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tive work. The end result is to improve accessibility to those cultural and
heritage resources for many people to actually see and use those resources
(for further information on this: Progress by the Digital Silk Roads Project
by Ono et al., 2006).
Dating back to ancient civilization, this region of the world has a rich,
interesting, and meaningful heritage worthy of our attention. Even today,
living oral epic traditions are still remarkably rich along the Silk Roads,
both on the Desert Route and the Maritime Route and documenting these
epic traditions are also being undertaken by researchers (e.g., Honko,
1996).
For example, the Manas epos of Batyr-khan Manas, an estimated
553,000 lines in total, reveals the formation, life struggles, and triumphs
of the Kyrgyz people and represents the highpoint of a widespread Central
Asian oral culture. There has been some effort to use the Manas epos and
heritage products in the creation of both a national identity and destina-
tion image in the positioning of Kyrgyzstan in the global market place
(e.g., Schofield and Maccarrone-Eaglen, 2011; Thompson, 2004; Thomp-
son, Schofield, Foster and Bakieva, 2006). Central Asia spans from cen-
tral Siberia in the north to Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan to the south.
The west is framed by the Caspian Sea and by China in the east (Buy-
ers, 2003). Today, the five countries most often included in the defini-
tions of the region include the five republics of the former Soviet Union:
Kazakhstan (pop. 16.6 million), Kyrgyzstan (5.5 million), Tajikistan (7.6
million), Turkmenistan (5.1 million), and Uzbekistan (29.5 million), for
a total population of approximately 65 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Central_Asia; accessed December 2, 2013). Not surprisingly, foreign
direct investment (FDI) in this region depends heavily upon earlier trade
relations as well as the extent of cultural distance between home and host
country (Culpan and Akcaoglu, 2003). For example, Turkey's geographic
and cultural proximity to Central Asian countries appears to give Turk-
ish tourism firms an advantage over competitor firms looking to penetrate
from other markets (Kantarci, 2007a). FDI, however, is trickling in from
a number of European and Asian countries with other regions such as the
Americas represented to a much lesser extent.
Tourism development in the region depends upon the confluence of nu-
merous push and pull factors, representing both demand and supply sides
of tourism planning, development, and activities. Push factors in tourism
represent the demand side and include items such as the socioeconomic
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