Présentation de l'Atlas de Turquie

Summary

This article presents the Atlas of Turkey, compiled by the Institute of Geography at Istanbul University under the direction of Professor Ali Tanoglu, comprising 60 map pages that illustrate the country's natural features, population, and economy. It focuses on the land-use map of Turkey and its key findings: cultivated land occupies a small proportion of the total area and is highly fragmented, primarily due to natural constraints such as aridity, high average elevation (1,132 m), mountainous limestone terrain, and limited water and arable soil, compounded by historical, social, and economic factors. The author argues that recent efforts to expand cropland at the expense of pastures and forests are unsustainable, given that forest cover barely reaches 13% of the national territory. Instead, policy should prioritize reducing fallow land, applying dry-farming techniques, and especially expanding irrigated agriculture, while emphasizing that farmer education remains the fundamental prerequisite for solving the land-use problem.