This paper explores the multiple and unexpected intersection between two forms of tourism in the Istanbul district of Eyüp: ‘belief tourism’ practiced by Muslim Turkish and Arab visitors; and a more stereotypical ‘tourism of the Orient’ practiced by non-Muslim European and American visitors. While the two tourist modes share the same object – Eyüp’s landscape of mosques, tombs, cemeteries, cafes, and picturesque houses – they are organized in radically different ways. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, I compare and contrast how these two forms of tourism have emerged, transformed, and been organized through Eyüp. Eyüp occupies a unique place within the city’s tourist landscape. Every year, millions of people come to Eyüp to visit the tomb of Halid bin Zeyd Ebâ Eyûp el-Ensârî, a Companion of the Prophet Muhammad. Indeed, Eyüp – and its central shrine complex in particular – is one of Istanbul’s (and Turkey’s) most widely visited Muslim pilgrimage destinations today. More importantly, Eyüp has also become one of the key sites from and in which a new form of ‘belief tourism’ (inanç turizm) is being articulated. ‘Belief tourism’ links two recent transformations in Turkey: the emergence of new consumer groups with disposable income; and the growing numbers of people interested in cultivating pious lifestyles. More recently, ‘belief tourism’ has broadened its audience as Turkey welcomes increasing numbers of visitors from the Arab Gulf. Eyüp also continues to be a favored destination for a different set of tourists: Europeans and Americans in search of a more ‘real’ Turkish experience. As more traditional tourist districts of Taksim, Galata, and Sultanahmet are perceived as increasingly controlled and stage-managed, Eyüp has become one of the privileged sites to see a more ‘authentic’ Turkey. Foreign tourists take photographs of pilgrims, the district’s picturesque landscape, and visit the Pierre Loti café. In doing so, these tourists reproduce a logic of ‘Oriental’ difference. Both forms of tourism raise questions about authenticity, consumption, and commodification. Working historically, I trace the practices, institutions, and objects involved in each tourist mode. I outline both their considerable space of overlap and the gaps produced by their interaction. In the process, this paper contributes to a richer understanding of the relationship between Turkey’s contemporary social, political, and cultural shifts and changing Euro-American and Gulf Arab tourist networks.

Oman has self-consciously distanced itself physically from Dubai and Doha, eschewing glass skyscrapers in favor of low buildings in traditional architectural styles with strict limitations on building height and exterior color schemes. Its beaches and rugged mountainscapes are routinely described as virgin, exotic and undiscovered. In 2013, 2.1 million tourists visited the country, an increase of 50% in only two years. The state invested $660 million in tourism-related endeavors that year. The enormous boom in tourism comes on the heels of serious uprisings that began in 2011. The demands were for jobs, social justice and an end to corruption. The tourist opening also coincides with the first succession in Oman since 1970 when Sultan Qaboos ousted his father. It is a time of extraordinary uncertainty in the country. There are currently proposals to ban alcohol and to gender-segregate education. Social and political struggles will play out in the tourist experience. The complexity of Oman’s tourist landscape – state interests, transnational tour companies, local communities – requires a new analysis that moves away from traditional analytical frameworks. This analysis is derived from two research trips to Oman in 2014 and 2015 that include visits to tourist sites, extensive interviews with Omanis in the tourist industry as consumers and/or producers, as well as secondary reading. I highlight change in social identities, the marketing of sustainability amid environmental damage, and the displacement of fishing villages. “Trickle down benefits” of tourism are an empirical question to investigate. The tourist opening is destroying and transforming social identities in the fishing villages that are being usurped; re-producing socio-economic hierarchies among the elites that enjoy the new industry, and is part and parcel of the struggle over Oman’s future. I examine three types of tourist experience: cruise ships, “Integrated Luxury Communities (ITCs)” and new five star resorts. Luxury cruise ship tourism skyrocketed beyond all predictions – from 3,500 tourists in 2003 to more than 300,000 in 2013 when 134 luxury behemoths dominated the harbors of Oman. Tourists descend into Souq Muttrah before re-boarding the ship. ITC’s are gated luxury communities where foreigners can own property. These are “home away from home” for GCC citizens who comprise 37% of tourists. Finally, new five star resorts dot the rugged landscape of Oman perched high atop mountains overlooking the blue waters. They are spatially isolated from the city and are self-contained living experiences.

The peripheral situation of Mauritania in the cartography of imperial interests, as well as in the cartography of the circuits and interests of colonial tourism, was the main guiding force for this paper that will focus on how Mauritania was touristically promoted within the colonies of French West Africa. Therein we will explore the country’s "peripheral status" through the analysis of both tourist guides and brochures, and of the discourses framing the display of those territories in the colonial exhibitions held in the first half of the XX century, discourses that contributed to perpetuate the marginal status of the country in the context and within the framework of colonial narratives connected to leisure. The tourist promotion of colonial Mauritania was based, at first, upon two different types of discourse: 1) one built upon an interpretation of Mauritania as mainly a “buffer” territory with no “touristic attractions”, a huge and dissuasive space filled with sand set between the northern and southern French African colonies; and 2) one built upon the promotion of touristic attractions that were, in fact imported from other places and regions, with different characteristics and physiognomies, such as the hunting potential of “exotic” species. Afterwards, Mauritania would be touristically promoted taking into account other resources and features, which gave place to forms of ethnographic tourism. The desert however would only appear as a central touristic product a few decades after the country’s independence. We will see that, despite the fact that the territory had been discursively constituted as touristic periphery during the colonial period, it is clear, through an analysis of archival material, that Mauritania was established as a kind of tourist niche whose success was growing over the 1950’s, despite its diminished status as an official colonial tourist destination within the French colonial empire.

The deployment of tourism to strengthen diaspora ties is well documented, however scholars have yet to examine the use of tourism to complicate transnational diaspora allegiances. Jewish tourism to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) offers a compelling case to study this trend, as more non-Israeli Jews are foregoing standard trips to Israel and instead visiting sites in the West Bank that challenge dominant Zionist narratives. Using a mixed methods approach that combines pre/post tour surveys with longitudinal in-depth interviews, I investigate how this emerging form of tourism shapes participants’ political views, identities, and activism. I find that tourists often experience significant ideological tension when they feel compelled to criticize a base country, while still seeing themselves as part of its national collective. However, rather than cause participants to sever their ties to the base country (Israel), this tension can actually lead to increased engagement on the part of the diaspora member, even when it is in the form of activism directed against the state. Jewish tourism to the OPT appears to facilitate this kind of diasporic tension, while also causing participants to “humanize” a previously demonized population, Palestinians. Though such “humanization” does not always lead to overt changes in political views, it influences participants’ willingness to embrace counter national narratives. These results suggest that this unique form of “homeland” tourism can engender political criticism within diaspora populations, while simultaneously solidifying transnational ties. It is this contradictory process – solidifying ties to a base country while promoting political criticism of it – that I discuss in my paper.