Rural development policies in Turkey and impact analysis of rural development projects provided grant support for the period 2007-2013

The aim of this thesis is to highlight the internal and external factors that lead to change in rural development policy in Turkey and to conduct an analysis based on the EU impact assessment guidelines of rural development projects funded under IPARD-I (2007-2013) as part of the EU accession process. In order to achive to objectives of the study, a survey was conducted with a total of 170 beneficiaries at the level of 42 provinces where the program was implemented throughout Turkey. According to data provided by survey, the strongest and most effective economic outcomes of grant support for beneficiaries are the effects of increasing agricultural income, such as improving the diversity of the local economy and creating non-agricultural employment opportunities. The study identified four factors as a result of the factor analysis to determine the social, cultural, and health impacts of the grants: working conditions and social rights, job quality and public health, employment, cultural heritage, and equal opportunity. Investment innovativeness ratings were analyzed using factor analysis, and four factors were identified. These are the innovation and sustainability factor, the green production factor, the entrepreneurship and energy factor, the rural development factor and the awareness factor. Finally, the study estimated logit models to identify the factors that influence the situation of beneficiary companies that succeeded by increasing their real turnover, increasing capacity or increasing employment. According to the results, the most important determinant for increasing real turnover is the sector in which the investment is made, the most important determinant for increasing the number of jobs is the amount of the grant, and the most important determinant for increasing capacity is the type of enterprise. On the other hand, the success of real turnover increase, job creation and capacity increase was higher in small scale investments. These results show that small-scale enterprises should be supported more in rural development project supports.