The impact of capitalist development process on Turkey agricultural structures and foreign trade

Turkish agriculture has stepped into a very different conjuncture with the implementation of neo-liberal policies from the 1980s onward. The rapid liberalization of the agricultural markets in this process has led to the reorganization of the international political economy and restructuring of the Turkish agricultural production?s and foreign trade?s position in this new world order. This change has occurred within the same dynamism for all underdeveloped countries. The root of this change, on the other hand, is not the similarities of local policies, but rather it is the result of the development of capitalism and an international process through which capitalism, as a world-system, has transformed all economic structures. In this regard, the main aim of this research is to present and examine the effects of capitalist development process in agriculture on the Turkish agricultural structures and agricultural foreign trade. However, before undertaking such an examination, firstly the emergence of a capitalist system and the capitalist development process in agriculture will be addressed; and secondly the entrance of the capital into the worldwide agricultural production systems with the liberalization of the agriculture trade within the framework of globalizing capitalism and consequently the changes, which have been introduced by the articulation of the agriculture to finance systems, in the agricultural structures of both the underdeveloped and developed countries will be analyzed. The global factors such as the GATT and WTO, which guaranteed the structural transformation of world trade policies and the liberalization of the agricultural trade and prepared the constitution of world trade, will be also referred within all these analyses. Within this framework, after discussing the effects of capitalism which follows a dynamic process on the Turkish agricultural structures in terms of production and processes of production, the effects of the liberalization process on Turkey?s agricultural foreign trade and the direction of the change will be emphasized.