Industrial tourism is killing the world!

Actually, I was going to write a belated holiday article, but I changed my mind after seeing the people of my country flocking to coastal towns for the "9-day holiday" this year, just like every year, in a way that could be the subject of psychopathology lessons.

I wanted to write about an issue that has been bothering me for a while, one that truly makes me uneasy, but which actually concerns the future of all of us collectively.

Let me not beat around the bush.

We are knowingly and willingly destroying our home, the only planet in the known universe that harbors life.

The world is being polluted at an incredible speed.

Especially after the industrial revolution, the balance of nature began to deteriorate visibly.

What we read in books, articles, and news, and what we watch in documentaries, of course, gives an idea about the seriousness of the issue, but when a person witnesses this pollution and destruction firsthand, alarm bells start ringing in their mind.

Don't say, "Tell us something we don't know."

Of course, everyone who hasn't rented out their mind and intellect; everyone who reads, researches, wants to understand what is happening around them, and in short, has at least a little bit of reasoning ability, is aware of this.

The issue has many facets, but I want to draw attention to "industrial tourism."

If you ask what this is; in an article at the TURSAB academy, there is a definition stating, "The concept of 'mass tourism,' where travel businesses organize holidays or trips on behalf of consumers and present them as a holistic (combined) product, is the determinant of industrial tourism."

Let's look at the practice of it.

In your spare time, while waiting for the subway to go to work, in a bank queue, or while doing your business on the toilet in the morning, you will see that your Instagram account is buzzing, especially in the summer months.

Advertisements start falling in front of you one after another.

You see tours to the paradisiacal shores and beaches of the Far East, the Indian Ocean, East Africa, or the Red Sea, to the Egyptian pyramids, the temples of India, or the picturesque medieval cities of Europe.

Moreover, they offer so many installments on such-and-such credit card with some feature.

Thinking "why not," you buy it as if scraping the bottom of your credit card.

Then you set off.

Cramped planes taking off at the crack of dawn, hotels marketed as three-star but worse than a student dormitory, bus journeys at jet speed passed off as "panoramic tours," "extras" that are each a tourist trap, evening meals worth pennies, shows like "cart" nights and "curt" dances that are barely better than a kindergarten play...

And of course, the endless "tourist trap" operations at the places where you stop under the guise of taking a break...

And there's more to come!

The paradisiacal beaches you see on social media are packed to the brim. If you can manage to swim a few strokes among the diesel leaking from boats, the residues of heavily applied sunscreen, jellyfish, and broken beer bottles, there is no one happier than you. Especially if you have posed for a fancy Instagram photo...

You cannot find a place to sit in the cafes and restaurants on the market streets.

The lunch included in the tour wouldn't be eaten by a dog, drinks are already "excluded," meaning those who pay for it drink their 'cola'.

Queues at museum doors can reach kilometers, and most of the temples, palaces, churches, and castles are either closed because they are being restored or your tour does not cover them.

If you are lucky and can get inside one of these, you won't see anything decent nor will you be able to listen to what the guide is saying, as it will be no different from the journey you take on the Güneşevler-Kırkkonaklar bus.

When you return home exhausted after 5 nights and 6 days, you are left with little more than five Facebook posts and three Instagram "stories."

At that moment, you start comparing what was marketed to you in social media ads with what you saw on the tour and wonder, "Did I fall victim to qualified fraud?" but it is too late; you continue to pay your credit card installments every month.

Then?

This is where the rubber meets the road.

-In my opinion- these obscure tourism activities on a global scale also cause major environmental disasters.

Most countries, desperate to close their budget deficits by opening their historical and natural values to tourists, ignore the massive piles of trash left behind by millions of tourists, the damage they cause to thousands-of-years-old artifacts, the inadequate infrastructure that cannot handle the crowds, the sewage dumped into the seas, air pollution, and the chaos created by traffic.

They continue to build massive hotels and residences at the expense of slaughtering nature.

