{"id":45841,"date":"2010-09-20T11:36:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T11:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/2010\/09\/20\/van-business-owners-want-to-see-armenia-turkey-border-open\/"},"modified":"2010-09-20T11:36:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T11:36:00","slug":"van-business-owners-want-to-see-armenia-turkey-border-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2010\/09\/20\/van-business-owners-want-to-see-armenia-turkey-border-open.html","title":{"rendered":"Van Business Owners Want to See Armenia-Turkey Border Open"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px\/normal 'Arian AMU'\">Van Industry and Trade Chamber (VATSO) President Zahir Kanda<span style=\"font: normal normal normal 14px\/normal 'Lucida Grande'\">\u015f<\/span>o<span style=\"font: normal normal normal 14px\/normal 'Lucida Grande'\">\u011f<\/span>lu said the border with Armenia should be reopened to develop the eastern province\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px\/normal 'Arian AMU'; min-height: 16px\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px\/normal 'Arian AMU'\">In an interview with the Anatolia news agency reported by Today&#8217;s Zaman, Kanda<span style=\"font: normal normal normal 14px\/normal 'Lucida Grande'\">\u015f<\/span>o<span style=\"font: normal normal normal 14px\/normal 'Lucida Grande'\">\u011f<\/span>lu pledged that they, as Van businessmen, would provide employment for 50,000 people in the city if the Armenian border that Turkey closed is reopened. He said the city will attract a large number of tourists if the border is opened again. He indicated that before the border was closed \u2014 the city which at the time had a population of 80,000 \u2014 was attracting 150,000 tourists annually.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px\/normal 'Arian AMU'; min-height: 16px\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px\/normal 'Arian AMU'\">Umut Akay, chair of the Akay Grup, which is continuing to construct a $15 million luxury hotel, Van Rescate, near Van Lake, is also of the same view with regard to the Armenian border. Speaking to Anatolia, he reiterated that the city hosted tens of thousands of tourists in the 1990s before the border was closed, and the tourism sector suffered a major blow from the border closing as well as terrorist activities. However, he said they are working tirelessly to bring back those \u201cgolden years\u201d of tourism to the city by making huge investments.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Van Industry and Trade Chamber&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[15838,15837,15840,15841,15839],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45841"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}