Governance of protected areas in Türkiye: Site management authorities

This study examines the recently introduced Site Management Authority model in Türkiye's protected area governance through an integrated lens of administrative law, governance and sustainable tourism. The research is motivated by three longstanding challenges: the persistence of a fragmented institutional structure in the protection of cultural and natural heritage, the difficulty of effectively translating the protection use balance into practice, and the limited involvement of local actors in planning processes. Within this framework, the thesis investigates how the Site Management Authorities established by Law No. 6546 on the Gelibolu Historic Site and Law No. 7174 on the Kapadokya Area contribute to conservation policy in terms of single-authority administration, budgetary capacity and institutional organisation. A comparative case study design is adopted. Primary data sources include the special founding laws of the Site Management Authorities, the Regulation on Site Management, strategic plans, annual activity reports and other relevant official documents. On the basis of these materials, the organisational structures, staffing arrangements, budget compositions, investment portfolios, oversight mechanisms and performance indicators of the Gelibolu, Kapadokya and newly established Uludağ Site Management Authorities are extracted and analysed comparatively using tables and graphical representations. As secondary sources, UNESCO, ICOMOS and IUCN guidance documents, together with national and international academic studies, provide the conceptual background on site management and sustainable tourism. The findings indicate that the Site Management Authority model significantly reduces institutional fragmentation in protected areas and enhances administrative efficiency by consolidating planning, permitting and implementation processes under a single organisational roof. The high share of capital expenditures in the budgets points to a strong emphasis on infrastructure and spatial improvement investments. At the same time, the analysis reveals that mechanisms capable of ensuring continuous and systematic participation of local residents, civil society organisations and professional chambers in decision-making remain limited, and that there are notable gaps with respect to open data, performance monitoring and sustainable tourism indicators. In conclusion, the Site Management Authority model can be regarded as a single-contact, relatively autonomous and specialised institutional innovation in Türkiye's protected area governance. However, for this model to evolve fully into a sustainable structure that simultaneously takes into account cultural and natural heritage, visitor needs and the expectations of local communities, the plan–budget–performance chain needs to be strengthened, social and ecological indicators diversified, consultative mechanisms made more effective and transparency enhanced. By offering concrete recommendations on the institutional capacity of Site Management Authorities and on human-centred sustainable tourism policies, this study seeks to provide a basis for future research and policy design in the field of protected area management in Türkiye.