ABSTRACT
Turkey is a large country which had a large agricultural sector until recently. During the past half century, income per capita in Turkey has been lower than in any of the countries studied in this volume. Turkey’s industrialisation and shift of resources from agriculture to the urban sector also started later than the other countries. In the year 2000, 35 per cent of its labour force was still employed in and 13 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) was generated in the agricultural sector although both shares have been declining rapidly. For the purposes of this volume, then, one may consider Turkey a ‘poor and late’ Mediterranean country. Turkey’s agriculture has played an important role in the country’s economic growth and development since 1870. Yet, a long-term, quantitative study of the role of agriculture in the country’s economic development has not been undertaken to date. While estimates are available for the post-1960 period, long-term studies of output and productivity growth in Turkish agriculture are also missing. Equally importantly, these long-term trends have not been studied in a comparative perspective.
