A fresh look at Iraq: tourism as a long-term stabilizing factor

Back in August of 2006 Iraqi Kurdistan Tourism’s official website evaluated its first international advertising campaign, “The Other Iraq.” In their own words “the campaign had tried to differentiate relatively safe Kurdistan from the rest of the country, where insurgent bombings and sectarian violence [were] daily occurrences.” Already at that time the local government aimed to generate business investment for a future tourism sector, a remarkable undertaking given the fact that insurgents were active in most parts of the country on a near daily basis.

In the same year a promotional advertisement from the Kurdistan Development Corporation was aired on US television.

Perhaps being overly optimistic at the time, things did begin to pick up, albeit extremely slowly. International media is the perfect ally to promote a perhaps up-and-coming destination and three years later, the BBC’s Hugh Sykes (March 22, 2009) had in more general terms reported on Iraq’s emerging tourism industry and spoke with a British tour company which at the time arranged 17-day-long trips to the country. His impression was that the British tour operators opted to keep a “low profile” due to continuous security alerts.

He cited the Ministry of Tourism in Baghdad’s “hope that, like Northern Ireland, Iraq will recover from its reputation for terrorism -- and become better known for tourism -- in the ‘land of the two rivers,’ Mesopotamia.”

Most recently, CNN (Mark Tutton, May 21, 2010) analyzed current developments with regards to Iraq’s incoming tourism flow, stating that “intrepid travelers can now fly directly to Iraq from Austria, Germany, Greece, Norway, Sweden and the UK as well as numerous cities in the Middle East. Specialist tour operators are now stepping in.” Giving examples of places meriting a visit already, Tutton continues by introducing Babylon; Hatra in northern Iraq, which was once the capital of the first Arab kingdom; Ashur, which dates back to the third millennium B.C.; and Samarra and the Abbasid Caliphate, which once ruled an empire stretching from Tunisia to Central Asia, boasting the largest palaces in the Islamic world.

Despite all this optimism, Iraq’s Ministry of Tourism told CNN that last year just 73 tourists visited Iraq’s archaeological sites.

As Turkey has become a leading regional actor both in political as well economic terms -- and a close friend of Iraq -- it would be logical to extend a hand to Iraq’s existing and future tourism sector entrepreneurs and engage in both their training and in bringing the first waves of Turkish tourists to the country. While competition in a volatile global economic climate is not what Turkey’s tourism bosses are looking for, it has to be said that an emerging and one day sustainable tourism industry in neighboring Iraq is no threat to Turkey’s own on-going success story. It will remain a different market with a distinct mix of products on offer. On the contrary, a stable Iraqi economy, including a strong tourism sector, will make the entire region safer, which in turn will benefit Turkey’s southeastern business community, mostly based on family and micro-enterprises, too. Turkey may even become a transit hub for overland tourists on a “two-destination history vacation,” combining, for example, Hatra and Hasankeyf.