Turkey Leads In European Nature Loss

Digging into the data reveals that Turkey is not only the worst offender of nature and agricultural land loss in Europe, but also overwhelmingly dominates the list of the most extreme cases.

In fact, eighteen of the twenty largest examples of encroachment on nature are in Turkey. Of Turkey’s own top 20, eleven are organised industrial zones, known as OSBs, state-supported manufacturing hubs that entice businesses with tax breaks, lower utility costs, and looser regulations. The number of OSBs in Turkey during the six-year period we analysed has increased by 43 to over 410, with many new projects planned.

The land destroyed in these few years amounts to 31 km², more than 4,300 football pitches. And most of the OSBs remain unfinished, meaning the eventual land taken will rise in the coming years as projects are completed. In addition to the brand-new sites, there were expansions to 60 existing OSBs that were established before 2018. If combined, the total number of organised industrial zones that contributed to artificialisation exceeds 120 – in just six years.

The findings highlight Turkey’s willingness to accede valuable public and agricultural lands for industry. But these developments not only erase nature, they also claim valuable croplands, which are often very flat and close to water sources.

“The slope level of soil on agricultural land is generally close to zero,” said Dr. Esra Yazıcı Gökmen, Urban and Regional Planning Expert at Tema Foundation, Turkey’s prominent environmental rights NGO. "This makes agricultural land more attractive because it reduces infrastructure and construction costs. Moreover, proximity to water resources in these areas is also critical for industrial activities.”

The decisions to expropriate land for industrial development have further negative impacts. OSBs, particularly in Turkey, come with significant environmental and health consequences, often depleting water sources and clean air, while increasing disease among locals. There is often additional land loss due to associated infrastructure projects, such as worker housing complexes, massive highways, and ports.

The largest of these OSBs are in Gaziantep, Aksaray, Balıkesir, and Taşpınar. We took a closer look at the Taşpınar case and the establishment of its much-touted Teknosab site – an industrial zone that neither locals wanted nor businesses needed.

In 2015, the expropriations began. Officials told villagers they would be compensated with new land, but when farmers like Mustafa Cingöz went to claim what they were promised, they were told there were no plots available.

After realising he would soon be landless, Cingöz sued in court to halt the transfer. The case was unsuccessful: “Everything was always in their [Teknosab’s] favour,” he said. "I never came across a judge who sided with us. We followed other, similar cases, and the villagers never won.” He lost 2.1 hectares.

Villagers also describe "persuasion rooms," meetings that took place in a space above the coffeehouse, where officials attempted to appeal to their sense of patriotism by declaring that the Turkish state would build the factories. Instead, the land went to private companies.

A decade on, locals’ predictions that the site was unneeded proved correct. Most of the parcels stand empty. Far from an “innovative and green" revolution, most of the companies that operate there produce chemicals, textiles, and steel, which are largely indistinguishable from those of Turkey’s other 400-plus industrial zones. The damage to Taşpınar, however, is irreversible.

The extent of Teknosab’s impact on Uluabat’s vital water supply is also uncertain, a lake home to the European stork village, Eskikaraağaç. Under an agreement signed with the State Hydraulic Works, Teknosab will be granted access to 18.5 million cubic metres of water per year, equivalent to 7,400 Olympic-sized swimming pools, from Çınarcık Dam, which is essential for maintaining the lake.

“Transferring fresh water from the Çınarcık Dam to Uluabat is extremely important for the lake’s ecological life,” said Serdar Atilla Erdem, Chairman of the Bursa Branch of the Chamber of Civil Engineers.

Back in the village, Cingöz, one of the few still holding on, tells us, “This coffeehouse used to be full. Young and old, full of life. Now we’re four people sitting here. It messes with you psychologically. No one is left.”

Ten minutes north of Taşpınar, Turkey’s housing authority TOKİ is constructing a new apartment complex on 72 hectares, in anticipation of a population surge that has yet to materialise. Of the animals and creatures that inhabit its flora, the experts who prepared the project’s EIA were unconcerned: the construction noise will scare them off to more “suitable” habitats.

Further north still, in Hürriyet, land has also been expropriated for Teknosab and its logistical infrastructure, highways and a railway. Nejla Özkılıç, from Hürriyet, said: “Only the name ‘villager’ remains. But how can you call someone a villager if they no longer have a village?”

Kandıra Organised Industrial Zone is located in Kocaeli, just outside of İstanbul. Despite its construction starting in 2019, it remains empty.

Tarsus Organised Industrial Zone in Mersin. Another example of agricultural land loss to industrial zones in Turkey.

The images show what was once a vital stop for migratory birds along Turkey’s Aegean coast. The Çaltılıdere wetland is now buried beneath more than one square kilometre of concrete – foundations for a facility that will repair and build luxury yachts. Officially designated as a wetland by Turkey, Çaltılıdere was home to flamingos, pelicans, cormorants, sea bream, and sea bass. Despite this, local authorities overturned its protected wetland status in 2017 after a tense and controversial local commission meeting.

