Economic marginalization of Turkeys Kurds:

The failed promise of modernization and reform.

Paul J. White
Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, April 1998, Vol. 18, Issue 1, pp.139-58.

Abstract:
Provides an analysis of the political economy of Turkeys Kurdish region
in the Kurdish east and south-east of Anatolia. In-depth look at the growth
of Kurdish Land ownership; Details on Turkeys economic reforms and
their impact on the Kurdish Region.

Introduction
The causes of alienation of the Kurds in Turkey from the Turkish nation state are
manifold. Prominent among these is the economic marginalization of the Kurdish
people and the region. This article shows that within Turkey which is itself a
developing country, a marked disparity exists between its Kurdish region and western
Turkey.
We begin our analysis by describing the political economy of Turkeys Kurdish region
in the Kurdish east and south-east of Anatolia, in order to provide the basis for an
examination of the notion that economic reform involving privatization of public
sector enterprises leads eventually to prosperity and expanded economic equity and
makes political reform (or democratization) possible. Thus, the development of
modem Turkeys economic life, and specific trends such as sharecropping and the outmigration caused by the growing mechanization of agriculture are considered. The
fortunes of industrial development in Turkeys Kurdish region are then examined for
the Kemalist period prior to 1980, enabling the discussion to then focus on the
present period of economic reform and privatization. Throughout this paper, the
evolving economic condition of this region will be presented against the backdrop of
overall developments in Turkeys economy.
From Nomadic Livestock-Raising to Sedentary Farming
At the end of the nineteenth century, the economy of the Kurdish tribes was still
dominated by nomadic sheep-breeding. As Lazarev has noted, however, this period
also saw the beginning of the end for Kurdish feudal tribalism with the disintegration
of kindred-tribal relationships and the marked stratification of property within each
tribe, as determined by the number of heads of large and small livestock owned by
each tribesman.[1]
As nomadic animal husbandry declined, the former nomads settled down as ordinary
ploughmen and shepherds, differing very little from Armenian, Turkish, Iranian, or

Iraqi peasants.[2] Data compiled by the British Foreign Office in 1863 indicates that
40% of land in Anatolian Kurdistan was in private hands by the late 1850s, with the
remaining 60% being either government-owned or waste land.[3] This was a change
from only 20 years earlier, when the land had begun to be wrested from the Koordish
Beys.[4] The same source, which appears to be indicative of land tenure
arrangements at this time throughout Anatolian Kurdistan, implies that private land
ownership was concentrated in the hands of comparatively few land owners.[5] Thus,
in 1863 Diyarbakr (the paradigmatic region cited) the private land was held in parcels
of various sizes, as shown in Table 1.
TABLE 1. Percentage distribution of private farms by size
in Diyarbakir in 1863[6]

Issawi estimates that the rent paid on land by peasants in Anatolian Kurdistan in 1858
equaled 15-20% of the annual produce[7] In Diyarbakr, he adds that: The owner of
the land and water received 14 per cent of the net produce, the rest after deduction
of all expenses being shared equally by the capitalist who supplied the seed, the
labourer who prepared the ground, and the gardener who tended the plants?[8]
A British official on the spot reported on sharecropping arrangements to the British
Foreign Office, in 1858 and states that: The owner of land either lets it to a farmer, or
cultivates it himself by means of hired labourers, or cultivates it in partnership with a
farmer or several small farmers to whom the proprietor advances a certain sum of
money and the necessary seed. The farmer finds the animals and labour; and after the
harvest, the net produce, all taxes having been paid, and the advance in money
refunded, is equally divided[9]
The area in the Ottoman Empire corresponding to the modern Turkish state also saw
much livestock-raising. Animal husbandry was particularly popular in the Kurdish
part of this area. Issawi reports that very few attempts appear to have been made to
improve cattle-raising methods during the nineteenth century. The work was hard and
returns were few especially in Kurdistan, where the wool was reportedly coarser.
Grazing land was frequently owned by capitalists, who employed shepherds,[10]
degrees who in return for 2 1/2 piastres for each sheep gave them all the lambs wool
and 1 1/2 okes of butter and 1 1/2 of cheese for every sheep.[11]
The eruption of World War I saw Ottoman Turkey still a predominantly pre-capitalist
economy albeit one co-existing uneasily with both feudal and capitalistic economic
forms. The defeat of the Central Powers (including the Ottomans) inevitably resulted
in the overthrow of the Ottoman system, and its replacement by Kemal Ataturks
modernizing capitalist regime in 1923.
The 1920s were a key period for the economy of Turkey as a whole. It was during this
period more specifically between 1923 and 1929 that the young Turkish
Republics economy was integrated into the world economy.[12] Even so, as one
observer has noted, Turkish capitalism developed not due to the internal dynamics of
Turkish society, but as a result of a process originating outside Turkey itself. World

