The negative effects of terror attacks in Turkey (1996-2018) on tourism demand

In the study, it is aimed to investigate terrorism, which is the one of the major problems for Turkey, the what extent to affect the country's tourism and to make predictions for the number of inbound tourists. For this purpose, the number of terror attacks that occurred in the country between 1996-2018, in the same years the monthly numbers of foreign inbound tourists and the numbers of beds of accommodation establishments were reached. Terror attacks data from Global Terrorism Database, the number of tourists' data from Turkey Statistical Institute and the number of beds' data were obtained from the Turkey Travel Agencies Union. The data obtained was analyzed by Eviews 10 package program and time series analysis was performed to make predictions for the future. As a result of the analyzes, the numbers of tourists from 1996 to today (except 2016) show an upward trend. It also shows that the number of inbound tourists during the period of some terror attacks is higher than the period in which no terror attacks occurred. In light of this finding, it can be said that terror attacks do not affect the number of tourists. However, it was seen that the terrorists choose the summer months when tourism is the most intense to perform their actions. It shows that a terrorist incident started to affect the number of tourists in the first 4 months and lost its effect completely in 7 months. Causal relationship between the change in the number of foreign inbound tourists due to the terror attacks and the number of beds in Turkey was invastigated for the 1996-2018 period. To examine casulity relation between these variables, Pair-wise Granger Causality test was used. The result of Granger causality test showed that there was bidirectional causality between the variables. The forecasts for the future based on the seasonally adjusted number of tourists indicate that the monthly average numbers of tourists in 2023 will be around 4.5 million in the absence of terrorism.