New paths towards sustainable rural development: lesson from Southeastern Anatolia region development plan in Turkey

Abstract

The Southeastern Anatolia Project(GAP), which is one of the most important regional development projects, has been processing both as a participatory planning and sustainable development project in recent years. The Master Plan of the Southeastern Anatolia Project(GAP), which was prepared in 1989 and including a period of 15 years was revised by adding participatory and sustainable dimensions in 2002. The aim of this study is to analyse and to bring out the different aspects of the revised version of the GAP Master Plan. For this reason, firstly, the steps of the plan from the first version to last one will be examined. Next, both regional and national cases and conditions will be evaluated. In the third step the participatory and sustainable dimensions of the GAP Master Plan will be discussed. And, in the last step, in order to complete project in time planned, what should be done and lessons learned from the process will be analyzed.