Land Use And Land

Use Problems In
Turkey
Funda KAYMAK
Nee UYANIK

Outline

The Definition of Land Use

Land Capability Classification
Land Use in The World
Land Use Policies And Applications In Turkey
Main Determinants Of Land Use And Land Use
Problems
The Cost Of Land Degradation And The Economics
Results
Conclusion

Introduction

Land use is the human modification of

natural environment or wilderness into
built environment such as fields, pastures,
and settlements.

The significant effects of land use include

urban sprawl, soil erosion, soil degradation,
salinization, and desertification.

Lands are so important for the industry and

urbanization like for the agriculture

The land use which is very important for

sustainable development should be
activated with the policies, planning or
obligations by the states because of being
insufficient and not renewable source and
impossibility of accelerate of land formation
time.

Today, there are 22 institutions which

apply planning, applications and controls
and also 24 laws about these subjects. So, it
causes an authority distribution problem.

However, the reconstruction laws about

shanty cause crooked urbanization and
then wrong land use.

The effects of land degeneration could not be

measured exactly, but it is estimated that
losses are huge amounts.

The wrong use of lands creates negative

effects on extant flora and animal along with
agriculture production.

On the other hand, the decreasing output

lands have a huge cost to reacquire because of
wrong use.

The Land Use And Land Capability

Classification

The land use includes the type of activity on a certain area

that is available for physical, economic and social
conditions of any region and defined characteristics.
In order to efficient land use , experts improved several
methods for efficient planning.
Two of the most common the land usage methods which
applied international are Land Capability Classification
and Land Evaluation Principles which are determined by
The World Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
In our country, Land Capability Classification method is
mostly used.

Table 1. Land Capability Classification

In Land Capability
Classification Method, lands
are classified into 8 category.
The first four category are
considered as suitable areas
for agricultural production.
Other four category are not
suitable for agriculture and
must be used for
urbanization and for other
activities.
Land in Class 5 is generally
limited to the production of
perennial crops or other
specially adapted crops.
Productivity of these suited
crops may be high.

Land Capability Class

Class

What they must be used for

Lands
Lands
Class Lands
Class Lands

Agricultural Production (best)

Agricultural Production (good-moderate)
Agricultural Production (moderate)
Agricultural Production (insufficient)

5. Class Lands

Particular Class

6. and 7. Class Lands

Forest, Pasture, Grassland, Brushwood

8. Class Lands

Urbanization, Industry, Tourism and

Other

Class

The Land Structure of Turkey

Turkey is the 36th in earth wideness in the world

with 779,452 square meters area. But, if we look for
productivity, 35-40 % of Turkeys area is the
mountains which are not economic. Although the
forest areas are about 30%, 2/3 of them are the
marquis, thickets etc.

30-35% of the lands in our country are available for

the agriculture but there has the erosion risk. The soil
areas which are watered are limited and they are
delta plains mostly.

In Turkey, because of the dry and half dry climate, a

lot of watering projects realized, but they were not
completed, the enough information was not given to
the farmers, and not enough measures.

As a result the productive lands started to become

barren. So, the barren lands increased. However,
Mesopotamia plain which has the wide flatness
opened to be watered with completing of Southeast
Anatolian Project (GAP); but, there is getting barren
and saltinization risks.

Table 2. Land Capability Qualification of Turkey

As it can see from the table,

Turkeys total land quantity
is 26.546.585 ha in first four
class according to the land
capability classification.
This amount is 34,6 % of
total lands
Quantity of 5., 6. and 7.
class lands are 60,9% of
total lands and 8. class
lands are 3.455.513 ha,
meanly 4,6 % of total lands.

Land Capability
Class

Hectare

1. Class Lands
2. Class Lands
3. Class Lands
4. Class Lands

5.012.537
6.758.702
7.574.330
7.201.016

6.5
8.8
9.7
9.5

Total Agriculture
Lands

26.546.585

34.6

5. Class Lands
6. Class Lands
7. Class Lands

165.547
10.238.533
36.288.553

0.2
13.3
47.4

Total Forest,
Pasture and
Grasslands

46.692.633

60.09

8. Class Lands

3.455.514

4.6

Total Lands

76.694.731

100.0

Souce: Trkiye Ziraat Mhendislii Teknik Kongresi,

1995.

Table 3. Current Land Use in Turkey

Land Class

Dry Agriculture

Watery Agriculture

Gardens

Nut-Olive

Total

3.155.146

1.413.256

176.264

33.333

4.778.299

4.876.280

835.791

187.972

86.823

5.986.866

5.438.715

476.222

204.989

109.507

6.229.433

4.062.580

233.081

172.414

135.054

4.603.129

13.340

3.980

143

17.463

3.377.458

34.290

201.714

235.037

3.848.499

1.683.515

4.260

115.041

442.398

2.245.214

Error term

Source: TEMA Erozyonla Mcadele Seminer Notlar

6.111.176 ha (%23)

27.708.903

In Table 3, its shown the existing usage figures

of the lands.

According to table 3, we see that it is made

agriculture in the areas which should not be
made agriculture according to the land usage
classification.

