Primitive Accumulation and Strong State: Changing Agrarian Relations in Turkey

IIPPE 7th Annual Conference in Political Economy, Lisbon, Portugal, 7 - 09 September 2016, (Unpublished)

Publication Type: Conference Paper / Unpublished
City: Lisbon
Country: Portugal
Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University Affiliated: No

Abstract

This paper examines the agricultural restructuring process experienced in post-1980 Turkey. It problematizes the role of the state in this process and argues that the fact that materialisation of the process required a relatively stable political environment and committed governments underlines the significance of a strong state rather than a state retreating from the agricultural market, as widely used in the literature. Depoliticisation of economic management has created the appearance of the retreating state, on one hand, and reproduced the state-market dichotomy peculiar to capitalism per se, on the other. The concept of primitive accumulation, as the constitutive basis of capital-relation, is used to grasp how the agricultural restructuring process constituted the capital-relation in rural Turkey. This, in turn, substantiates the argument on the role of the state in the process.