National and regional atlases: Turkey

M. Bazin describes the 1961 Atlas of Turkey, published by Istanbul geographers, as comparable in conception to the Atlas de France. Apart from a one-page preface, it presents maps and diagrams without commentary, arranged in nine sections covering physical geography, population, economic activities, communications and administrative divisions. Climate receives the most extensive treatment, with 43 maps and inset maps; topographic coverage includes eight sheets at 1:800,000. Bazin argues that the delay between completion of the maps in 1954 and publication in 1961 left its human and economic geography outdated on arrival: population distribution relied on the 1935 census, other demographic maps on the 1950 census, and agricultural and livestock data on averages for 1950–1952 and 1945–1950 respectively. He adds that demographic and economic changes accelerated this obsolescence, while advances in geological surveying and plate tectonics soon dated some physical maps as well.