Ideology, Foreign Policy and Tourism: The Case of Turkey-Middle East Relations.

This paper aims to analyze the impact of ideology and foreign policy of Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, JDP) on incoming tourist volume to Turkey from the Middle East. Turkey has been one of the destinations enjoyed rapid tourism growth for the past 15 years both in number of arrivals and tourism income. Meanwhile almost all major Muslim countries in the region increased their share on arrivals to Turkey. JDP, the party in power in Turkey since 2003, is a conservative party, which seeks for close relations with the Middle East region, as part of its ideological attitude and new foreign policy outlook. Therefore, Turkey is an ideal domain to study the relationship between ideology, foreign policy and international tourist arrivals. The paper argues that the conservative identity and new foreign policy of the JDP resulted in a significant increase on incoming tourist volume from the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]