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

Abstract

Being one of the fast7est-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.