TOURISM, TURKEY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Economic development is one of the most important targets for the developing countries like turkey. developing countries that try to reach this target are faced with many socio-economic problems and look for solutions to deal with these problems. tourism could be an opportunity for turkey as a developing country to speed up its economic development, since it is a very fast growing and diversifying sector not only in turkey but also in the world. additionally, comparing to many other touristic countries, turkey fortunately has a great tourism potential. the number of the tourists is about one billion, while the amount of tourism receipts is about one trillion dollars in the world regarding to unwto data in 2008. tourism is no longer just for sea-sand-sun tourism; it is today diversified as historical, green nature, health, thermal, sports, cultural, congress tourism, etc. tourism contributes importantly both to the production by increasing demand for goods and services in different industries such as transportation, accommodation, food, and entertainment, and to the employment by creating direct and indirect demand for labor. therefore, tourism potential of turkey, if it is utilized well, seems to have the power to solve many socio-economic problems of the country which prevent its economic development. the purpose of this paper is first to review the developments, the scopes and the economic effects of tourism in the world and in turkey; then to investigate what turkey should do to take suitable share regarding its tourism potential from the world tourism by determining the advantages against its rivals among the mediterranean countries; and finally to analyze if there is a significant relationship between tourism and economic development using international data and vector error correction model (vecm).