Land In Turkey Research Articles

The Enclosure of Urban Space and Consolidation of the Capitalist Land Regime in Turkish Cities

This article discusses the role of squatters in the commodification of urban space in Turkey since the 1960s. Although squatting until the early 1980s was regarded as the expression of the demands of rural-to-urban migrants for their citizenship rights, early migrants eventually built multistorey buildings on the plots they occupied and rented the extra space to late migrants. Thus, squatting as ‘self-help put into practice’ became a major mechanism of commodification of urban land in Turkey. The commodification brought about significant antagonism between early migrants/new petty bourgeois and late migrants/new working class, as the latter became the tenants of the former. This division in working-class neighbourhoods is mostly invisible to the current literature. However, if this historical transformation is conceptualised as the ‘enclosure of urban space’, contradictions among different segments of squatter communities can be analysed in a comparative manner.

PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY IN TURKEY

Turkey's land area is 752 million square km. Of this land area 36% is cultivated and 6% is irrigated. 30% is covered with shrubs and forests. Major agricultural production is composed of (in million Ha): cereals (13.7), industrial plants (cotton, sugar beet, sunflower, tobacco) (2.65), legumes (1.6) and others (mainly vegetables and fruit trees). In Turkey, plant biotechnology research is conducted mainly by the universities and also by governmental agricultural research institutes. Total number of universities and research institutes is 75 and 23, respectively. Total number of units (faculties and research units) and researchers engaged in research on biotechnology related topics is around 180 and 2,000, respectively. Among these units and researchers approximately 35% and 30% is focused on plant biotechnology. Among 50 biotechnology related commercial companies, only 2 is related with plant biotechnology issues. There are also 3 commercial micro propagation units. Total number of biotechnology related articles published between 1995 and 2002 is 1100. 11% (123) of those are related with plant biotechnology. Stress tolerance (21%), tissue culture (19%) and molecular markers (14%) constitute the most intensively-studied plant biotechnology related topics. In this presentation, an extended summary of plant biotechnology research in Turkey together with examples of the most active research units will be covered.

Cover and management factors for the Universal Soil-Loss Equation for forest ecosystems in the Marmara region, Turkey

The Universal Soil-Loss Equation (USLE) predicts annual soil loss from agricultural uplands under specified land use and management conditions. Recently, some attempts have been made to apply USLE to forest lands in Turkey. This regional application of USLE and its reliability should be tested against measured data, especially for forest ecosystems. Our objective was to compute the cropping management ( C) and the support practice ( P) factors of the equation together in a single numerical value as a cover and management factor (CP) for forest and pseudo-maqui ecosystems using the local watershed and plot experiments carried out in the vicinity of Istanbul. CP factors were computed using known (rainfall erosivity factor, R) and estimated numerical values of other factors (average annual soil loss, A; soil-erodibility factor, K; combined slope-length and slope-steepness factor, LS). The CP factors were found to be 0.021 for old-growth oak-beech forest ecosystem in watershed-I and pseudo-maqui ecosystem and 0.011 for forest ecosystem in watershed-II.

Zinc deficiency as a practical problem in plant and human nutrition in Turkey: A NATO-science for stability project

Zinc (Zn) deficiency is a critical nutritional problem for plants and humans in Turkey. About 14 Mha of cropped land in Turkey are known to be Zn deficient, particularly cereal growing areas of Anatolia. In 1993, a joint research project was started in Turkey with the financial support of the NATO-Science for Stability Programme to select and characterize cereal genotypes with high yield and/or high Zn accumulation in grain under deficient supply of Zn. Field, greenhouse and growth chamber experiments were carried to study morphological, physiological and genetic factors determining the bases of genotypical differences in Zn efficiency among cereal species and within cultivars of wheat. Among the cereals, rye had particularly high Zn efficiency (high yield under Zn deficiency). There were large genotypical differences among wheat lines. High Zn efficiency was closely associated with enhanced capacity of some lines to take up Zn from soils, but not with increased Zn accumulation per unit dry weight of shoot or grain. Measurement of Zn-containing superoxide dismutase activity in leaves revealed that an efficient utilization of Zn at the tissue or cellular level is an additional major factor involved in Zn efficiency of cereals. Zinc present in grains from Anatolia seems to be not bioavailable. Phytate : Zn molar ratios in grains, a widely accepted predictor of Zn bioavailability, were extremely high and ranged between 95 and 216 for crops grown severely on Zn-deficient soils of Central Anatolia. In the studies concerning determination of Zn nutritional status of school children in Southeastern Anatolia, most children were found to be of shorter stature and had very low levels of Zn (<100 mg kg −1) in hair.