President Erdoğan removes national park status of Turkey's iconic Göreme Valley

Duvar English

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has removed the national park status of Turkey's iconic Göreme Valley, in a decision published by the Official Gazette on Tuesday. 

Göreme was declared a national park in 1986, and lies in the Cappadocia region, one of the country's most popular tourist destinations, famed for its natural beauty and famous 'fairy chimney' rock formations and millennium-old underground cave churches. Prior to receiving its national park status, Göreme was designated a UNESCO heritage site. 

There have been recent reports of illegal structures built in the area, some of which have been demolished if they are determined to be in discordance with zoning codes. Earlier this year, a hotel that was being built alongside one of the fairy chimneys was demolished. The construction of the hotel was halted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. 

The Cappadocia region stretches across several provinces in Turkey's central Anatolian region and is home to a major tourism infrastructure, which includes hundreds of hotels, many of which were built into the region's caves, offering an otherworldly experience coupled with the unique, surreal beauty of the area. 

It is a favorite destination of both local and international tourists, who join guided tours, hike the area, and go for hot air balloon rides. Close to two million tourists visit the area each year, though the unparalleled beauty of the region has not been spoiled by its popularity, in large part owing to Göreme's national park designation. 

The presidential decision to strip Göreme of its natural park status has sparked fears that this will lead to excessive construction in the area, a phenomenon that has plagued not only Turkey's cities but tourist destinations as well, as Turkey's construction boom, which coincided with an increase in tourism, resulted in rapid and unchecked residential and commercial development throughout the country. 

“Removing the area's national park status means opening it for development. The illegal structures that were built here were torn down, and it is good that they were. At the time I said the same thing. However, now it is clear that the purpose is to open the region up to major development. There is nothing coherent about this decision,” said opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Faruk Sarıaslan, speaking to the daily Sözcü on Tuesday. Sarıaslan is a deputy for the province of Nevşehir, in which Göreme is located.

“This type of situation will destroy Cappadocia, because this area is in the dead center of the region, so it is impossible that the potential development wouldn't harm the other areas,”  Sarıaslan said. 

Turkey has frequently come under fire for failing to protect its cultural heritage sites. One prominent example is the historic town of Hasankeyf, an ancient settlement in southeastern Turkey with a 12,000-year history and numerous historic structures nestled within a picturesque landscape. The construction of a hydroelectric power plant has now resulted in the flooding of the town, displacing the residents and requiring the removal of some of the historic monuments, which has outraged locals and resulted in a flurry of gloomy international news reports.