In July 2025, around 50 participants gathered in Boğatepe, a village near Kars in northeast Türkiye, for a Festival of Pastoralism. The event was led by a research team based at Bilkent University, Ankara, Türkiye, and the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, United Kingdom, working on the project Pastoralism and Climate Action: Participatory Planning for the Governance of Extensive Grazing in Türkiye, supported by the British Academy. The festival brought together participants from Tibet, India, Ethiopia, Georgia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain, including WAMIP’s Fernando García-Dory, representing the INLAND project, Spain.
Over three days, the festival combined research presentations with walks through the surrounding pastures to observe and learn about local vegetation. It also featured music and dance from different pastoral regions, as well as art and craft workshops that explored the challenges facing pastoralism. Common issues discussed included access to grazing lands, climate change and adaptation, state policies that restrict pastoral mobility, limitations on movement caused by infrastructure and external investments, and inadequate policy frameworks to support productive pastoral systems.
The research team has been working closely with livestock keepers from Boğatepe village, where cattle farming and cheese-making are central to the local economy, as well as with families from the Sarıkeçili community, who practise nomadic goat herding and meat production during their transhumance across the Taurus Mountains between Mersin and Konya. Both communities presented craftwork developed over the previous months, including felt images, embroidery, and leatherwork. The displays also included maps and ethnobotanical exhibits highlighting key plant species important to pastoral systems for fodder, construction, medicine, and other uses.
Four future steps for continued collaboration beyond the project were also discussed. These included convening dialogue between pastoralists and state agriculture and forestry officials to identify low-cost actions to improve the flexibility of livestock and human mobility; building on strategic, action-oriented measures such as fire management in forests and the role of managed grazing in fire prevention; institutionalising broader platforms for pastoralism, including pastoralist schools; and, finally, drawing inspiration from the INLAND project in Spain by demonstrating the wider public benefits of pastoralism.
More information on the festival can be found here.