With voting compulsory in Turkey, and the country not having a system of absentee balloting, many Turks have cut short or interrupted their holiday to travel back to their own province to cast their ballot.
There was heavy traffic on many of Turkey’s major highways Saturday, especially those leading in to Istanbul, as the country’s Aegean and Mediterranean coastal resort regions emptied.
Hotels in Bodrum on the Aegean and Antalya in the south eastern Mediterranean, two of Turkey’s most popular summer resort regions, reported most of their Turkish clientele had checked out ahead of the ballot, with foreign tourists making up the majority of booking.
TURSAB, Turkey’s peak tourism business lobby group, had warned holding the general election at the height of the summer holiday season would harm the sector and eat into profits and bookings.
