Turkish Visitors in Armenia: Any Changes in Attitudes and Perceptions?

Abstract

Being one of the fast 7 est-growing sectors world-wide since the 2000s, tourism mobility has risen to over one billion visitors world-wide, and is an important social event affecting both social relationships and cultural attitudes. This phenomenon has provided a wide productive field of study regarding various aspects in the study of sociology. This study has the characteristics of the tourist-local people interaction aspect especially, and aims to determine the effect of tourism on cultural attitudes in two controversial countries in terms of social relationships. In this study, in-depth interviews were carried out with 12 academics travelling from Turkey to Armenia for academic purposes in order to evaluate the changes in their pre-travel and post-travel perceptions and attitudes. As a result, the study has revealed that the ongoing problem of many decades between Turkey-Armenia can be solved, to some extent, through interaction via tourism. Thus, tourism can create a positive cultural attitude change.

Questioning the potential of tourism‐related imagined contact in improving interethnic relations in Türkiye

“…An imagined international trip to Armenia was also rated as less positive than a domestic trip to an ethnically diverse city in Türkiye. This may reflect Turkish visitors' fears of being excluded or treated badly by Armenians as international tourists in Armenia (Günlü et al, 2015).…”

“…Yet, none of these studies questioned the impact of tourism-related contact on attitudes toward Kurds as a specific resident group in eastern Türkiye. Addressing the role of international tourism, Günlü et al (2015) found that Turkish visitors have experienced improvements in their attitudes toward Armenians following their trip to Armenia. However, there may be domestic tourism prospects for interethnic contacts with Armenians in Türkiye, particularly in the form of religious tourism (Republic of Türkiye Governorship of Hatay, n.d.).…”

“…In the latter case, the two interacted as nationals of two countries plagued by long-standing conflicts (Özdoğan et al, 2009). Despite having no security concerns, Turkish visitors to Armenia were shown to have pre-trip expectations of being treated poorly by Armenians (Günlü et al, 2015). Such negative expectations may hinder optimal contact, increasing the possibility of intergroup attitudes toward Armenians deteriorating as contact may backfire due to intergroup anxiety and reluctance to interact (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006).…”

Does Tourism Change Tourist Attitudes (Prejudice and Stereotype) towards Local People?

“…As a matter of fact, several other studies such as Pizam, Jafari & Milman (1991), Milman, Reichel & Pizam (1990) and Anastasopoulos (1992), which have used similar statements, also made use of a single dimension. However, since the changes in negative and positive attitudes are not the same (Günlü et al (2015), the attitude scale was considered under the prejudice and positive attitude dimensions. It can be said that there will be a contribution to the literature by this research in this context.…”

“…The sector of tourism continues to grow with each passing day (UNWTO, 2018) and negative or positive social, environmental, economic, political, cultural and socialpsychological effects (Rezaei, 2017; Çelik & Uygur, 2017; Amalu, Otop, Duluora, Omeje, & Emeana, 2018; Pong But, & Ap, 2017) are shaping tourism destinations. Studies that show the social-psychological effects of tourism (Grothe, 1970;Pearce, 1980;Pizam, Jafari & Milman, 1991;Günlü et al, 2015;Ajanovic, Çizel & Çizel, 2016;Çelik, 2018;Ming, 2018) are of special importance for tourism and social psychology. In these studies, the role that tourism plays on the transformations of the attitudes (such as prejudices and stereotypes) that constitute the building blocks of social psychology (Allport, 1954) was the preferred point of focus.…”