PM’s Davos moment a blessing, says minister
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MUĞLA-It was a better promotion of Turkey than billions of dollars in advertisements, said the culture and tourism minister about the prime minister’s outburst at Davos last month.
At first he was shocked when he saw Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan severely criticizing Israel during a Davos summit panel before walking out in anger over the moderator's failure to allocate the same time to him as was given to Israel’s President Shimon Peres, said Ertuğrul Günay Friday.
Günay made the comments in Bodrum, where he was inspecting the ruling Justice and Development Party’s branches. "First I said ’oh no!’ However, when I started to hear about the domestic and international reactions to what the prime minister did, I realized the correctness of his conduct. Anyone else in his place would have done the same.
As we were planning to focus our promotion campaigns from Ukraine and Russia to the Middle East, the prime minister’s actions created a huge surge of attraction in the region. Israelis first reacted adversely but they also realized it was just a humane response," he said. Günay said there had been some reduction in tourist numbers in the first two months of the year but they expected a significant boost from "last-minute reservations" starting June.