Effectiveness and problems of sustainable management in protected areas: The case of Spil mountain, Dilek peninsula-Great Menderes delta and Marmaris national parks

In the face of ever-increasing population, consumption demands and environmental degradation, protected areas are seen as areas of key importance in supporting a sustainable life by preserving both natural and cultural values. Today, the proportion of protected areas is increasing worldwide through the efforts of supranational organizations and national initiatives created to combat many problems such as global climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental pollution, poverty. On the other hand, the fact that the management quality of a significant part of the protected areas is not known is seen as an important problem in terms of sustainable management. With this study, it is aimed to determine the management effectiveness level of the protected areas in Turkey and to reveal the administrative problems and solution proposals. In this direction, an application has been carried out in Spil Mountain National Park, Dilek Peninsula-Great Menderes Delta National Park and Marmaris National Park in the Aegean Region. In this research, Management Effectiveness Monitoring Tool (METT-4), one of the tools widely used at the global level, was used to determine the level of management effectiveness. A semi-structured interview form, which included open-ended questions, was applied to fifteen area managers in the full area in order to determine the problems and solution proposals of the protected areas. As a result of the evaluations made; the management effectiveness level of the Spil Mountain National Park was found to be 58% (medium), the Dilek Peninsula-Great Menderes Delta National Park was 63% (good) and the Marmaris National Park was 48% (medium). The arithmetic average of the management effectiveness level of these three national parks is 56%, indicating a medium level of effectiveness. Therefore, it has been determined that the level of management effectiveness of protected areas is not sufficient. It has been determined that while the protected areas are in the best condition at an average level of 70%, especially in planning, they cannot achieve sufficient success in inputs, processes, outputs and results. The most important administrative problems of protected areas in the research; It was determined as the lack of number and quality of personnel and the inadequacy of legislation, financing and coordination. In order to solve these problems of protected areas, it was determined that increasing the qualifications of the number of personnel by reaching the number specified in the long-term development plans, the nature protection legislation should be improved and reorganized in a way to eliminate status conflicts and cover all protected areas, to establish a budget system that will benefit more from protected area revenues and to make arrangements to eliminate coordination deficiencies. As a result, in order to ensure the sustainable management of protected areas in Turkey, it is necessary to work decisively to improve the level of management effectiveness and to solve the current problems. Keywords: Protected areas, national park, METT method, management effectiveness, administrative problems