TURKEY welcomed 1.46 million foreign visitors in January 2018, the Culture and Tourism Ministry said.

According to provisional police data, 1.46 million foreign nationals visited Turkey in January, up 38.5 percent from the 1.05 million who visited in January 2017, said the Ministry.

Well over half of the foreign visitors last month – 56.9 percent or over 831,000 people – came to Istanbul.

Iran topped the list of visitors by country, with over 154,000, followed by Georgia with nearly 151,000 visitors, and Bulgarian with over 119,000.

Last December, 1.7 million foreign visitors came to Turkey.

Turkey welcomed 32.4 million foreign tourists in 2017. In 2014, the number of tourists visiting Turkey reached an all-time high of 37 million.

Turkey is expecting approximately 38 million tourists this year, Culture and Tourism Minister Numan Kurtulmus said on Wednesday.

“We have very good indicators from early bookings and online reservations. From Germany, we are expecting five million visitors,” Kurtulmus said during his visit to the Turkish pavilion at ITB Berlin tourism fair, the world’s leading travel trade show.

6 million Russians to visit

Turkey will host more than six million Russian tourists in 2018, according to Kurtulmus.

“It seems that the number of tourists coming from Russia will exceed the six million figure in 2018 when we look at the early booking figures of the tour operators that dominate the Russian market,” Kurtulmus told Anadolu Agency.

Kurtulmus said he met 20 tour operators on the sidelines of the 25th Moscow International Travel and Tourism Exhibition (MITT).

4.7 million Russian tourists visited Turkey in 2017.