UNESCO-UNDP tourism and security in Cold War Turkey and Iran

Abstract

In the mid 1960s, UNESCO took on tourism development initiatives in both Turkey and Iran that were financed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The projects focused on restoration of historic zones to improve capacity for rural tourism, including concerts and festivals. These were Cold War efforts intended to sway hearts and minds in the countryside that built on earlier industrialization and concurrent militarization schemes. In Turkey, one modest 1965 initiative at Side paved the way for the South Antalya Tourism Infrastructure Project, a 1976 loan for $46.2 million from the World Bank. In Iran, $4 million resulted in the first UNESCO-UNDP tourism program of its kind to link an international tourism agenda with a country's national development plan: a UNESCO corridor from Tabriz to Shiraz. Drawing from archives at UNESCO and the World Bank, we explore how these initial UNESCO-UNDP tourism programs offered a further buffer for the west to both Soviet and Arab spheres of influence. Through this lens, we argue that tourism development became a way that Turkey and Iran as well as UNESCO, UNDP, and the World Bank became entangled in and benefitted from Cold War security.