Is there a conflict between local communities and tourism? : Mardin sample

The inevitable socio-cultural conflict between the tourism industry and local inhabitants in Mardin historic town challenges the tourism development process. The city of Mardin, located on the Tigris side of Southeastern Anatolia has become one of the most attractive cities of Turkey with its natural beauties, cultural heritage and socio-cultural elements and is a candidate city for the World Heritage Sites List with its stone architecture and unique religious and traditional buildings. The level of interrelation between government, residents and foreign visitors is critical in several circumstances, mainly due to the available instruments of territorial planning dealing with tourism policies, the local community benefits specifically from the social and economic point of view, the respect of natural resources and authentic culture of place. Methodologically, comprehending the environmental context in order to connect tangible (physical and material aspects) and intangible (perceptual, tradition or living heritage) factors could contribute to set a suitable and a holistic planning policy to tackle with tourism inconveniencies. The aim of this paper is to measure the local people's attitudes towards tourism and socio-cultural relations in Mardin historical city center, which is the third habitable urban site of the world after Venice and Jerusalem, and which builds an agenda with the recent development of tourism. Questionnaire technique was used to collect data. Survey received from participants in the bilateral negotiations with 225. Factor analysis was run to determine variable groups of socio-cultural impacts of tourism. As a result, we found that positive impacts significantly influence the relationship between tourism support and socio-cultural impacts.