摘要：Turkey has become one of the leading countries for international tourism with more than 31 million tourists in 2011. However, most of this development has been in the mass tourism sector. This has led to a concentration of the tourism activities and infrastructure in Istanbul and along the Aegean and western half of the Turkish Mediterranean coasts while most of the country has remained virtually untouched by international tourism. Although mass international tourism has been crucial for the economic development of the country it has also led to increased discrepancies in development among the provinces. Arguably, mass tourism is also considered less sustainable in the long term so that more sustainable alternatives need to be found to attract tourists to other parts of the country and contribute to a more harmonious development of the country. Among these alternative forms of tourism we found that religious tourism has a great potential for development in Turkey. We used direct observation and a range of secondary sources to assess the development potential of religious tourism in different parts of the country. We found that the greatest potential for development exist in Central and Southeastern Anatolia as well as in the eastern half of the Mediterranean Region and the Eastern Black Sea Region. These areas are blessed with a great variety of religious and cultural sites yet so far have seen very little tourism development.
关键词：tourism; sustainable tourism; alternative tourism; religious tourism; Turkey
