Prospects of marine spatial planning in Türkiye

Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) is spreading globally as a way to manage the complexities of expanding and diversifying maritime activities, while addressing both economic and environmental priorities. Despite being a maritime nation with an extensive coastline along four seas, T & uuml;rkiye has largely overlooked MSP. Therefore, this study aims to address this gap by establishing key considerations for MSP in the context of T & uuml;rkiye. Although T & uuml;rkiye is home to vital and rapidly expanding maritime activities, its maritime sector's management is hampered by a lack of comprehensive data, inadequate planning, sector-based management, and outdated legislation. The increasing overlap in the use and potential development zones-such as marine protected areas (MPA), offshore wind farms (OWF), aquaculture, and marine tourism-exhibits both synergistic and conflicting dynamics that will progressively escalate the indirect costs tied to current maritime management practices. T & uuml;rkiye's 2053 vision, aiming to ensure security of supply in food and energy, enhance sustainable resource use, and establish the country as a global logistics hub, further underscores the critical need for MSP. MSP involves the implementation of many concepts emerging from the developing environmental management paradigm within a broad framework. While T & uuml;rkiye keeps pace with the rest of the world in adopting concepts that have become international norms, difficulties in operationalizing these concepts make the development of institutional capacity a priority. Considering the similarities between MSP and large scale MPA, which strike a balance between conservation and human use, the Sea of Marmara Special Environmental Protection Area, established in 2021, can provide a starting point for MSP in T & uuml;rkiye.