TÜRKIYE

Türkiye’s segment reconnects the Caravan with the Anatolian heart of the Silk Road, where caravansaries once anchored long-distance travel and where high pastures and steppe rangelands still shape seasonal rhythms. As the Caravan marks its on-the-ground point of departure, Türkiye brings into focus diverse rangeland systems spanning close to 1,500 km from Erzurum to Antalya, highlighting pastoral traditions, dryland agriculture interfaces and highland summer grazing systems known as yayla culture. Türkiye has deep ties to the Convention as host of UNCCD COP12 in Ankara in October 2015 and its continued support of global cooperation and scientific exchange to address desertification, land degradation and drought.

Here the Caravan spotlights rangelands through the lens of pastoral livelihoods and landscape restoration: grazing management that keeps grasslands productive, soil and water conservation on vulnerable slopes and community knowledge that sustains seasonal movement and shared resources through the yayla season. Linking policy and practice, Türkiye’s part of the journey underlines a central lesson: durable prosperity depends on caring for the land that supports people and economy.

The journey unfolds across a richly varied landscape that once anchored key passages of the Silk Road, where caravans traded, rested and continued onward across continents. From uplands to interior plains and high pastures, the route reveals a landscape shaped by geography and tradition, with herders and flocks still following summer grazing rhythms across a living pastoral terrain. It is a journey of transitions and encounters, where travellers follow paths defined not only by trade, but by pastoral culture, craftsmanship and exchange.