Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Regional Studies in Marine Science, cilt.81, 2025 (SCI-Expanded)
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, Türkiye has largely overlooked MSP. Therefore, this study aims to address this gap by establishing key considerations for MSP in the context of Türkiye. Although Türkiye 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sector's management is hampered by a lack of comprehensive data, inadequate planning, sector-based management, and outdated legislation.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. Türkiye'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 Türkiye 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 Türkiye.