Sacred summit, sealed frontier: bordering, debordering and rebordering at Mount Ağrı (Ararat)

This study examines Mount Ararat (Mount Ağrı) as a dynamic borderscape at the intersection of Türkiye, Armenia, Iran, and Azerbaijan, challenging state-centric understandings of borders as fixed geopolitical lines. Drawing on the ‘borderscape’ and ‘border as method’ frameworks, it conceptualizes tourism as a practice of bordering, debordering, and rebordering (BDR). Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative case study design based on data triangulation, including tourism statistics, policy documents, tour operator materials, field observations, and interviews conducted in Iğdır and Yerevan between 2019 and 2025. The findings reveal how Yerevan-based ‘visual sovereignty’ transforms Mount Ararat into a touristic object despite the absence of physical access, and how contrasting tourism imaginaries emerge along the closed Türkiye-Armenia border. Tourism is shown to simultaneously erode borders symbolically while reproducing them through national identity narratives and visual representations. Mount Ararat thus emerges as a hybrid borderscape governed by touristic imagery and ideological meanings that extend well beyond the physical border itself.