2 Spain 59.2 million

3 United States 56 million

4 China 54.7 million

5 Italy 43.7 million

6 United Kingdom 30.7 million

7 Germany 24.4 million

8 Ukraine 23.1 million

9 Turkey 22.2 million

10 Mexico 21.4 million

n the newspaper “Today's Zaman”, published on Monday, March 03, 2008 it was said that Turkey has all opportunities to develop sustainable tourism. “Yэlmaz told the press that Turkey could attain all the targets by acting in unity and solidarity. “We have to increase the service quality in our hotels,” he pointed out and cited the conference's motto: “But everything is here,” which meant that Turkey had all kinds of tourism opportunities from faith-based to winter, health, golf, historical, etc. “Only the US and Turkey have 14 golf courses in a 10-kilometer area,” he noted.”

HYPOTHESIS

So, let's examine the first hypothesis

Is the number of visitors growing as The Ministry of Culture and Tourism is focused on the development of sustainable tourism?

With its objectives:

+Examination of sustainable tourism in Turkey

+Examination of The Ministry of Culture and Tourism strategy

+Examination of tourist growth

Turkey

(http://www.wikipedia.org )

Turkey is a Eurasian country located mainly in the Anatolian peninsula in Asia, with a small portion of its territory located in the Balkan region of southeast Europe. Turkey borders eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west; Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to the northeast; Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast.

It is divided into seven geographical regions: the Marmara, the Aegean, the Mediterranean, Central Anatolia, East Anatolia, Southeast Anatolia and the Black Sea region. Moreover, Turkey is divided into 81 provinces and each province is divided into sub-provinces. Major provinces include Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bursa, Konya and Adana.

One of the most dynamic and fast developing sectors in Turkey is tourism. According to the travel agencies TUI AG and Thomas Cook, 31 hotels located in Turkey are among the world's 100 best hotels. In the year 2005, 21 122 798 tourists visited Turkey. The total revenue was $14 billion with an average expenditure of $679 per tourist. Over the years, Turkey has emerged as a popular tourist destination for many Europeans, often competing with Croatia, Greece, Italy and Spain.

The history of Turkish tourism

The tourism industry, being a part of the national economy, has attracted government interest and interventions in Turkey. However, tourism could not gain any significance or priority until the 1950s. With the developments in international tourism, the Turkish government started to deal with the economic benefits of the tourism sector in creating currency flow and generating new employment opportunities (Tarhan 1997).

Like the evolution in Europe, tourism especially the international tourism could not benefit any significance or priority for the Turkish government until 1950. “On the contrary, because of the war psychology, foreign visitors were taken with suspicion by the authorities and their arrivals tried to be reduced” (Tarhan, 1997:61). This period was the birth of New Republic and the efforts to set national policies, where tourism policies could not benefit so much importance. Therefore the first period was the years of 1923 to 1950. The initial studies of organized tourism activities took start within this period, too.

With 1950s government's interest in Turkish tourism has started to show readiness to develop international tourism, and government understood that the tourism sector can bring the economic benefits in creating currency flow and new employment opportunities and with its being the modern means of development. Such an ever-increasing government interest in tourism industry has shown itself in various tourism organizations and institutions.

An important progress in that period of time was the enactment of the Law for Encouragement of Tourism Industry (Law numbered 6086) in 1953. The importance of this law was that it was the first attempt to set a regulation to administrate tourism facilities in accordance with a policy. The law brought a Licensing System for the tourism facilities, meaning these facilities were obliged to fulfill certain standards and service quality to obtain the Tourism Certificate.

With those requirements, it was aimed

* To reach tourism facilities to contemporary standards,

* To provide incentives i.e. a credit system for tourism activities,

* To achieve uniform standards for similar type and class of accommodation facilities,

* To introduce a new price control system for tourism licensed operations,

*To provide a checklist for new investors including necessary equipments, accessories and services needed at accommodation units of certain kind and quality (Tarhan, 1997:63)

As of the beginning of the 1960s, tourism's employment creation and foreign currency earning features have become prominent. With the increasing share from the world's tourism, the economic bottleneck was surpassed and tourism has become an important sector in economic development. In 1963, the Ministry of Tourism was founded. In 1968, The Ministry prepared the Western Turkey physical development study. In the end of the 1960s, tourism plans for some regions with priority were assigned to several foreign design offices. In spite of all these efforts, from 1960 to 1975, tourism investments remained at a very low level (Eraydэn 1997).

With the aim to make investments to create maximum amount of accommodation facilities, which would soon increase the revenues as well, in 1963, the Turkish government put The First Five Year Development Plan (1963-1967) into force. To achieve the main aims, national parks and holiday villages were planned, tourism agreements with other countries were made, and market searches for tourism demand and supply were carried out (Olalэ 1984).

In the Second Five Year Development Plan (1968-1972), the importance of national physical planning was stressed out. This plan had focused on benefiting from economic, social and cultural aspects and had foreseen the utilization of such functions (Aker and Serter, 1989). In 1969, the coastal region from Canakkale to Icel had been declared as the tourism development region to utilize the mass coastal tourism development (TURSAB).

As the following table shows, in 1963, there were 200 000 arrivals and 1 341 500 in 1973, which is if to count is a 570% increase in the period of 10 years. Tourism revenues increased from 7.7 million dollars in 1963 to 171.5 million dollars in 1973.

