ISTANBUL – Once upon a time, the world trembled before the cruel Turkish warriors, and today tens of millions of tourists flock to the feet of their descendants, who became famous for pleasing their guests.
Turkey owes its tourism boom to a strategy that was adopted more than four decades ago, and which the authorities implemented very persistently, skilfully combining state interventionism with the encouragement of private entrepreneurship and market competition.
Despite the wars in the area, the consequences of last year’s catastrophic earthquake and high inflation, it is estimated that over 50 million tourists will visit Turkey this year. Only France, Spain, USA, China and Italy record a higher number of visitors. This industry employs over 2.5 million people, generates revenues of 24 billion dollars and contributes about 12% to the national GDP, which also places Turkey at the top of the world tourism.
A similar situation has been going on for years and seems natural for a Mediterranean country with 7,200 kilometers of coastline and a position on the border between Europe and Asia, where great world civilizations have met or collided since time immemorial, depositing priceless archaeological, cultural and other heritage. However, there are those whose memories go back to the late 1980s, when the idea of a summer vacation in Turkey seemed like a serious adventure.
At that time, at least from our area, tourist visits were mostly limited to Istanbul. They were mockingly called “trafficking tours”, because rather than tourists interested in Hagia Sophia or the Blue Mosque, there were often more people keen to haggle in the local bazaars for leather jackets, jewelry and similar trinkets intended for resale.
How can one law change the whole country
The turning point began in 1982, when only 1.2 million tourists stayed in Turkey, compared to 5.3 million visitors in Greece, with which, apart from a turbulent history, Turkey shares the largest part of the Mediterranean border.
The progress of tourism in Turkey would be even more obvious when compared to some other destinations, bearing in mind that Greek tourism has grown rapidly since then, exceeding 30 million tourists a year. But that is only 60% of the current number of tourists in Turkey.
That growth in volume is accompanied by progress in quality is also shown by the fact that today Turkish tourism experts are often consultants or direct investors in countries with a much longer tourism tradition.
They were particularly successful in the diversification and development of the alternative tourist offer, which now also includes health tourism, athletes’ training and more and more attractions in the interior of the country.
It is difficult to find an example in the world where one law has changed a country as much as the Law on Tourism adopted by Turkey in 1982. It became a cohesive strategic document, to which other regulations were added over the years and with which measures and policies for numerous activities were harmonized.
Credit for its adoption belongs to the government of Turgut Ozal, who later became the president of Turkey. It is probably not a coincidence that he came to the position of prime minister, although an engineer by education, as a prominent economist of the World Bank. The unreserved support of Washington, its allies and the supporting institutions of the world order was based on the belief that Ozal would give momentum to the reforms initiated by Kemal Ataturk at the beginning of the 20th century.
Ever since Ataturk carried out the dramatic modernization of the country, making it a secular state and a republic, the powerful American support for Turkey as the key holder of the Bosphorus and the border guard towards Russia and the Middle East, but also a rare successful example of democratic transition in one of the largest and most influential Islamic countries, is understood.
Steam spins where a drill will not
Ozal’s strategy for the development of tourism was aimed at the rapid and large growth of foreign exchange income, while reducing chronic unemployment.
If there was any skepticism towards such a plan, they fell silent when Turkey already tripled the number of hotel capacities to 173,000 beds in the early nineties and exceeded the number of five million tourists.
As an economist, Ozal knew that this would strengthen the market-oriented and export-oriented economy, and as a politician, he counted on long-term positive effects due to greater openness to Western capital, business standards and cultural influence.
It was not easy for Turkey to overcome the conservative heritage according to which the traditional elite for centuries came from a warrior and not a business milieu. She looked down on the Greeks, Jews, Armenians and members of other minorities to whom the Ottoman Empire left most of the economic activities. When most of them disappeared in the wars at the beginning of the last century, a long-term economic vacuum was created.
The warrior nature is very far from the image of a smiling host who indulges the whims of spoiled, sometimes grumpy tourists. Nevertheless, such a change has taken place in Turkey and today it boasts of exceptional business people in tourism and other fields.
This does not mean that success was planned in advance and that the Turkish tourism boom was spared from challenges and mistakes, but the impressive series of measures with which the state implemented the once adopted strategy is proof of perseverance on that path. The state did not skimp on direct and indirect support. It introduced significant tax breaks, exemptions from customs duties, gave away state land and provided incentives for investments that reached 422 million dollars from 1985 to 1992.
In the same period, the Turkish Tourist Bank and the Turkish Development Bank approved 710 million dollars for favorable dedicated loans, and the amount of foreign investment in tourism jumped to 1.25 billion dollars.
Numerous benefits available to investors included subsidized prices for electricity, gas and other utilities, accelerated obtaining of various permits as well as easier employment of foreign workers. At the same time, there were huge state investments in transport and other infrastructure, as well as in modern marketing campaigns that helped build Turkey’s tourism brand.
Arrangements with the largest tourist operators, especially from Germany and other countries with a large Turkish diaspora, also contributed to this.
The authorities also reformed the education system in order to provide adequate personnel, as well as inspection services that were responsible for improving communal and sanitary standards.
At the same time, construction, agriculture, the transport sector and other services flourished. All this influenced the growth of standards and the modernization of the entire Turkish society.
Why is it difficult to copy this model?
The way Turkey has positioned itself on the world tourist map is attractive to those who believe in the power of state interventionism, but only if they do not overlook how successfully it is combined in this case with the encouragement of private entrepreneurship and market competition.
State support is perhaps necessary when, as here, it was practically starting from scratch, and it was successful because it was carried out with amazing discipline and perseverance, despite the political changes that took place there in the meantime.
The Turkish state also showed maturity, because it resisted the temptation to play the role of an entrepreneur, focusing mainly on creating an appropriate business environment. This included measures to encourage competition, which resulted in high quality services.
We should not have any illusions that all this happened without corruption and stretching the eligible, but the fact that Turkey has been at the top of world tourism for years suggests that only those who have developed a successful and sustainable business model have survived.
Achieving a balance between interventionism and liberalization is probably the most difficult to copy from the Turkish model, since, according to some opinions, that skill is partly the result of an imperial legacy. Empires are complex entities, made up of different territories, peoples and cultures, which cannot be held together in the long term by sheer force, without subtle coordination between them and all of them with the whole.
That is why long-lived empires have a competent and efficient management and administrative apparatus, whose skills and knowledge do not disappear overnight. That heritage is one of the secrets of their power to regenerate and rise again despite occasional historical setbacks.
Business & Finance
Source: capital.ba
