Patterns of Strategic Land Use: A Critical Remote Sensing Analysis of the Role of the Ceyanpınar State Farm in the Making of the Turkish-Syrian Borderland

Devon V. Maloney and Aaron Moody

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2025, vol. 115, issue 8, 1763-1783

Abstract: Over the past fifteen years, the Turkish government has engaged in large-scale development programs targeting its politically and geographically peripheral southeast. The developments have resulted in significant land-use change and agricultural intensification, particularly along the fraught border with Syria. In this article, we argue that these state-led projects seek to domesticate the frontier through agriculture, engineer the demographics of borderland communities, and demarcate territorial limits through land-use change. Building on the observations from the Chinese, Israeli, and Egyptian military farm programs, this article analyzes the landscape patterns of another state-led agricultural border project: the Turkish Ceylanpınar State Farm on the Syrian border. In this article, we analyze the patterns and drivers of land-use change in the Ceylanpınar region of Turkey to better understand the logic of rapid, state-led agricultural expansion and intensification. We argue the rapid land-use changes, particularly on Turkish state farmland along the border, are a form of strategic land-use change with the aim of territorialization and border-making.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2025.2516089

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