Booked for 16 days in August...for Cyprus.
5 days in the ("Greek" ) Republic, 11 days in TRNC.
I detest what has happened politically in Turkey in recent times and it seemed like a good time to sort out some business I have in ROC, to be combined with a longstanding desire to visit TRNC.
Also I can't see Thomas Cook messing around with flights to Larnaca like they have with Turkey. Travelling in peak season (school holidays), altering a flight could mean £100's in extra costs, plus the re-arrangement of other plans. I don't need that hassle. If anything ever did kick off in TRNC, I'm 12 miles from the EU border (maybe a bit trickier if we leave perhaps) and I could even run screaming like a toddler into to one of the British military bases without re-crossing the border.
I admire people's stoicism, but the way I see it, there have already been tourist deaths in Istanbul. If something big happens at a Turkish beach resort, Erdogan may as well switch the Turkish tourist trade's lights off.
The Kusadasi, Marmaris and Fethiye PKK bombs in 1994 didn't really put us off, and flying back from Kalkan a couple of days after 9/11 with the mad extra security at Dalaman never put us off either, but what's happening now seems to me to be on different level, with real nutjobs holding the explosives and AK47s.
I love so much about Turkey but I can't help but be really scared for its immediate future. I really don't know what the solution is but I feel sure that the current leader is not going to be part of it. And if he's not part of the solution...
I'm really glad we bagged a last minute cheapo week to Kalkan last October half-term (I think it was our 21st holiday to Turkey), even if it did end up raining for 5 days of the week. There was a bomb a short while before that trip, but there's been loads more since.
Saying all that, maybe I'm just a scaredy cat. All the same, I wish all you great trips and will hopefully bump into some of you in 2017, when it's all settled down.
