The Potential of Badlands in Turkey as Geosites
Abstract: Badlands are areas that cannot be used for agricultural and animal husbandry purposes. It is even impossibleto walk on some parts of them. However, they can be used for tourism and educational purposes. In the world,there are badlands used for tourism and educational purposes and visited by thousands of people every year. Itis also possible to see badlands, which cover a large area, almost in any region of Turkey. Turkey has badlandsthat can compete with other badlands in the world in terms of geosite potential. Indeed, certain badlands suchas Rhododendron Ridge, Küpyar Badland, Nallıhan Badland, Devil City Badland, Rainbow Hills (Erzurum) andRainbow Hills (Iğdır) have succeeded in attracting peoples attention with their interesting features. However, noholistic assessment has been carried out regarding the geosite potential of the badlands in Turkey. The main purposeof this research is to determine the educational and touristic value of certain badlands in Turkey as a geosite and tocompare these areas with their examples in the world. Accordingly, quantitative geosite assessment methods wereused in the research. The results of the assessment revealed that Nallıhan Badland, which is one of the badlandssubjected to assessment in the research, is the badland that has the highest geosite potential of Turkey with its main (educational and scientific) and additional (touristic and functional) values. Also, this area has high geotouristicvalue among other examples in the world. It was concluded that Turkey, which has important badlands in terms ofgeosite potential, does not evaluate these badlands for tourism and especially educational purposes.