The number of Russians visiting Turkey almost halved in December from the same period a year earlier as the crisis in relations over the shooting down of a Russian warplane hit the country's crucial tourism industry.

The Turkish tourism ministry said in its monthly figures late Thursday that 25,485 arrivals were recorded from Russia last month, down 46.9 percent from the comparable figure of 47,954 in December 2014.

The shooting down by Turkey's air force of a Russian warplane on the border with Syria on November 24 has led to the most bitter dispute between the two countries since the Cold War.

It also prompted Moscow to swiftly warn Russians against visiting Turkey and Russian tour operators to stop selling tours to the country.

Russian tourism is key to the sector in Turkey, especially on the Mediterranean coast, although figures had already been in decline due to Russia's economic problems.

Arrivals from Russia for the whole of 2015 dropped to 3.65 million in 2015 from around 4.5 million in the previous year, the tourism ministry said.

A total of 36.2 million foreigners travelled to Turkey last year, down 1.61 percent from a year earlier, it said.

But the industry will be waiting anxiously for the January figures so see how badly tourism in Turkey was hit by the January 12 attack by a suicide bomber linked to Islamic State (IS) jihadists who killed 11 German tourists in Istanbul.

The assault on the historic Sultanahmet Square was the first time in recent memory that extremists had directly targeted tourists in Turkey.

It came just three months after double suicide bombings in Ankara killed 103 people, mostly pro-Kurdish activists in an attack blamed on IS.

Tourism is one of the mainstays in a country which was the world's sixth-most visited in 2014.

Culture and Tourism Minister Mahir Unal said the decline in tourist numbers was "unavoidable" in the face of a "terror problem facing the world."

"We need to prevent any negative factor that damages Turkey's safe and secure country image," he said on Thursday.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, a major European cruise company, announced last week that it would cancel calls in Turkey for the rest of 2016 over security concerns.
Source :AFP