Pergamon Pll: s0261-5177(98)00068-5 T~mrism Management, Vol. 19, No. 6, pp. 595-610, 1998 © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0261-5177/98 $19.00 + ().()() Roots of unsustainable tourism development at the local level: the case of Urgup in Turkey Cevat Tosun The Scottish Hotel School, University of Strathclyde, 94 Cathedral Street, Glasgow G40LG, UK lskendurun School of Tourism and Hotel Management, Mustafa Kemal University, Iskendurun, Hatay, Turkey The main aim of this article is to investigate and explain the roots of unsustainable tourism development at the local level in a developing country, with special reference to Urgup in the region of Cappadocia, Turkey. It was found that the factors that ushered in unsustainable tourism development are beyond the control of local people and authorities. They are largely related to issues at the national level such as the policy of political economy, prevailing national planning approaches applied to tourism, patron-client relationships between decision-makers and related business class alongside the role of international tour operators in the international tourism system. It concludes that achieving sustainable tourism develop- ment at the local level in a developing country requires hard political choices, a confident decision-making process and the collaboration of international tour operators and donor agencies. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Kcywords: unsustainable tourism development, developing countries, Turkey, Urgup Introduction Many governments in developing countries have perceived tourism as an important means to stimu- late economic growth I ~. Thus, those developing countries have frequently concentrated on the economic impacts of tourism development and ignored wider issues 4". The contribution of inter- national tourism to the economic growth of Third World economies seems to be significant, but it has been argued by many scholars, such as de Kadt:, Briton ~ and Bryden ", that tourism also continues class and regional inequalities, stimulates economic, environmental and social problems, which have created doubts about tourism being a reliable strategy for the development of developing countries. Turkey, as a developing country, adopted tourism not only as an alternative economic growth strategy, but also as a tool to create a favourable image on the international platform through exemplifying immediate implementation of an outward-oriented economic development policy'" that seemed to have been essential just after the 1980 military coup which was ushered in to combat corrupt party politics and serious social unrest and to preserve the democracy in the country". The civilian government which came to power following the military govern- ment in 1983 saw tourism as an easy, effective and relatively cheap instrument to achieve export-led industrialization as a core principle of the 24 January Economic Stabilization Measurements formulated by the World Bank (WB) and Inter- national Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1980. However, these could not be implemented due to the socio- economic and political crisis in the country. As a result of the economic, social and political crisis of the 1980s, Turkey made almost an irrevers- ible decision about the tourism industry by enacting the Tourism Encouragement Law that gave gener- ous incentives to the industry. As Tosun '2 argued, "the successive governments have played an active role in shaping and locating physical tourism invest- ment by using generously and extensively fiscal and monetary instruments" at the initial stage of tourism development. Consequently, Turkey has experienced an unexpectedly rapid tourism growth in terms of volume, value and physical superstructure (hotels, restaurants, bars, disco, etc.) in the absence of proper planning and development principles. In other words, this rapid tourism growth has taken place largely in a haphazard way and created socio- economic and environmental problems, which may be called unsustainable tourism development. It is 595