Effects of Tourism Planning and Investments Process on Sustainability of Coastal Regions in Turkey

Abstract

Similar to environmental issues, most of the problems caused by industrialization of tourism emerge as these areas are not developed within a comprehensive plan. As tourism is a sector which has long term environmental effects, especially in developed countries, tourism planning is considered to be very important. In Turkey the concept of tourism planning, with main principles, objectives and methods, took place for the first time in the First 5-Year Development Plan (1963-1967) as an economic sector.. In this context, The South Antalya Tourism Development Project (SATDP), which was approved in 1977, is marked as the first and most important tourism development project, planned in the regional framework. While a planned development on a regional scale such as SATDP was trying to be realized on the one hand, in many coastal areas and settlements on the other hand with the political and economical pressures, agglomerations of unplanned touristic facilities appeared. This situation, which brings a pressure on environmental, cultural and social structure, in fact adversely affects the development of tourism in its own process. In this sense, in the present study, the planning and facility investment processes in Turkey are addressed within the scope of tourism sector, and the impacts of comprehensive planning on sector-specific sustainability and hence the sustainability of resources are intended to be highlighted.