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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2018
This article analyzes the transformation of the Kızılırmak Delta on the Black Sea coast of Turkey into a Turkish wetland. This production involved the transformation of international categories of wetlands into national imaginaries, as well as the material remaking of landscapes themselves. Population and agro-economic shifts concurrent to the formation of the Turkish nation-state transformed the delta into an agricultural landscape, and subsequently into a contested conservation area whose use is informed by changing Turkish and international notions of wetlands. I focus on the situated, local processes and practices through which wetlands are produced and become relevant to different social groups as subjects of scientific knowledge and environmental imaginations. These, I argue, have rendered the wetland an open-air laboratory and an object of care for environmental advocates, scientists, and residents.
Author's note: I am grateful to Benjamin Siegel, Chris Walley, Stefan Helmreich, Tessa Farmer, Jessica Barnes, members of the Middle East Environmental Worlds working group, and the anonymous peer reviewers for their help in refining my arguments. Earlier drafts were presented at the 2016 Rethinking Middle East Environment workshop, the 2016 Conservation workshop at the Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Amherst College, and the 2017 Ecological History in Asia conference at the Yale Council on East Asian Studies. I thank all of the workshop participants for their generous comments. Research was made possible thanks to grants from the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the National Science Foundation (1429914).
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