**6. Criticism of the Turkish planning process with regard to sustainability necessities**

Besides the structural shortcomings of the Turkish planning system, emphasis is on the critics of the Turkish planning process and planning hierarchy with respect to sustainability criteria. Even in the Habitat-III National Report of Turkey, it is claimed that sustainable urban planning in Turkey takes its reference from the physical dimension. The report claimed that there are shortcomings in proper handling of social, cultural, economic, and ecologic dimensions of planning [12]. Also, there is no evidence on how relations between economy–ecology and society are shaped within the planning process. On the other hand, the main bottleneck of the Turkish planning system is defined as follows [13]:

**•** Lack of a spatial planning system integrated with national development planning,


– Pedestrian and bicycle networks,

– Lands of urban design project areas,

– Logistics areas.

284 Sustainable Urbanization

– Housing areas;

– Trade areas;

– Cemeteries;

**necessities**

– Industrial areas;

– Social and cultural areas;

– Recreational and green areas;

– Special areas like military zones.

period of three months after the completion of the plan.

Turkish planning system is defined as follows [13]:

area zones;

– Service areas and locational choice characteristics,

Implementation Plans contain notations of the following areas or functions:

– All types of boundaries including administrative, planning and restriction zones, and risky

Adjustment tools utilized within plan-making process are zoning, surveillance of building lots, and norms and standards. Zoning consists of functional, density, and height zoning. Division of building lots is needed for the implementation of architecture of buildings on building parcels. Standards are used for the comfort, livability, and sustainable living of urban residents. Implementation plans are implemented on urban space with programs. These programs are especially prepared for the five-year period. It has to be executed successively. Continuity is the essential principle in this process. Municipalities have to prepare programs within a time

**6. Criticism of the Turkish planning process with regard to sustainability**

Besides the structural shortcomings of the Turkish planning system, emphasis is on the critics of the Turkish planning process and planning hierarchy with respect to sustainability criteria. Even in the Habitat-III National Report of Turkey, it is claimed that sustainable urban planning in Turkey takes its reference from the physical dimension. The report claimed that there are shortcomings in proper handling of social, cultural, economic, and ecologic dimensions of planning [12]. Also, there is no evidence on how relations between economy–ecology and society are shaped within the planning process. On the other hand, the main bottleneck of the

**•** Lack of a spatial planning system integrated with national development planning,

With reference to the Turkish planning process explained in the former part, there are some shortcomings of the planning process related to sustainability essentials.

First, there is a one-way flow of decision-making takes place in the system of Turkish urban planning. An elitist type of planning is dominant. Spatial decisions of all scales are taken at bureaucratic levels and they are dictated to citizens by the plan itself. In this elitist type of planning, planner's role is taken only at technical level. This causes a problem to the rantoriented decision making of municipalities as they are the approval mechanism of the Master and Implementation Plans. That is, especially, not the problem of planning process but it is entirely an ethical problem. These types of actions commonly bring out many legal problems.

The Turkish urban planning process also suffers from the absence of feedback mechanism. Feedback is executed as preparing ``revision plans" and ``local plan changes." This situation really leads to the waste of resources because all plans need an important amount of effort. The lack of feedback and elitist type of decision making leads to legal problems that are always tried to be solved at administrative courts. Every case in the courts makes plans imperma‐ nent and ineffective and leads to waste of resources.

Another important problem is the lack of a monitoring process in the Turkish urban plan‐ ning system. As it is the case of the lack of feedback, the lack of a monitoring process is also tried to be covered by revision plans and local plan changes. The lack of a monitoring process is an obstacle on the control of the Master and Implementation Plans. For this reason, it is compulsory to prepare a Master and Implementation Plan for all of the settlements, most of the settlements in Turkey are perceived as a nonplanned locality. Decisions of original plans cannot find a chance to be applied till the deadline of the plans but are always changed by the revision plan or plan changes. There are definite development programs for the implementa‐ tion of the urban plans but this mechanism is not organized as a monitoring process. However, these programs do not get a chance to be implemented as the construction activities are totally in the hand of speculator contractors.

The sustainability concept is emphasized in the last Regulation of Plan Making Process, as it was described in former parts. On the other hand, there is no evidence that how sustainable urban development can be achieved. Especially, sustainability indicators are not included into planning process, even no such indicators exist in the Turkish planning process. A lot of necessary or unnecessary data are collected throughout the planning process but neither of them are used for evaluating the sustainability indicators. The data collected at higher levels cannot be used at lower scales. With the collected data, it will be easy for evaluating sustain‐ ability indicators if they exist within the plan process.

One of the most important bottlenecks of the Turkish planning process is the lack of partici‐ pation even though the "participation" concept takes place in the Turkish planning system. On the other hand, this does not fulfill the conditions that sustainable type of planning requires. In Turkey, the participation of citizens to planning is achieved by two ways. One is participa‐ tion in questionnaires and surveys before the plan-making process and the second one is related to gathering information from the prepared plan itself. After completion of Master and Implementation plans, these plans are exhibited on municipality boards. This is for gather‐ ing information of the landowners about their parcels. Citizens can make their objections to the plan within a month time. Usually, nobody has information that plans are exhibited on the Municipal Boards unless they see or heard about by chance. These two situations about participation have no relation with participatory democratic planning. As a result, citizens are given no right to have opinions about the plan throughout the plan-making process. Even, they did not know the existence of such a planning process. This condition is also valid for other public institutions. The court cases of the plan conflict between the Public Treasury Office as owner of public lands and Municipalities as making and approving urban plans, which are the best examples for this situation.

Though there is an obligation to take decisions about all institutions in the planning process, this is not a guarantee that the participation of institutions to the planning process is treated in a proper way. These decisions are taken from only relevant institutions on relevant lands, not for the whole plan.

All these findings clearly indicate that the Turkish current planning system is not emphasiz‐ ing governance though this concept is given much importance in the stage of Strategic Spatial Plans. As the hierarchy of the plan scales is lowered, government-dictated decisions become dominant instead of governance principles.
