Branding and Turkey's New Tourism Strategy (2009)
Undergraduate: Clayton Thomas
Faculty Advisor: Sarah Shields
Department: History
As Turkey seeks to position herself as a thoroughly European state in her bid to join the European Union, her efforts to increase tourism emphasize a different and more diverse set of characteristics. Tourism has taken on increased importance in Turkey’s economy in recent years. The 2007 publication of the Tourism Strategy of Turkey-2023 by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism lays the foundation for a complete rethinking and restructuring of the tourism
industry. This paper will examine advertising, one of the most important components of the Ministry’s new approach. I will argue that, based on the Ministry’s website, its printed materials and current television commercials, the overall picture of Turkey that emerges is neither the thoroughly modern Western country characteristic of her EU bid, nor the ‘east meets west’ paradigm that dominates academic considerations of modern Turkey. Instead, Turkey is presented as a nation where history and modernity exist side by side and where nature meets civilization. Even more significantly, this new tourism campaign emphasizes traditions of Christianity and tolerance. The wholesale absence of
Islam and the East from tourism images, while
disingenuous, is indicative of a Turkey’s direction and cultural orientation. For issues of cultural identity, with corresponding questions of Turkey’s role in Europe and the world, tourist advertising provides a unique and illuminating perspective.