Greece’s second largest city has of course a special place in the minds and hearts of Turks since it is the birth place of Atatürk, the Republic’s founder. Thessaloniki is also considered an open-air museum of Byzantine art.
With the rise in the last decade of a middle class in search of tourist destinations abroad yet frustrated by European Union visa regulations (the all too familiar Schengen visa), many Turkish tourists are increasingly seeking visa-free travel. Government efforts to abolish visa requirements with certain countries were emphatically appreciated as it has boosted tourism with countries like Russia, Lebanon (before the Syrian war) and Croatia (before it became an EU member). If we look at the last example, Turkish tourists’ arrivals to Croatia dropped 20 percent after the nation entered the EU last summer, despite Zagreb’s efforts to ease the process of visa attainment for Turkish nationals.
GR
FR
DE
ES
IT
RU
EU