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

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.