Guide
The stretch of sea between Fethiye and Kaş became a national park by presidential decision published in the Official Gazette on 16 August 2026. It covers 2,170,603 hectares, and it is one of the first two marine national parks Türkiye has declared; the other, the Northern Aegean Marine National Park, covers 174,214 hectares. Together they brought about 2.34 million hectares of sea under protection.
The status did not come out of nowhere. These waters had already been entered as a marine protected area on 2 August 2025 in Türkiye's marine spatial planning map, which was declared on 16 April 2025 and registered with the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission on 12 June 2025. The national park declaration turned that planning designation into legal protection.
Protected areas in Türkiye are declared under the National Parks Law and related legislation in several categories, of which national park is one, and the Directorate General of Nature Conservation and National Parks pursues them under the Convention on Biological Diversity target agreed at Kunming-Montreal of protecting thirty per cent of a country's land and sea. With these two declarations, the ministry counted 52 national parks and 698 protected areas in the country in August 2026.
The ministry describes the next stage as inventory work: identifying, monitoring and conserving marine biological diversity within the new boundaries.
- Designated
- 16.08.2026
