Gastronomy Tourism as an Alternative Tourism: An Assessment on the Gastronomy Tourism Potential of Turkey

Gastronomy tourism, besides being the most important means of economic development, it is also the most significant part of the fastly developing cultural tourism market. Many recent researches emphasized that the culinary culture of a target destination has a significant part in the travel experience. Travelling for the purpose of experiencing the new and unbelievable food, wine and other inimitable local gastronomy assets of another region is gastronomy tourism. In Turkey, tourism policies had been limited to the coastal mass tourism in the coastal zones of Aegean and Mediterranean regions, utilizing sea, sand and sun potentials of the country, win the purpose of maximum contribution to the national economy, by attracting foreign tourists. Turkish Cuisine; in seven region with advantage of having different climates and vegetation, reserves diversity of local taste and flavour in its cuisine as well Turkish cuisine one of three top cuisine in the world. The aim of this study is to emphasize the importance of marketing strategy of the traditional Turkish cultural cuisine as a alternative tourism field. Turkish articles with the subject of "gastronomy" published in "Google Scholar" and Council of Higher Education Thesis Centre or foreign articles regarding the gastronomy potential of Turkey and master's and PhD thesis on the subject have been analysed within this research. A content analysis has been conducted as a result of the revision of the data gathered from 54 articles and 32 thesis within the scope of defined categories. Also method of frequency analysis has been utilised during the analysis of the data. According to the findings, gastronomy tourism has an important potential as a kind of alternative tourism for the Turkish tourism sector.