Bodrum Taxi Trouble? Tour Operator Says Reports Are Overblown

Reports of widespread conflicts between tourists and taxi drivers in the Turkish resort town of Bodrum are being dismissed as exaggerated by a major Russian tour operator. Voskhan Arzumanov, commercial director of TEZ TOUR Russia and a member of the Russian Union of Travel Industry, told NSN that his company has received no reports of such incidents involving Russian vacationers. “If these conflicts were happening, our quality control team would know about it,” he said. “Since I’ve heard nothing, I can conclude our tourists are fine. A tourist pays for a trip and should be able to go wherever they want without trouble.”

Arzumanov acknowledged that isolated disagreements can occur—anywhere, including Russia—but argued that a single incident can be blown out of proportion when it hits the media. He emphasized that most Bodrum vacations are resort-based, with tourists rarely using taxis, and that his company’s partners have not flagged any pattern of problems. This comes after a Turkish tourism official, Akın Beke of TÜRSAB, told RIA Novosti that local drivers have been increasingly clashing with tourists using ride-hailing apps like Uber, sometimes leading to threats and physical fights.

Arzumanov stressed that Russian travelers using vetted transport services are protected from such unpleasantness, and that the situation is far from a widespread issue. “In any case, this cannot be called a mass event,” he concluded. The comments follow a separate incident in which a group of Russian tourists got lost in the mountains of Turkey on a challenging hiking route, with rescue efforts hampered by fog for over a day.