Table 1: Tourist arrivals and receipts of Turkey (in USD)

Source: Ministry of Tourism

At the beginning of 1980s, tourism was considered among the sectors of special importance for development and contribution to the Turkish economy. Since the Tourism sector in Turkey was relatively new, there has been the opportunity to preserve natural, cultural, historical and archaeological assets of the country. Contrary to some other countries which suffered from saturation, improper development, seriously damaging environment and many valuable natural assets as well as existing human settlements, Turkish tourism was prepared to sustain the balance between utilization and conservation and Ministry of Tourism determined certain principles when planning tourism areas (Araз, 2001; TURSAB), here they are:

* The acceptable use of natural and cultural resources,

* Sustainable tourism development in high potential tourist areas,

* Creation of efficient tourism sector with high international competitiveness,

* Harmonious tourism related constructions with natural landscape,

* Meeting the need of foreign and domestic tourists and the resident population,

* Developing social tourism facilities,

* Extending the economic benefits of tourism,

* Continuous restoration and maintenance of the natural and cultural resources,

* Protection of the tourists and hosts against adverse environmental effects

(Ministry of Tourism, 1994; Kьce, 2001).

After the 1980 military coup, many important legislation changes for a more liberal economy were enacted. Among these, the Tourism Encouragement Law of 1982, Environmental Protection Law 1983 and National Parks Law can be mentioned. The Tourism Encouragement Law gave higher significance to tourism investments and the problems affecting them. Specific issues concerning land use plans and use of state owned property were thoroughly handled. In accordance with these, tourism investments increased rapidly and concentrated along the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, where almost 80 % of Turkey's bed capacity exists (Kьce 2001). In the next 10 years, the number of new establishments increased rapidly and in 1992, the bed capacity reached 219 940, while it was 65 934 in 1982 (see the previous table).

International arrivals accelerated between 1984 and 1994 by 206%, and in 1994, 8 million foreigners visited Turkey. Similar growth trend have also been observed in tourism revenues. Tourism revenues became USD 4.7 billion in 1994 with a significant increase to USD 840 million in 1984. In brief, it is clear that Turkey has experienced a rapid growth in international tourist arrivals, revenues, and bed capacity in this period.

With the beginning of 1990s, tourism policies had faced certain changes, which were (Tarhan, 1997: 66):

* Public sector participation was reduced and pilot and sample investment policy was abandoned and tourism investments operations of public sector were stopped. Existing ventures, state owned tourism facilities (TURBAN) were decided to be privatized.

* Government interferences on prices of private tourism operations were stopped. Operations were allowed to determine their prices themselves, and also to use their choice of currency unit for their prices. It was the beginning for wider use of foreign currency prices.

Tourism investments operations in the public sector and government interferences on prices of private tourism operations were stopped. While the new investments at Southern and Western Turkey were not supported, the efforts for increasing the variety of tourist activities were emphasized (Turan 1997).

Between 1994 and 2001, the tourism sector in Turkey lost its acceleration due to the Gulf war, increasing terrorist activities and the earthquake in 1999. The fall of demand due to those events resulted in considerable price reductions. Consequently, the quality of tourist arrivals and economic benefits of international tourism decreased (Tarhan 1997). When it is compared to previous years, the increase in the number of tourist arrivals and tourism revenues were very low. In 2001, 11 700 000 foreigners visited Turkey, which was an increase of 11% from the previous year.

Table 2: Tourist arrivals and tourism revenues 2002-2005

Source: Turkish Statistical Institute

The following bar chart shows information about the change in the amount of tourists that entered Turkey from 1993 until 2007. The chart compares the amount of tourists that entered Turkey to the amount of tourists that entered Turkey the previous year.

Table 4: Change in the number of visitors on a year earlier (%)

Since 2001, the tourism industry has enjoyed an instant growth. Decreasing terrorist activities, intensive investments to the coastal region, political stability and better development policies resulted in a boom in terms of arrivals. The number of tourists who visited Turkey reached up to 14 million in 2003. The year 2004 also witnessed particularly strong growth, with the number of foreign tourists reaching significant 17.5 million. The revenues obtained from foreign tourists increased to USD 12.1 billion. According to the WTO, in 2005, Turkey had the highest growth rate registered in the world's tourism. There were 21.1 million tourist arrivals, and total revenues were estimated to 14 billion USD which made 2005 the Golden Year for the Turkish tourism industry (see previous table).

In the following table the history of Turkish tourism since the year of 1980 is demonstrated graphically.

Table 5: International tourist arrivals and tourism receipts in Turkey since 1980

Importance of Tourism in Turkey

It is not easy to measure all the economic and developmental impacts of tourism in Turkey because the various components of the industry on both the supply and demand sides are closely linked to other segments of the economy. However, related statistical figures have facilitated an examination of the importance of international inbound tourism as a source of foreign currency earnings, as an employment generator, and as a revenue source for GNP. While it is possible to evaluate the contributions of tourism to the national economy, it is difficult to measure its contribution to overall development. (Tosun, Timothy, Ozturk 2003)

Turkey adopted tourism as an alternative economic development strategy to support new export-led growth strategies, to create more jobs and to establish a favourable image on the international platform (Tosun 1998).

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