Iran, Turkey joint commission sessions begins in Ankara

The participants in the meeting will discuss ways and means to remove the problems facing the nationals of both countries. Some 400,000 Iranian nations travel to Turkey on business or astourists every year while some 400,000 others trip to other states via Turkey. Turkey has developed plans to attract some three million Iranian
tourists annually. The number of Iranian tourists visiting Turkey inthe first nine months of 2002 shows a 33.02 percent increase comparedto the same period last year. According to statistics released by Turkey’s Ministry of Tourism, some 343,434 Iranian tourists visited Turkey in the first nine months of 2002. In the first nine months of 2001, the number of Iranian tourists traveling to Turkey was 258,173 that showed a 16.64 percent decrease
compared to the figures for the same period in 2000. Iranian nationals constitute 2.68 percent of total number of foreign tourists visiting Turkey in the period under study. The figure stood at 3.68 in the same period in 2000. Based on the information on hand, only in September 2002, some
54,701 Iranian tourists visited Turkey — a figure which showed a
46.75 percent increase compared to the figure for the corresponding month in 2001. In 2001, 327,013 Iranian tourists visited Turkey, registering a 14.14 percent decline compared to the figure for the same period the year before.