Registration of agricultural areas towards the development of a future Turkish cadastral system

Despite the rapidly increasing population of the world, the amount of agricultural land remains the same. For this reason, agricultural fields are gradually becoming ‘collective scarce resources’. Many countries have put restrictions on property ownership in order to manage these resources. In addition, most countries are trying to implement agricultural policies by developing various systems pertaining to these areas. The existing cadastral system in Turkey is inadequately equipped to identify the location, amount and quality of agricultural land. Therefore, due to the nature of agricultural land, the restrictions on immovable property cannot be expediently applied. This study aimed to implement registration of agricultural lands under a Land Administration System (LAS). Thus, public restrictions applied to agricultural areas could be represented under the LAS. In this way, implementation of agricultural policies would be utilised even more effectively than under current land management systems. In order to realise this aim, a village in north-eastern Turkey where cadastral work had not been completed was chosen for the study. Firstly, the agricultural classifications of the subparcels in the village were determined. These were then combined into cadastral parcels. Four important findings emerging from the study showed that: 1) agricultural classification and cadastral work could be carried out together, 2) agricultural areas could be registered in the LAS, 3) public restrictions arising from agricultural land usage could be determined, and 4) the ‘land type’ section in the land registry was insufficient in reflecting the features of the immovable property, thus making a more precise class identity necessary. In addition to ‘land type’, the term ‘land class’ was proposed for the land registry. Although the study was conducted for an unplanned rural area, it is recommended that researchers carry out future studies in terms of more precise identity requirements for urban areas.