Five months before the commission meeting, the president of Yatek Aslan Bilgi made their intentions clear in an interview with an industry magazine: "The previously given [affirmative] wetlands decision regarding this region is causing us to lose some time. We are working to get an opinion from Dokuz Eylül University. If we do not get the result we want, we will get an opinion from Ege University."

They indeed got what they wanted. During the commission meeting, the governor’s office presented a fresh report from Ege University, contradicting earlier findings, that claimed Çaltılıdere “lost its ability to be a habitat for many species.” Yatek rallied around this report, and the governor’s office used it as the primary justification for its final decision.

“They manipulated the process,” said one of the commission members who fought hard to save the area and wanted to stay anonymous out of fear of reprisals, "and got the wetland status revoked.”

Unlike other commission members, he knew Çaltılıdere well and visited it often for birdwatching. “I still think about this place from time to time. And every time I think about it, my heart aches,” he said. “I don’t want to see what it has become.”

Today, on the edge of what was once wetland, concrete stretches as far as the eye can see. The fish and birds are gone. “It used to be all red all around here,” said village resident Gürsel Cakır, 66, remembering the colonies of flamingos. “There would be hundreds of them. When the construction started, it all ended.”

Wetlands and peatlands serve as vital carbon stores and natural flood protection. Their destruction can have dire consequences. “Wetlands act like natural sponges, retaining excess water during rainy periods and gradually releasing it during dry periods, mitigating the effects of both floods and droughts,” said Burçin Yaraşlı, a wetlands specialist with the Doğa Derneği, an environmental association in İzmir. “When these areas are destroyed, people living nearby directly face greater risks.”

Yatek claims the project will bring massive economic growth and thousands of jobs to the area, alongside annual exports worth 500 million euros. “The richest people in Turkey and in the world will bring their big yachts here and repair them or have them built,” a former Yatek director said in 2021.

But in Çaltılıdere, population 600, locals are divided. Some are holding out for jobs, or an increase in the financial value of their land. Others simply feel abandoned. “We couldn’t unite to oppose this together,” said one local fisherman. “Now, nothing is left. We are trapped.”

Yatek told us the “investment is fully compliant with environmental regulations, respectful of nature and ecosystems, socially responsible, and economically beneficial for the region and the country as a whole.” The İzmir governor’s office did not reply to our request for comment.

While vast areas of land in Turkey have been swallowed by mega-projects, what stood out in Sapanca were the sheer number of small incursions. In the satellite maps, they appear as clusters of tiny polygons, scattered across the lakeside and into the surrounding hills. From the ground and up close, they are bungalows and so-called “tiny houses” – holiday rentals built on protected land as part of a growing craze of tiny house tourism.

Sapanca, a lakeside town just an hour and a half from Istanbul, has long been a refuge for city-dwellers craving nature. Its forests, streams, and 10,000-year-old lake made it a favourite for weekend and day trips, where visitors would eat breakfast by the lake or barbecue beside Maşukiye stream. The town has been reshaped by its bungalow boom and now resembles a construction site. What began with a handful of locals building a couple of units on old family plots became an epidemic. “In Sapanca, many families, whom we could call locals, had owned plots of land for many years,” said Ali Safa Alaçam, head of Savibu, a bungalow owners’ association. “These had always just sat idle. Families decided to utilise their land and, in a modest way, built one or two units.”

Soon, the allure of easy money became contagious. “There are no limits, and it’s all done by locals,” Alaçam said. “It became a complete economic ecosystem. Everyone benefited. At a table of five people, one runs the bungalow, another does the cleaning, someone else supplies the fridge, their brother runs the breakfast business. We became a chain. That’s why the state turned a blind eye at first.” Today, there are thousands of bungalows built illegally and without permits, ever-creeping into the forests and mountains. The municipality recently admitted there were more than 4,400 bungalows in Sapanca, of which only around 400 were legal.

The boom is no secret. It has become an economic engine for the town, generating billions of lira and fuelling jobs, from cleaners and delivery drivers to restaurant owners and tour operators. But it has also eaten away at Sapanca’s greatest asset: its nature. Public access to much of the lakeside has been blocked and reed beds vital for birdlife have been destroyed. By law, the first 300 metres around the lake, where hundreds of bungalows now stand, is an "absolute protection zone."

In January 2025, instead of clamping down on illegal construction, the Environment Ministry quietly revised Sapanca’s conservation map. Land that had been designated first-grade protection – where building should be forbidden – was downgraded to categories that allow “controlled use.” The change effectively legalised some of the most prominent investments, including NEF Sapanca, a $130 million Kempinski-branded resort, and Lake Look, a luxury complex tied to ruling party insiders, both of which were built on protected land.

"This is not a lawful practice," said Esmanur Çağlak, environmental lawyer. "Sapanca has been under severe tourism-related destruction for many years. Public authorities do not exercise their power over the companies plundering our natural assets. As a result, we are faced with the bungalow invasion in Sapanca today.”

The fight over bungalows has also become increasingly political. The CHP mayor, Nihat Arda Şahin, has paid lip service to stricter regulation while insisting the industry must not "suffocate a newborn." AKP officials, meanwhile, accuse him of mismanaging the boom. The Interior Ministry even opened an investigation into Şahin and his predecessors, a move he dismissed as politically motivated, part of a broader attack by the ruling party on the opposition.

