Russian tourists can enjoy again the Turkish seaside

A plane carrying Russian tourists landed Saturday in Antalya, the famous resort in southern Turkey, for the first time after eight months of diplomatic crisis between Moscow and Ankara, declared special airport sources quoted by AFP.

The aircraft belonging to Rossiya Airlines Company, which took off from Moscow with 189 passengers on board, landed at the international airport of Antalya on Saturday at 10.30 am (local time), 10 days after the Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the lifting of the tourism sanctions against Turkey and the "normalization" of trade relations between the two countries, informs Reuters.

Russia is Turkey’s second tourism market, second only to Germany. But the number of visitors from those countries, along with the United States, the UK and other parts of Europe has plummeted by nearly a quarter during the first half of this year.

Cetin Gurcun, secretary general of TURSAB, the Association of Turkish Travel Agencies, declared for CNN that it's the worst he's seen in his nearly 40-year career. "[Tourists] are asking about security measures, what we are doing about that. And I can tell them Turkey is doing its best for security. But global terror, you know, it can happen anywhere. At any time," Gurcun says.

The dispute between Moscow and Ankara, which have divergent views on the conflict in Syria, was accentuated by at the end of November, when a bomber of the Russian combat was shot down by an F-16 Turkish aircraft, near the Syrian border.Anka

In response, Moscow has adopted a series of sanctions targeting Ankara, including an embargo on imports of Turkish fruit and vegetables. The sanctions also forbade Russian companies to hire Turks, suspended charter flights to Turkey and asked travel agencies to no longer sell tour packages to this destination.