ABSTRACT
Neo-liberal policies implemented in Turkey since the 1980s have not only ensured the country’s further integration into the global economy, but have also represented a significant departure from the long-standing nationalist perspective. The rapid transformation of Turkey since the 1980s needs to be explained in conjunction with the internationalization of agriculture under the hegemony of Transnational Companies (TNCs). The Turkish state since the 1980s has implemented policies such as the gradual reduction and elimination of subsidies and the abolishment of parastatal organizations, under the strong influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the European Union (EU) and the USA. Such polices, while ensuring the further integration of Turkey into the global economy, thus consolidating the stronghold of the transnational agribusiness companies in Turkish agriculture, have had a devastating impact on the great majority of farmers. Following the signing of the Staff Monitored Programme with the IMF in 1998, the Turkish state has especially introduced fundamental institutional changes to ensure the smooth internationalization of Turkish agriculture, which has inevitably led to de-agrarianization and de-peasantization. The internationalisation of agriculture refers to the process of how international agribusiness companies increase their global reach by determining the conditions and nature of agricultural production. De-agrarianization refers to a long-term process of occupational adjustment, income-earning reorientation, social identification and spatial relocation of rural dwellers away from strictly agricultural-based modes of livelihood (Bryceson et al. 2000). De-peasantization is a specific form of deagrarianization, which leads to demographic shrinking and collapse of communities due to loss of economic capacity and social coherence (Bryceson et al. 2000). The attempts to further integrate the Turkish economy with the international economy have necessitated the abandonment of the developmentalist policies which characterized the pre-1980 period. Various governments have been increasingly facing a real dilemma since the early 1980s. While the state’s commitment to neo-liberalism necessitates fundamental institutional changes which do not pay any attention to food security and the welfare of farmers, its legitimacy concerns make it obligatory to pay attention to the needs of the great
majority of farmers. Although from time to time the state has oscillated between the requirements of neo-liberalism and populist food security concerns, the longterm tendency has been to favor neo-liberalism. Given the long-term state involvement in agriculture since the 1930s, it proved difficult to abandon the entrenched developmentalist policies within a short period of time. The financial and industrial sectors were given first priority in the liberalization polices of the 1980s. Liberalization policies in agriculture were rather slow and inconsistent throughout the 1980s and in the early 1990s. The political compositions of successive short-term coalition governments throughout the 1990s did not prove conducive to following a well-determined and consistent policy of agricultural liberalization. The right-of-center conservative Motherland and the True Path parties, Islamist Welfare Party, the ultra-right nationalist Nationalist Action Party, the social democratic Republican People’s Party and the Democratic Left Party were all involved in a number of short-lived coalition governments involving two or three parties from the late 1990s until the 2002 elections. None of the political parties, either from the left or from the right, was prepared to lose the votes of the farming population by appearing to be responsible for comprehensive reforms. Being concerned with the nature of agrarian transformation in Turkey in recent decades this chapter specifically looks at the processes of deagrarianization and de-peasantization at work. It scrutinizes the post-1980 period in detail as the restructuring of Turkish agriculture started in 1980. As such, it specifically concentrates on the policy shift from the developmentalism that characterised the 1950-1980 period to the neo-liberal control of agriculture. The main focus is to analyze the questions of how and why the necessity to restructure Turkish agriculture emerged in relationship to the dominance of transnational agribusiness companies, and how this has unleashed a process of de-agrarianization and de-peasantization.
