ABSTRACT

This book is an exploration of the environmental makings and contested historical trajectories of environmental change in Turkey. Despite the recent proliferation of studies on the political economy of environmental change and urban transformation, until now there has not been a sufficiently complete treatment of Turkey's troubled environments, which live on the edge both geographically (between Europe and Middle East) and politically (between democracy and totalitarianism).

The contributors to Transforming Socio-Natures in Turkey use the toolbox of environmental humanities to explore the main political, cultural and historical factors relating to the country’s socio-environmental problems. This leads not only to a better grounding of some of the historical and contemporary debates on the environment in Turkey, but also a deeper understanding of the multiplicity of framings around more-than-human interactions in the country in a time of authoritarian populism.

This book will be of interest not only to students of Turkey from a variety of social science and humanities disciplines but also contribute to the larger debates on environmental change and developmentalism in the context of a global populist turn.

Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at https://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. 

chapter 1|7 pages

Socio-natures on the edge

Landscapes, state and movements in Turkey

part One|62 pages

Landscapes on the edge

chapter 2|20 pages

The soils of Turkey

Nature, science, and crisis (1930–1960)

chapter 3|21 pages

A technopolitical frontier

The Keban Dam project and southeastern Anatolia

chapter 4|19 pages

From imperial frontier to national heartland

Environmental history of Turkey’s nation-building in its European province of Thrace, 1920–1940

part Two|64 pages

State and capital on the edge

chapter 6|22 pages

Sediment in reservoirs

A history of dams and forestry in Turkey

chapter 7|23 pages

Informalization of waste regimes

The entanglement of urbanization, poverty and waste in Ankara

part Three|82 pages

Movements on the edge

chapter 8|29 pages

Contextualizing the rise of environmental movements in Turkey

Two instances of anti-gold mining resistance

chapter 9|21 pages

Coal, ash, and other tales

The making and remaking of the anti-coal movement in Aliağa, Turkey

chapter 10|21 pages

Moving stills

The idea of nature in New Turkish Cinema