capitalism, first used Turkey as a market, then as a place for investment. We shall
examine below how this led to the destruction of the Anatolian handicrafts market, by
a flood of cheap imported Western goods.[13] The comparative underdevelopment of
this region was the upshot of these developments.[14]
In the under-developed regions of todays world, some of the relations of production
can, even now, appear feudal or semi-feudal. Provided the economy of the country is
dominated by capitalism, however, pre-capitalist enterprises are capitalist since they
are subordinated to capitalist laws of motion.[15] Boratov asserts that a backward,
primitive capitalism dominates the economy in Turkey today, while Zulhkif Aydin
comments with relation to Turkey and the world economy that:
Today capitalism has acquired a universal character; the pre-capitalist appearance of
the family farm should not let us believe that this constitutes a mode of production
Capital controls the conditions of reproduction of the peasant family farm.[16]
While the Turkish economy remained subordinate to those of industrialized states, it
is nonetheless true that, overall, it experienced a leap forward in both agricultural and
industrial sectors, productivity and techniques.[17] But the same was not true for
Turkeys Kurdish region. In the Kurdish east and south-east, agriculture remained at
subsistence level throughout the 1920s. Large landowners continued to dominate in
Turkeys Kurdish region.[18] The form of labour in these areas remained
sharecropping, which survived as a quasi-feudal tenancy arrangement [19] while
small peasant holdings predominated in the rest of the new Turkish state.[20] In
fact, notes Keyder excepting Eastern Anatolia, all peasant families held some land.
[21]
Growth of Kurdish Land Ownership
In south-east and eastern Anatolia, agriculture is still the principal economic activity.
[22] Kurdish peasants in the mountains now overwhelmingly own the land they farm
[23] although, as will be shown, this has not meant prosperity for most of them.
For one thing, plots of land tend to be ridiculously small and unable to support a
family. Until as recently as the 1950s and 1960s, Kurdish peasants living on the plains
were frequently yarc sharecroppers who paid the landowner a fixed proportion of
the crop, which could vary from 10 to 80%.[24] Other plains dwellers, were
agricultural workers, who received a small fee for working under the supervision of
the landlord or his bailiff.[25] Many sharecropping agreements came to an end with
the gradual introduction of mechanization into agricultural production from the 1950s
onwards.[26] A surplus labour force began to appear, as landlords were compelled to
free peasants they could no longer usefully employ. Former sharecroppers in both the
mountains and the plains of Turkeys Kurdish region increasingly became transformed
into seasonal agricultural workers, or were forced to migrate either to Kurdish cities
or to the west of Turkey, if not out of the country altogether.[27]
Figures for the distribution of land holdings have shown little variation for the period
1950-1980. Statistics can be misleading, however. The depredations of factors such
as absenteeism, renting and sharecropping arrangements and the illegal use of public
lands led to a decrease in the amount of cultivated land. By 1973, landless families
constituted 30.1% of total rural households. This figure is almost double the ratio of

