The impact of geographical indications on rural development: The case of Gaziantep and Siirt

Recently changing life styles and demand for a healthier life brought the change in consumption patterns as well. Consumers' preferences towards natural goods created new, quality assured product markets. Traditional foods which provide safe food to consumers, at the same time motivate them to protect traditions and create added value to producers, localities and to the country as a whole. Turkey with her cultural richness and climatic variety embodies a very rich potential in terms of traditional foods. These values are protected with geographical indications (GI) from unfair competition and imitations. In this study four products that have geographical indication registry are investigated to raise the attention towards their role in local development. Field surveys are carried out with producers, consumers and related organizations of these four products in Gaziantep and Siirt provinces and qualitative analyses are carried out using the collected data. According to findings from the analyses, use of geographical indication labels on the goods will raise the consciousness towards benefit of geographical indications and this will built up union among produces of GI products. While the added value from a GI product will be more than expected, the cost of GI application is perceived as a burden by some producers. And hence these producers are not volunteers to apply GI. In addition, lack of advertisements and promotion, insufficient control, lack of communication among related institutions can be counted among the problems that creat barriers in front of GI products to gain the real value in the market they deserve. Keywords: Traditional Foods, Geographical Indication, Product, Consumers, Producers