The Cabinet Meeting chaired by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ended. The meeting at the Presidential Complex lasted approximately 2 hours.
Highlights from President Erdoğan's statements:
16 of our brothers lost their lives in the explosion in Izmir. 13 of our citizens were injured, 2 seriously. The investigation into the explosion continues. First of all, I pray that God Almighty has mercy on our workers who lost their lives. I offer my condolences to their grieving families.
Immediately following these, our Ministers of Energy and Internal Affairs quickly arrived at the scene upon the instructions of our cabinet. A judicial and administrative investigation was launched regarding the explosion. It will be revealed why and how this painful event, which breaks our hearts, happened and who is responsible. Once again, I wish God's mercy to those who lost their lives, and I extend my best wishes to their families, relatives and citizens.
In our meeting, we evaluated the issues that occupy the agenda of our country and nation. We had the opportunity to comprehensively consider the recent events and developments in foreign policy.
As you follow closely, Türkiye is experiencing one of its most turbulent periods after the Second World War. Türkiye, under the leadership of experienced, hard-working and astute staff, is one of the leading countries that successfully manage this difficult process, thank God.
Despite the spiral of instability surrounding us, we continue our development journey in stability and confidence without interruption. Export and tourism figures, most recently announced last week, reaffirmed Türkiye's shining star in the midst of regional tensions.
EXPORT RECORD
Despite all the pessimistic scenarios and all the smear campaigns, our upward trend in exports continues unabated. In October, we increased our exports by 8.1 percent compared to the same month of the previous year, reaching 25.9 billion dollars. With this figure, we achieved the third highest monthly exports and the highest October exports in the history of our Republic. Our exports in the January-October period increased by 5.5 percent and broke a new record with 236.8 billion dollars. In October, our annualized exports reached the highest level in its history with 285.6 billion dollars. As you know, at the beginning of 2026, we set our annualized goods and services export target as 410 billion dollars. It seems that we will reach a new peak with 413 billion dollars.
We achieved another success in exports in technology. Our medium and high technology product exports reached 18.6 billion dollars with an increase of 8.8 percent. We have also achieved significant success in defense and aerospace exports. In October, our exports in this field increased by 61 percent compared to the same period last year, reaching 1 billion 140 million dollars. On a twelve-month basis, it increased by 37 percent to 11 billion 357 million dollars. While our foreign trade deficit decreased by 11.4 percent in October, the ratio of exports to imports increased by 3.4 percent. I wish you good luck. I congratulate all our exporters, companies, and all the rings of the chain, from our workers to our transporters, who contributed to this success.
TOURISM REVENUES REACHED THE HIGHEST LEVEL
Dear friends, we see a similar graph in tourism. We hosted a total of 49 million 132 thousand visitors in our country between January and September 2026. We increased our tourism income by 2.4 percent compared to the same period in 2025, reaching 51 billion 278 million dollars.
With this figure, we increased tourism revenues to the highest level in both quarterly and nine-month periods. In the same period, the average stay of visitors in our country was 10.34 nights, while the average spending per person per night increased by 4.6 percent to 107.7 dollars. The average spending of foreign visitors per person per night approached 120 dollars. I hope that our tourism figures will be beneficial to our economy and sector.
GOOD NEWS ABOUT ACCOMMODATION TAX
Another good news is that we are extending the accommodation tax discount that we started in April for another year. We have decided to extend the employee support we provide to our facilities with Ministry of Tourism operating certificates until 2028. Good luck.
