Nature tourism areas i̇n Duhok province (Northern Iraq) and the role of social media i̇n promoting them

Duhok Province; Northwest of Iraq, It is located between the (37 °, 23'24 '') and (36 °, 10'36 '') north latitude, (42 °, 20'55 '') and (44.18'19 '') east longitude. The area of Duhok province is 10,809 km2. Duhok province has a strategic location because it has border with both Turkey and Syria and Iraqi province of Mosul, with its existing geographic structure and its natural and mountainous structure, which it takes from its conjuncture position, makes it different from other countries and there are many areas and places open to tourism. According to our research, all tourism related places, as well as natural habitats mentioned in chapter two, have their place and importance visibly in our assessment. In addition, in the fourth part, how attractive such places can be especıally on social media, we have introduced the questionnaire we conducted over these places through tourists, and has been the subject of our evaluation of the existing importance, and also focused on what can be done in different platforms of social media. The weather in Duhok is very suitable for nature tourism, total rainfall (720 mm), snowfall (687 cm), average temperature (22.6 oC) in the last 10 years. As a result, there are 14 valleys, 7 waterfalls,3 cave, 3 mountain ranges, 1 plateau, and 1 natural spring water fountain in the province of Duhok. In addition, more than 50% of the respondents rely on social media to find nature tourism sites to visit. For this reason, they mainly use Facebook as the most popular social media platform in Iraq for promoting nature tourism, in fact several places has become popular via social media promotion.