Sous les gölet, les forages. Infrastructures d’irrigation et trajectoires des territoires de l’eau dans la région d’Izmir (Turquie)

Abstract

In 2012, the Turkish state launched a nation-wide program, « 1,000 gölet in 1,000 days », to increase irrigated areas. However, these gölet (small hillside reservoirs), which are to be transferred to farmers’ organizations, are often implemented in areas where farmers already irrigate from groundwater, and from one village to another, their appropriation is very different. The article examines the role of irrigation infrastructure in the reconfiguration of rural territories in two villages in the Izmir region. In the first village, there is a continuity of community irrigation, that materializes in the collective use of boreholes and now of the gölet, for commercial arboriculture. In the second village, private wells have made it possible to develop intensive horticulture, and this individual irrigation continues through the informal water use from the gölet. The article shows that technical objects, in their materiality, shape and reveal territorial trajectories that are never static.

Keywords

• water management
• groundwater
• irrigated agriculture
• hydraulic planning
• small-dam
• territorialities