Abstract:

Turkish geography has left behind the hundredth year of its academic institutionalization. Numerous reviews have been conducted on its academic development and performance to date. However, little focus has been put on how Turkish geography views its current situation and future from the perspective of community members. This article examines the recently emerging efforts of innovation in the sub-discipline of Turkish Human Geography. In doing so, it tries to understand the disciplinary change from an insider perspective departing from the actor experiences unlike the previous studies. This article was designed as a qualitative research. Two basic data sources were used in the research. The first one is written interviews that depict ideas of 16 academicians. The second one is a focus group interviews performed with 5 young academicians. Current overview of the human geography in Turkey has been defined by the participants with the concepts of belatedness, actor addiction, shallowness, limitations, ordinariness and inadequacy. However, they also pointed out that there have been some positive developments in their discipline from scientific approach, methodological, theoretical and thematic perspectives in recent years. The findings of the research show that one of the most important achievements of the innovation process is that some human geographers have discovered the multi-paradigmatic geography. Again it is also determined that research topics in the Turkish human geography are largely out of social context due to insensitivity to changing social dynamics. It is thought that the innovation process will find its true colour in time with the efforts of young academicians and the doubtful optimism will be left behind. 

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