Coastal zone management in Turkey

This paper introduces the institutions, rules and regulations which have been established by the relevant Turkish laws for addressing various coastal and sea management issues. The Turkish Constitution and 12 laws having relevance to coastal and sea management are reviewed, and wherever appropriate, deficiencies and shortcomings are pointed out. The existing legislation shows clearly the sectoral character of the present system, suffering from overlapping responsibilities, and from insufficient communication and cooperation among different state agencies on the one hand, and among central government and the municipalities on the other. The review of the various studies and developments distributed over a decade shows that there has been a significant interest in Turkey for improving the CZM practices and for ‘integration’ of the management.