Exploring the conceptual boundaries of diaspora and battlefield tourism: Australians' travel to the Gallipoli battlefield, Turkey, as a case study

Historical tourism resources associated with diasporic communities and battlefields would at face value appear to have little in common. On closer inspection, however, diaspora and battlefield tourism share several elements in common. These commonalities are explored in greater detail, with an eye to investigating battlefield tourism sites indelibly linked to the birth of modern nations, where it is argued that there is a particularly blurred boundary between these two forms of tourism that must be recognized. 

The Gallipoli battlefield, Turkey, provides the contextual anchor for this discussion in suggesting that a key reason Australians travel to this foreign place to is to find out what it means to be an Australian. The prominence of this battlefield in the psyche of Australians is borne out of the involvement of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) in the First World War campaign that commenced at what is now known as Anzac Cove at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915. This campaign was the first united action of the fledging Australian nation bought together through federation in 1901.

Qualitative data collected from Australians visiting the Gallipoli battlefields in Turkey during 2010 is used to explore whether the experiences of those traveling to battlefields strongly associated with nation building legends and stories resemble those of diasporic tourists in seeking to return to their homeland. Emerging from the analysis, the confines of the blurred boundary between diaspora tourism and battlefield tourism is discussed in detail and an associated research agenda is proposed that aims to further clarify the scope of these concepts in relation to the broad spectrum of heritage tourism resources.

Gender roles and the education gender gap in Turkey

Using nationally representative data on individual subjective views on gender roles, we examine the gender gap in educational achievement in Turkey and show that the cultural bias against the education of girls is a fundamental factor behind their low educational attainment in socially conservative societies. The 1997 education reform in Turkey extended compulsory schooling from 5 to 8 years. Using the reform as a natural experiment, we investigate the impact of the reform on the effects of mothers’ traditional views in determining children’s educational attainment. We find that the reform helped reduce school dropout rates across the country. Nevertheless, regardless of the mother’s view on gender roles, the reductions in school dropout rates were similar for boys and girls, failing to eliminate the gender gap against girls. Turkey is an excellent environment to study the effects of societal gender roles since it combines modernity with traditionalism and displays a wide spectrum of views on gender roles. It is also one of the few developing countries where a gender gap to the detriment of females still exists in educational achievement