Tourism Ministry:
Ecotourism’s friend or foe?

After consulting the Turkish Association of Travel Agents (TÜRSAB) -- which represents Turkey’s tourism agencies in general -- but not those directly concerned (the agencies and tour leaders actively engaged in the alternative tourism sector) in January, the ministry unexpectedly passed a law stipulating that from then on all tour leaders, not just guides of cultural groups visiting archaeological sites and museums, need to have a ministry-approved certificate. Now, six months on, the ministry still hasn’t taken any concrete steps to make certificate courses available for tour leaders who lead alternative tourism groups. The majority of experienced tour leaders in the alternative tourism sector, leading trekking, nature or activity-based groups, are now working illegally. For example, despite my work developing both of Turkey’s long-distance walking routes, it is illegal for me to take people along the Lycian Way or the St. Paul’s Trail, and it would be extremely difficult for me to regularize my position by taking a guiding course.

The only ministry-approved courses currently available are a tourist guide degree or the ministry’s own official guide course, the five-month “kokart,” a condensed version of the degree. Both courses focus heavily on history and archaeology, so ecotourism leaders find them irrelevant to their needs. Tour leaders specializing in areas such as trekking, botany or bird watching, who wanted to take the necessary ministry course, didn’t have the opportunity to get qualified in time for this season. The course isn’t held on a regular basis and applications for the most recent one, which started in October and ended in May, had to be in last June, way before these new regulations were promulgated. There’s stiff competition for places and a grueling selection procedure which includes Turkish history and translations as well as an interview. Potential kokart guides also have to spend around YTL 8,000 on the course itself, living expenses during the course, and a month-long tour of archaeological sites all over Turkey at the end. Ecotourism, and the livelihood of ecotourism guides, is thus threatened by poor planning at a national level.

Current ecotourism leaders usually have relevant degrees, specialized experience and a great deal of on-the-job training. For example, a young leader of botanic tours has a master’s degree in botany, working experience in a herbarium and extensive experience as an assistant leader in several European countries before leading his own groups. Leaders such as these, if caught working, currently face 1,000 days in prison or a fine ranging from YTL 1,000 to 2,500. Their employers face fines ranging from YTL 1,500 to 25,000 and after a third fine could have their TÜRSAB license revoked, which would put them out of business. The only exceptions are for whitewater rafting and paragliding instructors.

When recently challenged about the current lack of official ecotourism guides, Faruk Daşkanoğlu of the Culture and Tourism Ministry’s Research and Education Department replied that the ministry is “now training licensed guides in botany” through short courses. It has been six months since the change was unexpectedly published in the Official Gazette and to date there’s been no such course for bird tour, botanic or trekking leaders. The Nature Association (DD), a nongovernmental organization for the protection of birds, plants and their habitats, has drawn up and presented the ministry with a request for a special one-off course to qualify experienced bird tour leaders but the ministry has yet to agree on the content of the course.

A glance at one professional guide association’s Web site, that of the Federation of Turkish Tourist Guide Associations (TUREB), shows that the 45 or so kokart guides who claim to have experience as ecotourism guides do not have botanic, environmental or other relevant degrees, and in fact put this area well down their list of preferred work. Through a short training course, guides trained to show people around archaeological sites cannot acquire the required level of expertise to be able to lead a plant or bird tour and keep specialized customers happy. The most extensive reference work on flora in Turkey is the 11 volume-long “Flora of Turkey” by Peter H. Davis, with plants’ names in Latin and descriptions in technical botanical English. It covers the 11,000 species of plants found in Turkey (without taking into account sub-species or hybrids). As for birds -- of which there around 450 species in Turkey, on an average 10-day holiday bird tour leaders need to be able to show bird watchers around 200 different birds and so need to know their habitats and migration routes, be able to differentiate between different calls and identify different plumages.

Safety is an ecotourism tour leader’s prime concern, particularly in the more active areas of the sector, such as trekking, mountain biking, canyoning or mountaineering. They are totally responsible for the safety of customers while far from built-up areas. An experienced non-kokart trekking tour leader, who asked not to be named for fear of being fined and losing his job, commented on the situation, saying: “On a trekking or mountaineering holiday you don’t just go out for a nice long walk in the woods or mountains with 10 other people. If you’re miles from anywhere and someone has a fall you need to be good at first aid. You also need to know what the correct procedure is to get that person to a hospital if necessary. In the middle of nowhere you can’t just call an ambulance and wait; you have to know how to implement an emergency plan, which may include calling a helicopter. Added to which, many of the customers are foreign nationals and you have to contact their consulates before you do anything else. It’s very complicated and stressful.”

Despite the total lack of ministry-approved birding guides, in line with their policy of encouraging alternative tourism, the Culture and Tourism Ministry’s publishing department is currently working on a brochure to promote bird tourism. The culture side of the ministry is also working on creating and protecting existing trekking routes of natural or cultural interest, which also require specialist trekking guides. In the future, alternative tourism will be a more lucrative and less environmentally damaging alternative to mass tourism. The WTO estimates that the sector is growing five times faster than others. This can be also be seen through increasing interest from foreign visitors, as there’s an annual 25 percent increase in eco or alternative tourism holidays worldwide among the British alone. The ministry is well aware that it represents the most sustainable form of tourism available. After touring the Antalya area in March, just before a conference on the future of tourism, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan drew attention to the pollution caused by mass tourism, saying that he saw “discharges from beachside hotels the color of the rainbow.”

The Turkish tourism sector is currently focused on low-cost, high-volume holidays based on cheap flights dependent on oil prices remaining stable. An average two-week beach holiday costs around $1,300 per person, most of which doesn’t stay in the country. In comparison, the revenues from nature-based tours, at $4,900 per person for a fortnight, represent potentially greater future profits with more money trickling down to the local economy, such as to Turkish-owned agencies, hotels, restaurants and transport businesses. Concrete indicators show the sector’s future potential in terms of revenues, sustainability and contributions to conservation efforts.

Examination of recent articles on Turkish tourism in the European press shows that the majority of them include information about alternative tourism as it is an area in high demand. Consequently, a great many people on such tours are researchers, lecturers or journalists who go home, publish and promote Turkey. Their articles raise awareness about Turkey as a destination, and of the importance of protecting the country’s rich biodiversity and precious natural resources at both a local and national level. It is the intense exposure that Turkish outdoor tourism has had in the foreign press, rather than official ministerial promotion, that makes it a fast developing sector.

The current shortage of ministry-qualified ecotourism guides, and the ministry’s policy of training kokart guides as nature guides rather than devising a policy for the development of existing guides, will undoubtedly result in a fall in the quality of alternative tourism and lower customer satisfaction. As the same non-kokart trekking guide noted: “Employers have a tough choice to make; either they continue to employ experienced tour leaders who aren’t ministry-approved and risk losing their businesses, or replace them with guides qualified for archaeological sites and risk losing customers.”

To be fair to the ministry, this difficulty has arisen because the 20 or more TÜRSAB-registered alternative tourism firms have so far perceived the ministry as irrelevant to their businesses, and have not attempted to adequately represent themselves in TÜRSAB or to the ministry. They need to change this attitude, and combine forces in an ecotourism association. The ministry could then consult them about how to resolve their short-term guiding problems. To resolve the problem in the long term, they could devise ways to restructure the kokart course. One alternative would be an easily available basic course for all guides, and an exemption from the archaeology section for alternative tourism guides, with relevant degrees or skills, who want to work only in the eco or alternative tourism sector.