Growing demand for historically meaningful and place-based experiences has increased interest in transforming underutilized military heritage landscapes into sustainable tourism resources. This study evaluates the development potential of the Caucasian Islamic Army Heritage Route in Azerbaijan as an integrated military heritage, memorial tourism, and geotourism product. A mixed-methods approach combines field observations across historically significant territories, archival and documentary analysis, secondary tourism statistics, and evidence triangulation. The assessment is complemented by analogical comparison with established military heritage destinations in Gallipoli, Normandy, and Sakarya. Butler’s Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model is applied to determine the route’s current development stage and construct future development scenarios. The findings position the proposed route within the exploration and early involvement stages, characterized by limited tourism infrastructure, fragmented heritage interpretation, weak destination integration, and low international visibility. Scenario modeling projects approximately 30,000 visitors in the short term, 120,000 in the medium term, and 300,000 in the long term. The results indicate that coordinated infrastructure development, coherent historical interpretation, destination branding, and stakeholder cooperation could transform dispersed military heritage sites into an integrated tourism corridor, supporting heritage preservation, tourism diversification, regional economic activity, and more geographically balanced tourism development across Azerbaijan.

Keywords: geotourism, military heritage tourism, Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC); heritage routes, memorial tourism, Azerbaijan

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