Turkish Airports Really Taking Off

With tourism up more than 12% in 1997--and a similar rise expected this year--Turkey’s airports are bursting at the seams. So the country, long popular with Europeans but newly “discovered� by American tourists, is on a building boom.

In the last two months, Turkey has opened a new international air terminal at the Mediterranean resort of Antalya and expanded Trabzon airport on the Black Sea. The $75-million Antalya facility can handle about 20 planes at a time. A new international terminal is also planned for Istanbul, although there’s no completion date as yet, tourism officials said. Last year, about 9.7 million people, including 276,000 Americans, visited Turkey.