hiatus.

The first scheduled flight will be held from Riyadh and Jeddah to Istanbul Airport on May 7. Moreover, on May 11, the carrier will launch its flights from Medina to Istanbul Airport.

Turkey on April 20 accused some of its NATO allies of wanting the war in Ukraine to last longer in order to weaken Russia.

"There are countries within NATO who want the war to continue," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told CNN Turk in an interview.

Residential property sales in Turkey surged 20.6 percent on an annual basis in March, according to data released by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) on April 15.

A total of 134,170 houses were sold last month, up from 111,241 in March 2021, TÜİK said in its monthly report.

As part of plans to keep foreign population at certain levels within local communities, officials are not allowing 16 provinces, including Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir, to admit additional refugees for settlement.

Foreign tourist arrivals in Turkey more than doubled in January compared to the same month of 2021, reaching almost 1.3 million, according to official data announced on Feb. 21. 

The number of foreigners visiting the country was 1.28 million in January, which jumped 151 percent from the same month in 2021, according to the Culture and Tourism Ministry data.

Turkey will hold the second Antalya Diplomacy Forum (ADF) on March 11-13 with the theme "Recoding Diplomacy."

The forum will be held under the auspices of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and will be hosted by Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu in the southern resort city of Antalya.

Initial indicators, such as early reservations, suggest that Turkey's target set for 2022 of generating $35 billion in tourism revenues is attainable, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy has said.

The most expensive roundtrip and one-way airline tickets for international flights were sold at 33,000 Turkish Liras and 28,000 liras, respectively in 2021, a report has shown.

Air travel gained momentum last year after countries and carriers eased most of COVID-19-related measures, said Turna.com, an online ticket sales company in its 2021 Travel Report.

Dozens of Turkish couples flocked to marriage offices across the country on Feb. 2 to tie the knot as some couples consider it lucky to marry on a palindrome date.

Since the date of Feb. 2 can be shortened as 2-2-22, which is just too much synchronicity for pattern-lovers, some couples were hoping the day would turn out to be memorable.

Turkey's tourism revenues increased by 103 percent on an annual basis to $24.48 billion last year, according to official data released on Jan. 31, reflecting a recovery from the initial wave of COVID-19 pandemic measures in 2020.