Tourism development in Natura 2000 areas: lessons for Turkey.

Abstract: Tourism in protected areas is still a debated topic and its impacts investigated for decades. Initially, protected areas considered as a way for protecting biodiversity, and human intervention is strictly prohibited. Over the course of time, this strict conservation approach shifted to sustainable tourism model in protected areas. While this business brought several advantages, such as creating income to support these sites, there are also environmental drawbacks related with it. European Commission addresses this new development by creating NATURA 2000 (N2K) network in order to strengthen the preservation of the valuable natural environments by including the human factor.Turkey, a long-time candidate of EU, implies an aggressive policy while utilising its protected areas as a tourism asset. This approach identified as a common problem in developing countries, as focus of this development lies on short term economic gains. In this regard, an analysis of two different models of tourism development in N2K sites, in two EU’s member states - the national parks in Poland and Sweden, helped to identify challenges and opportunities in order to draw conclusions for Turkey.The main findings of this qualitative study revealed different approaches used by two of EU’s member states. While Sweden employed almost all services in national parks for free, Poland managed to create additional incomes by charging different fees to the visitors. Despite this, the incomes generated by tourism generally found insufficient in both case studies in order to cover the expenses. EU’s funding programmes here played crucial role in supporting the protected areas. Furthermore, through horizontal legislation of EU, Poland managed to fight against destructive investments planned in these sites. Educational outcomes of tourism in protected areas, and their possible contribution to the needs of environment protection were pointed out by all the participants. Hence, despite the common preoccupation, tourism in the study areas determined as a positive tool to increase awareness among society members about the necessity of environment protection. Overall, the findings demonstrated that Turkey can benefit N2K sites and its directives in a number of different aspects mentioned above.