Frommer's Turkey
Chapter One
The Best of Turkey
Just call Turkey the comeback kid. Having been stuck in the doldrums of terrorism,
the Gulf War, the August 1999 earthquake, the September 11th terrorist attacks, and
the current war in Iraq, Turkey's tourism industry is finally reaping much-deserved
rewards. But it's a fine line between rewards and highway robbery. On the one hand,
a restructuring of the Turkish economy has translated into a whopping 9% growth in
GDP in the past 5 years. Business is booming, the middle class is spending money,
and foreigners seem to be descending on Turkey as if it were going out of business. On
the other hand, the class of entrepreneurs making their living solely off of tourism
seems to have come together and decided to make up for the combined past seasons'
losses in one fell swoop. The result is that Turkey is no longer the bargain it was a mere
2 years ago. Hotels that once quoted prices in U.S. dollars switched to the symbol of
the [euro] (representing a 21% increase); in Istanbul, Cappadocia and in other popular
regions, even this decrease in value has been c ... read full excerpt from Frommer's Turkey ebook
