A Heritage from the Turkish Cypriot National Struggle Period: The Dark Tourism Potential of TRNC

Abstract

Especially with the spread of the internet, easier access to information, the expansion of airline transport networks to all over the world and air transportation prices decreasing to reasonable levels in terms of price is easily accessible to has increased the motivation and demands of tourists to travel for special interests. Dark tourism, which is considered as a new kind of special interest of tourists, has developed both in Turkey and in the world rapidly and attracts tourists’ attention. Cyprus, which witnessed bloody fights and conflicts between the two nations from the end of the 19th century to 1974, has a great potential of dark tourism. In this study the inventory of dark tourism of North Cyprus which comes from Turkish Cypriot National Struggle Period has been tried to take, the study has been limited with Turkish Cypriot National Struggle Period. While taking the inventory, Seaton (1996) and Stone’s (2006) classification techniques of dark tourism have been used. As a result, it has been found out that dark tourism potential of North Cyprus has a capacity to contribute more to the economy of the country. If the tourism destinations of the country are organized and introduced as well as the examples in the world and if the necessary investments are put into effect, North Cyprus will also be a dark tourism destination and number of tourists and the tourism income will increase.