Image and Tourist Discourses: Turkey Seen by Advertisements

Our work is proposing an analysis of the tourist image of Turkey through advertisements introducing the country. We assume that the “tourist space” is an image created together by the advertising executives, the travel agencies and the tourist himself. Indeed, the advertising executives' just as much as public and private actors try to meet the tourists request for authenticity. Accordingly, they emphasize certain points of interests and interpret them according to supposed tourists' expectations. This approach has for results to reduce the “tourist space” to a mere element of folklore, of orientalism and of exoticism, and even more to propose stereotypical images. As such this constructed image of the tourist advertising may refer to a specific communication contract between the advertising executive and its target. Since the advertising executives have for main purpose to establish a coherency between travelers' expectations and the existing reality the iconic images choice proposed in the “tourist speech” exposes to a social construction of the reality.