'Maybe our children can see better days': A brief history and analysis of farmers' cooperative organizations in Turkey.

摘要

This thesis examines rural cooperatives in Turkey and identify the reasons behind the weaknesses and ineffectiveness of the rural cooperative system today. The problematic is based on two issues: The historical ill-development of the cooperative organizations in Turkey and the recent pressures of neoliberal policies and deregulation. The particular focus is a careful study of Turkey's Unions of Agricultural Sales Cooperatives (UASCs), historically one of the country's main components of agricultural production and policy. A review of the history of UASCs since 1930s along with the general agricultural policy explains how the rural cooperative system marched along the transformation of government policies on agriculture. More recently the effects of European integration and a World Bank sponsored agricultural reform have had substantial effects on agriculture and cooperatives. Oral history interviews with cooperative managers and members conducted at three cooperative unions clarify the causes of contemporary issues of cooperatives which are a mixture of historical conditions and recent policy changes. A grassroots perspective allowing the democratic participation and commitment of small-scale farmers to their cooperatives is questioned to halt the potential destruction of the rural cooperative system at the expense of small farmers.