ABSTRACT
Turkey is one of the top tourism countries in the world, having developed its industry rapidly within the past thirty years, claiming itself as one of the most visited global destinations. The achievement has been realised through state-to-sector led policies on utilising country’s various tourism resources, such as sun-sea-sand and heritage. However, these major products have concentrated tourism within certain regions of the country, limiting the chances of product diversification and revenue enhancement, which is why Turkey is now developing another major latent resource: the snowy mountains that cover an area of around 140,000<th>km2, in the form of 100 ski resorts worth 49 billion Euros within the next decade. This chapter focuses on how state-led tourism planning will once again pioneer the development of a specific tourism type in Turkey and its consequences on spreading snow sports as one of the most popular lifestyle activities throughout the country. Until now, snow sports have been a central activity to very limited populations, comprised of locals of the snowy regions, enthusiastic athletes, and a few high-income urbanites, reaching only a maximum of 100,000 people out of a young population of 80 million. How does the state approach snow sports tourism? Does snow sports tourism have a place in public policy making? Which actors play a role? The chapter examines the history of snow sports tourism development in Turkey, and builds upon upcoming policy papers, workshops, and roundtables with the political actors and stakeholders concerned with public policy making. The study examines the case of the provisional role of various state institutions and actors, namely the Ministry of Development, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Ministry of Youth and Sports, and Turkish Ski Federation, in the double-nested development of snow sports and tourism with an in-depth analysis of the increasing interaction among policy, sports, and tourism. In doing so, the case study also touches upon the promotion of a national-level civic agenda headline: socioeconomic improvement of the least developed, particularly the eastern, regions of Turkey, and, the current high dependency of the Turkish economy on the construction sector. Moreover, the major challenges of climate change and lack of market size are also discussed, with the latter also posing an opportunity to rationalise the public dissemination of snow sports activities and culture due to the urge for domestic market development. Finally, the question of whether tourism development or sports acknowledgement precede each other or if they co-exist is revisited in an attempt to provide a framework that takes different actors, stakeholders, power relations, and political agendas into consideration.
