ABSTRACT
Economic migrations had also been long established and formed part of the sustenance strategy of households in most of Anatolia. The vast majority of the people were non-Muslim subjects of the empire. Contrary to the perceptions or sometimes explicit claims of some previous studies relating to the subject, labour migration of Turkish nationals to Western Europe between 1960 and 1974 was not Turkey’s first participation in international migration. Between 1923 and 1960 another some 1,300,000 Muslims, mainly from the Balkans, arrived in Turkey. The high annual economic growth rate since 1950 gave way to a fully-fledged capitalist transformation process in agriculture. Turkish agriculture was characterised by the predominance of small independent peasantry. Moreover, economic development and change and increasing linkages with the West also affected values, cultural perceptions and the taste for consumer goods among the people, particularly youngsters in urban and capitalised areas.
