ECOTOURISM, PROTECTED AREAS AND NATURE CONSERVATION

The authors of this paper have conducted a series of interviews with local administrative staff through questionnaires, one to one meetings with visitors and national parks managers, and field studies to assess the general state of ecotourism in Turkey's national parks. The existing official data on national parks, ecotourism and visitor management were also used in the assessment process. Results indicate that national parks of Turkey have unique values to support ecotourism. However, the authors believe that the willingness for ecotourism is high yet the know-how is low amongst the park managers and local people. These stakeholders have minimal experience on ecotourism and the infrastructure to support development of ecotourism is also limited. Currently, the visitors of the protected areas are mainly domestic, and they are interested more in recreational activities in the national parks rather than in their natural-cultural values. Approximately only 5 percent of the visitors are naturalists and interested in the nature and ecotourism activities such as trekking, bird watching, biodiversity observation and conservation, and camping. This study is focusing if ecotourism could be supported by Plan, Policy and Engagement of the Target Stakeholders to certainly perform as an important tool for biodiversity conservation. Besides conservation of the biodiversity ecotourism could contribute to the economic development and strengthens the institutional capacity of local people and preserves the local culture and traditional lifestyle in the protected areas.