Law No. 5403 on Soil Preservation and Land Utilization.

This Law lays down rules and principles for determining land and soil resources and their classification, preparing land utilization plans, preventing non-purpose utilization, and defining the tasks and obligations to ensure land and soil preservation. The purposes of this Law are: (I) protection and development of soil, (II) the classification of agricultural land, (III) determination of minimum agricultural land size and agricultural land size of sufficient income and the prevention of their division, and (IV) the planned use of agricultural lands in accordance with the principle of sustainable development with priority on the environment.
Soil Preservation Boards are established in each province to examine, assess and monitor the activities related to the preservation, development and productive utilization of lands. Lands are classified as absolute farming lands, special crop lands, cultivated farming lands and marginal farming lands. Except for objectives and circumstances clearly defined in the Law, farming lands cannot be used for any purpose other than the one defined in the utilization plans. These exceptions are specified in the Law. Areas that are deteriorated or likely to be deteriorated due to natural or artificial incidents will be classified as erosion-sensitive areas. Land use plans prepared by the Ministry covers agricultural land, pastureland, forest land, areas designated by special laws, settlements, infrastructure facilities for social and economic purposes and other forms of lands in local, regional and national scale. In order to rationalize land utilization, land aggregation projects will be prepared and implemented either with the consent of the majority of land owners or by a government decree, if deemed necessary, regardless of receiving any consent.