Abstract:

Tourism is at the forefront of increasingly important sectors today. Since alternative tourism types are increasing and more people participate in tourism activity every year, world tourism pie grows day by day. The developments in technology, communication, and education and the increase in the overall welfare level has increased the material expectations of Muslim tourists and this led the Muslims to look for alternative vacation options that meet requirements set by the religion. Intensive competition in the tourism sector has led to diversification of tourism. Depending on those developments, a variety of tourism products emerged as "Halal Tourism" which  has increasingly importance day by day and  and becomes a hot topic in academic literature.  Halal tourism includes all touristic businesses that satisfy the needs of all tourism activities such as recreation,accommodation, travel, transportation based on the Islamic rules and regulations. The purpose of this research is to assess the present situation of Turkey for halal tourism and to put forward thoughts on how to develop halal tourism by using the potential of Turkey to guide for future works.For this purpose, a conceptual framework of halal tourism has been established by conducting a comprehensive literature search. As a result of this research, it is concluded that even though the the vast majority of the people in Turkey are Muslim, halal tourism market is very small when compared to other countries. In the conclusion, we have brought some suggestions to improve the halal tourism in Turkey.

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