Alongside the ecological damage, Sapanca has developed a new reputation. As one regular visitor from Istanbul put it: “We go to Sapanca to have sex in the jacuzzi, outdoor sex, that kind of thing. Because we like that. That idea appealed to us.” Another, who had been coming since childhood, described the town as “more like a place for forbidden love,” a hotspot for romance and extramarital affairs. On social media, ads for “romantic” tiny houses are often accompanied by offers of sex for sale. Locals speak of rising harassment and violence, and critics said those who complain face threats of violence.

Safety is another concern: fatal fires, hidden cameras in rooms, and even the drowning of a child at an unlicensed site have all been reported in recent years.

Sapanca may look different from Turkey’s mega-projects in scale, but the story is the same: green turning grey. Instead of a single colossal scar, the town shows how thousands of small cuts can transform a landscape, stripping away public space, biodiversity, and community in the name of fast tourism profits.

“We will go on talking about the scale of land destruction in ever-deepening terms,” said Eylem Tuncaelli of Turkey’s largest environmental protection NGO, Tema. “If you don’t follow science, if you don’t follow ethics, if you don’t prioritise the sustainability of life but instead prioritise the sustainability of development, then unfortunately these things happen. Not only in Turkey, but in any country that does this.”

Losing nature to tourism not only affects countries in the south, like Turkey, Greece, and Italy. From inside the glass-roofed igloos at Utsjoki Arctic Resort in Finland, visitors can now gaze at pristine wilderness, the Arctic, and the Northern Lights. But this is far from untouched nature.

Six years ago, a forest stood where the resort now sprawls. Across Finnish Lapland, we found that 15% of all construction projects that replaced nature since 2018 have been driven by tourism, often for accommodation, including cottages, hotels and cabins.

Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland, has suffered the region's most significant losses. While Rovaniemi has just 60,000 residents, it receives an avalanche of visitors, recording 1.5 million overnight stays in 2024. As Rovaniemi grows more popular and crowded, tourists venture further afield in search of untrampled snow. The data analysis revealed that in some highly visited places in the region, more than half of the new constructions were related to tourism activities.

Last spring, the municipal council of Inari approved 227 cottage plots along the shore of Lapland’s Lake Inari, in one of the remotest corners of Europe. These plots are located in old-growth forests where indigenous Sámi communities have for generations practised reindeer herding.

“What has been planned is completely absurd. Almost all reindeer herders are concerned about these kinds of developments, whether it’s logging, mining or tourism competing for the same land,” said Elle Maarit Arttijeff, an Inari Sámi reindeer herder, lamenting what amounts to the reversal of a 20-year settlement reached between the state-owned forestry company and herders to protect pastures in the area. “It is so terribly stressful and sad.”

Building on habitats means losing not just animals or native plants, but also crucial natural defences against extreme weather and rising temperatures. More buildings bring more heat and a higher risk of flooding, at a time when Europe, along with the Arctic, is warming faster than any other continent. Gunnar Austrheim, professor in biology at NTNU in Trondheim, co-authored an IPBES Report, which concluded in 2018 that Europe and Central Asia were facing a crisis that would require profound societal changes to change course. Our investigation, he said, shows that politicians failed to act, instead embracing “business as usual.”

Lena Schilling, a Green MEP, said that every forest, fertile field, and biodiversity hotspot destroyed for short-term profit is a betrayal of the promises we made to young people. “For years, the EU has promised to lead on climate and nature protection, but what this investigation shows is that we are literally cementing over our own future,” she said.

In 2024, the EU approved the Nature Restoration Regulation – a pioneering law that aims to revive 90% of degraded habitats across the EU by 2050. For the first time, national governments are obliged to set deadlines and meet targets on nature conservation. The regulation has faced intense pushback from the farming and forestry sector. Questions remain about how these measures will be financed and enforced, as the EU has promised to cut red tape for businesses and has rolled back a number of its ambitious environmental goals over the past year.

Existing laws protecting nature might be next on the chopping block, warn environmental NGOs responsible for a petition, signed by 200,000 EU citizens, calling for current measures to be maintained. Meanwhile, forthcoming EU soil legislation makes no commitment to “no net land take by 2050.”

In September, the European Environment Agency acknowledged in its State of the Environment report that the EU's target of achieving “no net land take” by 2050 is unlikely to be met.

Peter Verburg from VU University Amsterdam said that to reach this goal by 2050, European countries need intermediate, legally binding targets.

“This determines our future. We cannot live in a stone desert,” Verburg said. “We need green space. We need to see trees. We need nature to support us, especially with climate change.”

For Turkey, Tema contends that civil society needs to work harder. “Yes, these things are happening,” said Eylem Tuncaelli, of our findings, “but there are people who can somehow stop this. We are prepared to wage legal battles, if necessary. We are already doing this on a large scale. We also lobby, and we talk to everyone. The point is not to give up."

The Green to Grey project was produced with the support of Journalismfund Europe and IJ4EU.