Article
ID: CBB550542244

Technopolitical Construction of a River Basin: Turkey’s Encounters and Adventures with the “TVA Idea” (2023)

unapi
Regional Development Dams Technology and politics History of technology, as a discipline 20th century Turkey Tennessee Valley Authority

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.

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Authors & Contributors
Bijker, Wiebe E.
Camprubí, Lino
Cookson-Hills, Claire
Dissard, Laurent
Elie, Marc
Herlea, Alexandre
Journals
Bulletin of the History of Archaeology
Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science
Environmental History
History and Technology
History of Technology
Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
Publishers
Oregon State University Press
Princeton University Press
The MIT Press
University of Nevada Press
University of Pittsburgh Press
Concepts
Dams
Technology and politics
Water resource management
Technology
History of technology, as a discipline
Economic development
People
Franco, Francisco
Bir, Atilla
Intze, Otto Adolf Ludwig
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
19th century
20th century, early
21st century
Medieval
Places
United States
Spain
Southeast Asia
Turkey
Kazakhstan
Mexico
Institutions
Tennessee Valley Authority
International Committee for the History of Technology
Sierra Club
Istanbul Teknik Universitesi
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