Turkey’s Convergence Analysis of Selected OECD Countries in the Tourism Sector

Tourism is a crucial source of foreign income for many developed and developing countries and is a sector required for development. Turkey is a competitive country in the tourism sector because of its strategic geopolitical location. Therefore, Turkey has become one of the top destinations for international tourist arrivals and tourism revenues. In this context, international arrivals and tourism revenues are critical to a country’s economic activities and competitiveness. This study tests Turkey’s convergence hypothesis with OECD countries by using tourism revenues and the number of international arrival data. The linearity tests of Harvey and Leybourne (2007) and Harvey et al. (2008), as well as Fourier-Kruse (2019), and a new unit root test developed as an extension of the test, are used. The results demonstrate that the convergence hypothesis is not valid. This result supports the statistics that Turkey has a more competitive advantage in the tourism sector than selected OECD countries and is a top international destination for tourism.