Indian media reports claim that Indian tourist flow to Turkey and Azerbaijan has fallen significantly in the months following Operation Sindoor.
Azerbaijan and Turkey’s backing of Pakistan during the military conflict with India in May has been cited as the reason for the decline in Indian tourists visiting these countries. In May, Azerbaijan echoed Pakistan’s stance on the conflict, but Turkey supported Islamabad’s demand for an international investigation into the Pahalgam attack.
Indian media claims that Turkey has also supplied weapons to Pakistan in the past. According to the latest data and an Indian Express report, the decline has been steeper for Azerbaijan, which recorded a 56 percent drop in visitors from India during the May-August period, while Turkey saw a 33.3 percent fall.
The data from the Azerbaijan Tourism Board showed that the Indian visitors had grown 33 percent year-on-year from January to April, but decreased nearly 56 percent in the subsequent four months following Operation Sindor. In recent years, both Azerbaijan and Turkey have gained popularity among Indian tourists, aided by direct flight connections and Istanbul serving as a gateway to destinations beyond Turkey.
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Despite these geopolitical tensions in West Asia, the tourism from India to these destinations remains steady. However, travelling booking portals reported a notable drop in reservations and a rise in cancellations soon after a ceasefire with Islamabad and calls as campaigns were run calling for the boycott of Turkey and Azerbaijan. Visa processing platform Atlas had also reported a 43 percent decline in visa applications to Turkey and Azerbaijan from India.
“Indian travellers have expressed strong sentiments over the past one week, with bookings for Azerbaijan and Turkey decreasing by 60%, while cancellations have surged by 250% during the same period. In solidarity with our nation and out of deep respect for our armed forces, we strongly support this sentiment and advise all against all non-essential travel to Azerbaijan and Turkey. We have already discontinued all promotions and offers on our platform to discourage tourism to these two destinations,” MakeMyTrip had said in a statement on May 14.
In the May-August period, the number of visitors to Azerbaijan from India dropped to around 44,000 from nearly a lakh in the corresponding four months of 2024. Similarly, before Operation Sindhur, in the first four months of 2025, Azerbaijan had hosted 81,000 visitors from India, which was notably higher than 61,000 in the year-ago period. Similarly, the visitor numbers from India to Azerbaijan for the first eight months of 2025 were down 22% year-on-year at 1.25 lakh.
The Azerbaijan Tourism Board had described India as a key target market for the tourism sector in Azerbaijan, and India was counted among its top five visiting nations and its source markets. However, in August, India dropped to 11th place in terms of the number of visitors coming to Azerbaijan.
Data from Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism also showed that the number of Indians travelling to Turkey in the May-August period fell by a third to around 90,400 from nearly 1.36 lakh in the corresponding four months of the last year. In the first four months of 2025, around 83,300 Indians had visited Turkey, slightly lower than the year-ago period of 84,500 visitors.
With Additional Inputs from GVS South Asia Desk