Developing Security and Defense Strategies in the Border Areas of West Azerbaijan with Territorial Planning Approach

The planning of border areas in West Azarbaijan province has a special position in the country's development system due to its long borders and the location of more than 858 km of the province on the international borders with neighboring countries. In this regard, the purpose of this study is to achieve security-defense strategies in West Azerbaijan province with the approach of spatial planning. The research methodology is based on a futuristic research approach and uses techniques such as Delphi method, cross-impact analysis, MicMac software, scenario-wizard and SWOT analytical model to analyze the findings. The results show that there are 16 key factors which play a key role in the security development of the province, and 48 possible future statuses was considered for them. Then, with expert comments and based on the analyzes of the Scenario Wizard software, 17 believable scenarios and 5 strong scenarios were extracted. The results show that 39.58% of these scenarios are desirable and 38.88% of the nine-sided scenarios show critical situations, the probability of realization of static conditions is about 21.52%. This suggests that in the defense and security strategies of the border regions of West Azerbaijan province, the probability of occurrence of static conditions is low, but the probability of occurrence of two favorable and critical conditions with a small percentage difference is higher. Finally, based on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats presented for each of the strong scenarios and using the SWOT model, security strategies for the province were developed.