Turkey Land Tenure
From the time of Atatürk, it was generally accepted that land reform would accelerate rural development. Most attention to redistribution of land – a highly charged political issue. People who favored land reform pointed to the higher yields achieved by owner-companies and absentee landlords attacked. Opponents pointed out that land reform would not solve the problems of the rural population because it is not enough land for farms large enough to identify families to support. Whatever the merits of land reform proposals, landowners effectively blocked most of the measures that governments and often lacked the will to implement these measures which have been adopted. In addition, landless peasants continue migrating to the cities in sufficient number to reduce the pressure for reform.
Historically, Turkey has a land inhabited by independent farmers. The Ottoman state restricted the growth of a landowning class, and in the early years of Ottoman rule, the central government retained ownership of most of the country, which was leased to farmers under relatively secure tenure arrangements. To maintain the plants big enough to feed a family and a pair of oxen, the Ottomans out of Muslim land inheritance policy, practice, free, later retracted, since the state reintroduced Islamic inheritance practices sold to win the land revenue, and authorized Land transfers. These changes favored the growth of a class of large landowners in the last decades of the empire. By 1923, ownership restrictions had shifted in favor of a small group with large holdings. But during the Republican period, decreased concentration of land, a development that reflects, perhaps, the effects of the division through inheritance or the attraction of alternative investments. At the same time made the opening of new areas of land available for cultivation, farmers without any investments.
Since no comprehensive cadastral surveys have been carried out, data ownership restrictions still poor in the mid-1990s, but formed a general picture of ownership. According to the 1980 agricultural census, about 78 percent of the farms consisted of five hectares or less, and together accounted for 60 percent of agricultural land. About 23 percent of farms 5:00 to 20:00 hectares were large, on the other 18 percent of the country. Less than 4 percent of farms covered more than twenty hectares, although they occupied more than 15 percent of agricultural land. Only a few farms over 100 hectares. Although experts believed that ownership restrictions was more than data on the size of farms concentrated implied, it was clear that Turkey had more even distribution of land than many other developing countries.
Some observers estimate that operated in spite of the widespread leasing and sharecropping, a majority of firms are owners. However, the employment conditions vary significantly between regions, reflecting different geographical conditions and historical developments. In general, Islamic inheritance practices, the shares for each cause a number of male and female child to build up, fragmented holdings and make leasing and sharecropping extensive. Joint ownership of land is widespread, and very small businesses in general from several non-contiguous areas.Farmers often rent some of their own land, while leasing or sharecropping other land areas by up quite close together and large enough to support their families. Owners of small plots can rent their land and their labor to other farms or in the city. Owners of large farms, sometimes whole villages, usually rent all or most of their land. Between one tenth and one fifth of the farmers rent or sharecrop the country until, and landless rural families also work as agricultural laborers.
Rental arrangements are varied and complex. Some leases can be inherited, but many renters do not have enough security for a long-term commitment to the ground, to make them.Sharecroppers usually get about half of the harvest, the owner provides inputs such as seeds and fertilizer. Grazing rights are often used by groups and not individuals instead. Many villages have common pasture open to the village herd. Areas have expanded as individuals suitable place pastures to grow grains, a process that has not only a village dispute was caused, but also the erosion worse.
After 1950, the commercialization of agriculture has been accelerating changes in land use and employment. Many of the large holdings on the coastal plains of the Aegean and the Mediterranean have been converted to modern enterprises, which often benefit from irrigation projects and specializes in high-quality fruit, or industrial crops. Landless families provided the labor for this modern holdings, while the tenants and owners of small farms tilled the adjacent land. In these more fertile areas, could be a five-hectare farm produce, how much income twenty acre farm in the semi-arid central plateau of Anatolia. Southeastern Anatolia, one of the poorest regions of Turkey including feudal-style landlords, all the villages and many landless families controlled.
Although Atatürk had stressed the need for upper and lower limits on land ownership, the last stop on the fragmentation process, little in the way of effective land reform were carried out by the early 1990s. Nevertheless, more than 3 million hectares had been distributed to landless peasants 1920-1970, most of them state land.
The remaining problems of land ownership, and some have worsened. Many farms are too small to support a family and fragmented for effective management. to promote long-term tenancy arrangements, neither the productivity of the land nor the welfare of the tenants. In many areas, the rural poor are getting poorer, while more suitable grazing land will be converted to grain fields continue. At the same time, however, many large estates into productive modern farms have become the country contribute to the improvement of agricultural performance. Major irrigation projects in the Euphrates Valley and elsewhere are facing towards increasing the supply of productive land. The declining rate of population growth is the pressure for land reform reduced and industrialization offers an alternative for landless rural workers who prefer the city life, that in rural areas.
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