The effectiveness of tourism within the management of World heritage sites

UNESCO World Heritage Sites with their outstanding universal values are cultural tourism focal points. Despite the positive contributions of tourism on the aforementioned sites in different aspects, many negative impacts can be seen because of the tourism activities which don?t take into consideration the conservation and transmission to future generations of the heritage values. Therefore, ?the cultural heritage management? which foreseen the delicate balance between the conservation and tourism, has been on the agenda of world. ?The management plans? prepared for World Heritage Sites include the conservation and tourism policies which are in mutual interaction, with a specific manner of heritage values; identify objectives and actions.Within the scope of this thesis, ?management aspect? has been admitted as the most important tool for conservation, keeping alive and/or providing sustainability of the World Heritage Sites which are the evidence of development of civilization in the historical process and the common values of humanity. With this approach, due to the tourism pressure on World Heritage Sites, sustainable tourism has been evaluated as the main principle and in this regard, as successful examples City of Bath World Heritage Site in England, Syracuse and the Rocky Necropolis of Pantalica in Italy and Historic Center of Oporto in Portuguese has been examined.Although an important tourism center in worldwide, there hasn?t been any approved nor implemented management plan for the Historic Areas of Istanbul World Heritage Site. For this reason Historic Areas of Istanbul was determined as the case area. Primarily, interaction of tourism activities with management plan; tourism strategies and actions put forward by stakeholders about the area were examined. After the field studies and surveys, tourism activities carried out in the area, the quality of the tourism infrastructure and the awareness of the visitors about the outstanding universal value of the site were identified. Thus, the data obtained were evaluated on the effectiveness of tourism objectives and actions within the management of World Heritage Site, based on the principles of sustainable tourism.These objectives and actions in the form of a guideline, will provide to evaluate the tourism as an important component and/or not to deny it, not only for the preparatory studies of the management plan for the Historic Areas of Istanbul, but also for the other World Heritage Sites. As a result, a management plan format proposal that can be used as a basis for the preparation of management plans in Turkey is designed and some legislative amendments are suggested for conducting the cultural heritage management process more efficiently.