Agrarian transformation, labour supplies, and proletarianization processes in Turkey: A historical overview

Abstract

Building on Giovanni Arrighi's writings on Africa and southern Italy, this article describes the process of rural to urban migration and proletarianization in Turkey. During the developmentalist era agrarian transformations led to the formation of semi-proletarianized households in the cities, with significant ties to the countryside. The nature of housing in urban areas and the predominance of informal work relations contributed to this outcome. Under neo-liberal globalization a new type of proletarianization has emerged whereby workers do not abandon the countryside and instead find wage employment during part of the year. The recent experience of the Kurdish population, who were displaced from their villages in eastern Anatolia under military pressure, constitutes a third path toward proletarianization, where former villagers have been dispossessed and deruralized by force. These distinct paths imply different accommodations to capitalist employment, with different population dynamics and patterns of household reproduction.