Antalya
17 million tourists annually, 43% from Russia and Germany — one diplomatic incident in 2015 crashed arrivals 95%, proving a cleaner wrasse cannot choose its clients.
Antalya receives over 17 million foreign tourists annually — more than the entire population of the Netherlands. Two countries supply 43% of them: Russia (3.9 million) and Germany (3.5 million). The city's economy is a tourism monoculture sustained by two client populations whose governments have demonstrated they can switch it off overnight.
In November 2015, Turkey shot down a Russian Su-24 near the Syrian border. Russia responded by banning charter flights and tourism packages to Turkey. Russian arrivals plummeted 95% within months, costing Turkey an estimated $8 billion and shaving up to 0.7 percentage points off GDP growth. Antalya's hotels, restaurants, and tour operators — built for Russian capacity — sat empty. The ban lasted seven months before diplomatic rapprochement restored the flow.
When Turkey shot down a Russian jet in 2015, Russian tourist arrivals dropped 95% in months — demonstrating that 3.9 million annual visitors can vanish with a single diplomatic incident.
The all-inclusive resort model compounds the vulnerability. Roughly 80% of tourist spending flows to international hotel chains and airlines rather than the local economy. Resorts designed as self-contained ecosystems — pools, restaurants, entertainment, shops — discourage guests from leaving the property. Antalya provides the geography; international operators capture the revenue. Local businesses compete for the remaining 20% of spending from tourists who venture beyond hotel walls.
The dual dependency creates a structural trap. Antalya cannot diversify away from tourism because the entire built environment — thousands of hotel rooms, airport capacity, coastal infrastructure — is optimised for visitors. But it cannot secure its tourism revenue because the two largest source markets are controlled by governments willing to weaponise tourist flows for diplomatic leverage.
Antalya functions like a cleaner wrasse stationed at a fixed point on a reef, servicing large fish that arrive predictably. The wrasse cannot relocate. The fish can choose any cleaner station. When the fish stop coming — because a predator appeared, or the current shifted — the wrasse starves at its station. Antalya is geographically fixed, economically dependent, and strategically exposed to decisions made in Moscow and Berlin.