Masses of people, under the guise of mass tourism activity, occupy historical cities that have been preserved for thousands of years, paradisiacal beaches, and lush green forests like a swarm of locusts.

Moreover, they think this is a tourism activity. In fact, the whole issue is nothing more than three or five photos to be posted on social media. Local tour guides take Instagram or TikTok breaks on the road. No one is really interested in the rest anyway.

But there is an economic scale of hundreds of billions of dollars here.

It seems everyone wants a piece of this pie.

Especially for underdeveloped or developing countries, the situation is "as long as the money comes, as long as the tourists leave the dollars in their pockets."

This issue has reached a critical point, especially for Southeast Asia.

Environmental pollution is at incredible levels.

They are obsessively trying to industrialize at the expense of destroying their paradisiacal natural wealth.

The multiplication of this with the destructive and polluting effect of industrial tourism is driving countries toward a total extinction.

For example, the beaches of Da Nang, Vietnam, are of unbelievable beauty.

It has white sandy beaches stretching for kilometers. Millions of tourists from the West vacation here. There are also a significant number of people who have fled from big European cities to settle here.

By chance, I had the chance to see Da Nang Bay from the air while flying from here to Saigon. I was horrified when I looked down from the plane window. One ship was moving, leaving a yellow trail kilometers long behind it. It was clear that it had discharged bilge or chemical waste into the bay.

Right behind those beaches, it is full of skyscrapers that would rival Miami. They destroyed beautiful palm forests to build these buildings.

Who is buying the real estate here? Of course, not the poor Vietnamese who are starving.

Rich Chinese, Arabs, Russian oligarchs, and the Serbian and Albanian mafia who hold Europe to ransom are the new residents of these places.

The pollution caused by oyster farms in the famous Halong Bay is of such magnitude that when you look from the deck of the tour boats, you see kilometers of dirty waste floating on the sea.

The oyster farms here are where the pearls sold to tourists are produced. They are destroying a unique natural beauty in the world beyond repair for a few hundred thousand dollars that will come from European tourists or rich Arabs.

The situation in Malaysia is not much different.

For example, on the island of Penang, sewage flows in the open and drains into the sea. This is one of Malaysia's tourism centers, and there is an incredible amount of environmental pollution.

On the way from Penang Bayan Lepas International Airport to George Town, which is half an hour away from the city center, factories of high-tech companies such as Intel, Dell, Motorola, Hitachi, Bosch, and Seagate catch the eye.

European-based companies setting up their factories here is not just because of cheap labor. They have come to Southeast Asia due to the heavy restrictions of the European Union on waste, especially chemical waste. There are not many such restrictions in Malaysia. And those that exist are extremely simple.

In other words, there is an approach of "let the Old Continent stay clean, and let your country swim in filth..."

That's why they pollute their surroundings recklessly. Tourists coming from Western countries, let alone their own trash, swim in seas polluted by Western companies, walk in forests where they dump their waste, and eat pineapples, coconuts, and bananas grown on agricultural lands poisoned by chemicals.

Is there no alternative to this? For example, are there no countries that protect their historical and natural values while also earning big money from tourism activities?

Of course there are, but their numbers are few. For example, one of them is our neighbor, Greece. It protects its beaches and historical artifacts with great care. Some islands, like Lesbos, are not open to mass tourism. Despite being a major source of income, it does not increase the number of beds on the islands, does not widen its roads, does not open these places to zoning, and does not allow the sale of real estate to foreigners.

In Greece, when you pollute the sea, you face extremely deterrent penalties.

Italy is also taking its own precautions. But whether it is enough is debatable. For example, industrial tourism has devastated Venice. But in Rome, tourists are not allowed to sit on the famous Spanish Steps so that they are not damaged.

Naples, where tourists coming to the famous Pompeii mainly stay, is running in a different lane, so to speak. The city is both unsafe and filthy.

And what about Turkey...

Let's leave that for next week. Before wrapping up the article, let's make an appointment for Tuesday, and for now, let's put a period to our article by celebrating your past holiday.