The hotel I stayed at in Akçay was more expensive than the one in Miami Beach.

In Akçay, my son and I stayed at the Room 23 Hotel for 5,250 TL per night.

In Miami Beach, I stayed at the Avalon Hotel for $135 a night, which is 4,500 TL.

The hotel in Akçay was 750 TL more expensive than the one in Miami Beach.

I won’t even mention the prices of hotels in Bodrum.

Doesn’t this strike you as odd?

Prices in Turkey have skyrocketed.

I struggle to understand how this is happening.

The current state of tourism in our country is disheartening.

Everyone I talk to complains about the high costs.

This country is already expensive for us who live here.

Now it has become expensive even for tourists coming from abroad.

I visited the Mandarin Hotel, one of the luxury hotels on the Beşiktaş coast, with a friend.

Let me tell you the price of the tea we drank: 242 TL, which is $8. Yes, that tiny glass of tea costs this much.

You can’t drink tea at such exorbitant prices even in the home of tea, England.

Hotels in tourist areas are operating at 50% capacity.

Restaurants and cafes are ending the day with losses.

The streets of Bodrum are empty.

The famous Hacımemiş District of Alaçatı, usually so crowded you can’t walk through it, is deserted.

Yet, no one seems to care. No one says, “Where are we going wrong?”

A friend went to Zuma Beach in Bodrum. The entrance fee was 3,340 TL. He counted 16 people on the entire beach.

In Küçükkuyu, someone set up a camping site. He rents it out for 6,000 TL per day.

Even a tent is more expensive than the hotel in Miami Beach.

There’s a luxury chain hotel in Bodrum, Rixos. It costs 212,268 TL per week.

The same hotel has a location in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Same concept, ultra all-inclusive, for 56,000 TL.

Instead of staying in Bodrum for a week, you can stay in Sharm El Sheikh for four weeks for the same price.

Doesn’t this make you wonder how this is possible?

Right now, Turkish tourists are flocking to the Greek islands.

Tourists are happy vacationing on Greek islands, on the beaches of Spain, and on the shores of Italy.

But neither Turkish nor foreign tourists are happy vacationing on our beautiful Aegean and Mediterranean coasts.

Readers sent me an article I wrote on April 26 last year. Fourteen months have passed since then.

In that article, I had mentioned the price of a croissant and coffee. The croissant was 75 TL, and the coffee was 70 TL.

I checked the prices now. The croissant is 140 TL, and the coffee is 160 TL.

They have doubled in price in 14 months.

What was the dollar rate back then, and what is it now?

The dollar went from 20 TL to 33 TL.

They have increased in price more than the dollar.

In Italy, a croissant was 2 euros last year, and it is still 2 euros this year. The same goes for coffee.

Who will say stop to these prices?

If we want to go down in history as the most expensive country in the world, we are on the right track.

If not, let’s ask ourselves: Where are we going wrong?