Technopolitical Construction of a River Basin
Turkey’s Encounters and Adventures with the “TVA Idea”
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21392450 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Aybike Alkan (Technische Universität Berlin, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 111-142 |
| Publication date | 2023-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften Technik und Medizin (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0036-6978 • E-ISSN: 1420-9144 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s00048-023-00357-y |
| PMID | 37133794 |
| OpenAlex | W4367834233 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 37 |
In the postwar era, the preferred approach to harnessing rivers was through integrated river basin planning (IRBP), which required a holistic focus on the river basin for multipurpose development. While the river basin is taken for granted as the natural unit of development in the definitions of the IRBP concept, this article problematizes the river basin idea and reveals the politics behind what has been deemed natural (scientific), with a specific focus on Turkey’s experience with IRBP. It explores geopolitical and national motivations and challenges in the context of the scaling of the Euphrates-Tigris basin. By approaching IRBP as a process of scale-making, it draws from discussions of the politics of scale in the literature on political ecology, but also incorporates a historical dimension to these discussions with attention to the political and environmental histories of Southeastern Turkey, which became home to Turkey’s first and most extensive IRBP project, the Southeast Anatolia Project (GAP). The article stretches the chronological boundaries of GAP to the decades prior to the 1970s, when the project was initiated, by analyzing archival materials, including the proceedings of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the archives of a daily newspaper, and the expert reports on GAP. The analysis highlights the politics of scale as a powerful constituent of the politics of technological development, and shows the significance of historical analysis to delineate the politics of river basin planning into different layers, including the level of geopolitics, territorial disputes, and international conflicts
Archaeology · Cartography · Context (archaeology) · Drainage basin · Geography · Geopolitics · Natural (archaeology) · Political science · Politics · Regional science · Scale (ratio) · Structural basin · Geology · Law · Transboundary Water Resource Management · Turkey's Politics and Society · Water Governance and Infrastructure
Concrete Revolution
The Cambridge History of Turkey
The Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) in Turkey
How Knowledge Moves
The River Basin in History and Law
Smokestacks and Pipelines
Introduction
Streams of knowledge
Violence and nationalist mobilization
The American Planning Tradition
Damming Afghanistan
Bridge across the Bosporus
River-basin planning and management
Hard Times in Turkey
Bridge across the Bosporus
Negotiating hydro-scales, forging states
Turkey
A Light Bulb in Every House
Eigensinnige Musterschüler
Encountering Development
The Shared Political Production of 'the East' as a 'Resistant' Territory and Cultural Sphere in the Kemalist Era, 1923-1938
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |