Social innovation in rural development in Turkey

The primary aim of this study is to reveal the preconditions of social innovations in rural development in Turkey which can be defined as enhancing new and sustainable solutions to rural/regional problems with the participation of local communities and the leadership of local actors. In order to determine the drivers (preconditions) of social innovation in rural development, a face to face survey is conducted in 15 cities, 22 counties to 341 rural development stakeholders. The sample includes counties which are presented as successful examples of rural development in turkey at media and in academic research. From the results of the analysis of data obtained from the survey, the rural development activities in the selected rural areas, it is aimed to find out i) whether they can be accepted as social innovation examples according to the territorial approach to endogenous rural development; ii) if so, what the main drivers (preconditions) of these social innovations are. As a result of the factor analysis which is done to determine the drivers (preconditions) of the rural development activities that are accepted as social innovations according to the data, eight facrtors are determined. These factors explain 64% of total variance. The first factor is determined to be social capital factor explaining 38% of the total variance. The other factors are found to be policies and opportunities factor; infrastructure factor; local capital factor; rural tourism potential factor; agricultural potential factor; product, cost and income factor; social gender and empowerment factor respectively. In this context, policy makers, academics and investors representing private sector have important duties to increase the awareness of local community members about the endogenous development potentials (social, natural, historic and cultural capital) and make them conscious about how they will be able to reveal these potantials efficiently. In order to make a progress in the way of rural development, policies that will increase social capital levels of rural areas should be developped and implemented.