From the Private Law viewpoint, the legal essence of a tourism-based transaction is defined predominantly by the Turkish Code of Obligations no. 6098 (Türk Borçlar Kanunu) and the Turkish Commercial Code no. 6102 (Türk Ticaret Kanunu). All types of accommodation contracts, travel agency agreements, and booking transactions in essence are based on the fundamentals of contract law, tort liability, and business operational law. Meanwhile, given the popularization and mass nature of the tourism industry, the law of Consumer Protection also forms a core pillar of the area, ensuring tourists (in their roles as consumers) adequate protection from unfair commercial practices, asymmetric information, and deficient services. With regard to Public Law, Administrative Law governs—through its administrative procedures—how tourism businesses are regulated in terms of their licensing, zoning, classification, and ongoing supervision by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and/or local municipal authorities. Constitutional Law and Environmental Law also have a profound impact on the state’s macro policies regarding development and natural resource utilization in the tourism sector (e.g., state regulations on public utilization of coastal areas and protected cultural heritage sites). Furthermore, a key element in the dynamic evolution of the law of Travel and Tourism in Türkiye has been the process of EU accession, which triggered a significant transformation of the legal framework of the sector through harmonization of domestic law with the EU acquis. This caused a fundamental paradigm shift from merely offering incentives for physical investment in the tourism industry to focusing on legal protection for consumers and the transparent, standardized functioning of the tourism market. This shift is particularly visible through the enactment of modernized consumer protection law and highly detailed secondary legislation, such as those governing package travel contracts, which directly implement and mirror EU directives to ensure equivalent levels of legal safety for tourists regardless of nationality. The aim of this article is therefore to analyze the entire edifice of the law of Travel and Tourism in Türkiye, focusing on its evolutionary aspects, the legal hierarchy, the rights and obligations of key market actors, and the complex apportionment of liability within modern tourism relationships. It also addresses the legal order regulating the current and future tourism industry in Türkiye. 2 ENES ALTAN
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTE4NzM5Nw==