On this table, the most important point is that

the standard deviation is too high. And this
shows the difficulties to measure.

An Outlook of Land Use in the World

According to the
datas of UNCCD,
70 % of 5,2 billion
ha agriculture area
has been
deteriorated and
for fighting land
use corruptions in
a global scale, it is
required that 1022,4 billion dollars
of investment must
be done over 20
years.

Kyoto Protocol that is on the agenda is very

important for sustainable development and shows
given importance by the world. The land use, land
use changing and forestry activities are put on
Kyoto Protocol in order to apply the carbon dioxide
discount emission contract of developed countries.
In this way, both planned and efficient land use and
decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide would be
provided.
Because land-use change, together with use of fossil
fuels, are the major anthropogenic sources of carbon
dioxide, a dominant greenhouse gas

Land Use Policies and Applications in

Turkey

Today, there are lots of laws and institutions that

determine how lands will be used. For example in
1982 Constitution, in Environmental Law, in Law of
Agricultural Reform, in Law of Municipalities and
in Law of Reconstruction there are many provisions
about usage of lands.

In planning processes, some complications occur

about which rule will be applied and which
institution is the top authority.

Main Determinants of Land Use and Land

Use Problems in Turkey

Main determinants of land use are natural

structure, legal and institutional effects,
demography, economical situations and
infrastructure investments.

Rapid increase in industrialization and

increase in population caused a requirement
of new housing places. Hence, this ended up
with unplanned and uncontrolled
urbanization process and land use in cities.

According to the end of 1987 registration of

Ministry of Industry and Trade, 62% of 17,999
hectare that appropriated for organized and
small industry is on the earths that available for
I-IV. class agriculture

This situation shows insensitivity of the

ministries to this subject. Because, the
importance of agriculture and land usage are not
taken into consideration by this acts.

Touristic areas have used planless and

improperly for attracting more tourist. Owners
of lands in these areas have been selling them to
earn more money for non-agricultural use.

At the same time there are some problems

originated from planning deficiencies. For
example, in Kuadas-Davutlar 24 hectare land
has opened to tourism with license

On the other hand some public investments by

government have destroyed the productive lands.

Infrastructure, highways, railways, brick and

roofing-tile factory and such investments damage to
existing lands with high costs. At these investments,
more importance is given to cost and so, the land
structure is not concerned.

Brick and roofing-tile factories demolish more than

17.000.000 tones valuable alluvional lands and it is
very hard to regain them

Today, there are 22 institutions and foundation and

24 laws that enforce planning, implementation and
governance. Naturally, this creates an authority
problem and enables unplanned or wrong land use.

Although the planning and implementing power

deputed to municipalities, localization of planning
and implementations cannot be realized as technical
and financial deficiency.

On the other hand, attendances of people to

planning process take place by only elections and so
it is not provided to attendance of public to every
stage of planning.

The Cost Of Land Degradation And The

Economic Results

The cost of land degradation is quite high and to

calculate this cost, it is necessary to estimate the
primary situation of the land, existing conditions
and the potential returns in the future.
However, in Turkey, more importance is given to
short term returns rather than long term returns and
long term effect are not taken into consideration.
There are many factors that increase the cost of
regaining efficient lands such as destroyer effects to
flora and fauna, the decrease in the value of land

Today, agriculture areas are generally used for

housing, tourism, industry and infrastructure, but
guiding these areas differently will increase
efficiency. At the same time, wrong choices about
agriculture areas have decreasing agricultural
efficiency.

Complexity of authority and some reconstruction

laws channel people to irregular urbanization.
Especially in election periods, the increase in wrong
land use can be easily seen, and this situation causes
many uncontrolled housing problems which create
not only ecological problems but also environment
pollution.

In our country, some regional plannings and

projects were done after 1980s such as
ukurova Project, GAP Project and ATAK
Project, but it is hard to say that they were
successful.

Especially in GAP region, lands have been

irrigating too much and this causes saltinization.
Its economical meaning is decreasing of
efficiency and investment will be turn into loss
in the long term.

Effects of land degradation do not harm only

agricultural area, at the same time this affects the
whole environment.

Most significant effects of land use include

urban sprawl, soil erosion, soil degradation,
saltinization and desertification. Land use
change is one of the sources of carbon dioxide
that is a dominant greenhouse gas.

All of these are the examples of externality,

because both government and the owners of
lands take into consideration only short term
returns of them; but this will affect not only
Turkeys economy but also next generation.

In order to achieve an optimum efficiency level

in land use, direct, indirect and cumulative
effects must be calculated in the process of
planning.

Conclusion And Policy Implications

In recent times, the concept of sustainable

development has come into prominence so
much. However, in Turkey, it is concentrated
only economical and industrial development
and the importance of environment does not
set off. It is not thought that it will be faced
with high costly environmental problems in
the future.

As a result

Some arrangements must be realized with

continuity improvement framework to provide a
healthy environment for new generation.

Otherwise, buildings would increase on the areas

that should be made agriculture and use up
agriculture lands. Thats why; it must not be
thought the costs of the present time and so
planning, arrangements and auditing must be
realized to provide benefits in the future.