Assessing Gaziantep's ecotourism potential: Determining the ecotourism route for sustainable tourism

The popularity of ecotourism, which has an important place in the protection of natural and cultural values and transferring them to future generations, is increasing all over the world with its cultural and economic benefits. Ecotourism; It is a type of tourism that cares about social welfare and is environmentally friendly and is a necessity of sustainable tourism. It is especially important to have ecotourism potential and to promote various tourism expenditures within the scope of sustainable tourism. In the study, it was aimed to evaluate the ecotourism potential of Gaziantep province and to determine the ecotourism route for sustainable tourism. This research; It was designed as a mixed methods research in order to obtain both generalizable and in-depth results from the data obtained. Concurrent/sequential/convergent design was used as the research design. In order to realize the aim of the research, a total of 44 people were interviewed, 22 of which were with two different expert groups. Questionnaire technique was used in order to obtain quantitative data in the research. Statistical analyzes of the data obtained from the research were carried out with the SPSS 25.0 statistical package program. In order to obtain the qualitative data set of the research, semi-structured interview technique was used. The obtained data were analyzed using the MAXQDA Qualitative Data Analysis Program. As a result of the analyzes made with the quantitative data set of the research, the Ecotourism Opportunity Range scale, which has 6 variables and 27 sub-criteria, was used. Based on the data obtained as a result of the analysis made with the qualitative data set of the research, it was concluded that a total of 4 main themes, 15 codes and 98 sub-codes. In the light of the findings obtained with both the quantitative data set and the qualitative data set of the research, it has been concluded that the potential of these 15 ecotourism areas in Gaziantep is not used enough