landless families to landed families for Turkey as a whole. Some 66.4% were farmers,
mostly sharecroppers, while the remainder were labourers, probably seasonal
labourers or artisans.[28]
Very large land holdings have been a feature of the region since the sixteenth century.
Some families continue to own entire villages.[29] In 1980, for example, 59.9% of the
total lands were owned by only 11.6% of the total households. However, 56% of the
land owning households owned only 8.7% of the total land.[30]
Aydin comments:
Sharecropping plays an important role in reproducing the political and
economic power of landlords, some of whom are also tribal leaders. It is
through sharecropping arrangements that landlords strengthen their political
dominance, which in turn enables them to have access to credits, fertilisers,
etc. and therefore to intensify their economic dominance over the
sharecroppers.[31]
In eastern Anatolia, 79.3% of landless households engage in sharecropping or renting
arrangements. This supports the view that landlords try to tie the landless poor to the
land in order to secure a labour force for peak seasons. Although only 6.2% of
landowning families, absentee landlords nevertheless control 57.3% of the total land
in south-east Anatolia. In Diyarbakr vilayet, rich absentee landowning families
control 88% of land, despite themselves constituting a mere 3% of the provinces
landowning families. Absentee landlords might also engage in commercial activities
in the towns of the Kurdish region, or even in western Turkey. This tends to further
drain capital which could be used for development out of the region and send it
westwards.[32]
The unique geography of much of Turkeys Kurdish region also takes its toll. In the
mountains, where land is scarce and ploughing is still done by oxen drawing wooden
ploughs, agricultural production is scarcely above subsistence level. The low returns
from even cash crops, like tobacco, provide little incentive for an expansion of
agricultural production.[33]
The use of modern farm machinery in the plains has transformed the relations of
production: while small and middle land owners generally cannot afford to buy
tractors and harvesters, a new phenomenon is the urban entrepreneur who hires out
the machinery to landowners in exchange for a percentage (8 or 10%) of the crop.
Frequently such an entrepreneur is also a money-lender and obliges the landowner
who borrows money from him to rent out his land to him (in return for 50% of the
crop) until the debt has been paid back.[34]
Nomadism -once a phenomenon involving entire towns is now comparatively
rare.[35] Some villages of peasants in the lower mountain regions with larger flocks
may still practice semi-nomadism moving to cooler summer pastures (zozan),
where they live in tents for the duration of the season, apart from brief trips back to
their village when appropriate.[36] However, in Turkeys Kurdish region, notes van
Bruinessen, there are several [fully] nomadic tribes.[37]
Industrial Development in the Kurdish Region

Industrial development has taken a long time even to commence in Turkeys Kurdish
region. In the seventeenth century, we are told, many towns in Anatolian Ottoman
Kurdistan were centres of craftsmanship and trade, as well as seats of government
and centres of learning.[38] However, the population of these towns was largely nonKurdish.[39]
Foreign enterprises played the major role in developing Turkish industry. The way for
foreign industrial and commercial intervention on a large scale had been laid by the
signing of the Capitulations, a series of accords in which the Ottomans ceded certain
privileges to foreign business. Foreign business developed particularly strongly
following the Anglo-Turkish Commercial Convention of 1838, to the point where
foreigners had both completely unrestricted access to the economy and preferential
tariff arrangements.[40]
Industrial development began its torturous path in Turkish Kurdistan during the
nineteenth century. One observer lists the principal export industries in Diyarbakr in
1889 as:
coppersmith work, iron foundries, tanning, silk and cotton weaving, and
silkworm breeding. The other handicraftsmen, such as tinsmiths, smiths,
saddle-makers, masons, timber workers, carpenters, shoemakers, etc. make
only articles needed for local consumption. Except for saddle-making, all of
these crafts are undertaken exclusively by Christians, who constitute half the
population of Diyarbakr.[41]
Early in the nineteenth century, the Christian and Jewish artisans had begun to
disappear, with few Kurds remaining who had mastered these crafts by the early
twentieth century.[42] Since the 1830s, cheap foreign imports from Europe had begun
to compete with local handicrafts, anyway. And village craftsmanship was
increasingly replaced with simple mechanized industry.[43] However, the lack of
infrastructure and primitive nature of this industry means it remains peripheral to
other economies in the region and ill-equipped to compete with neighbouring
industry.[44] One observer estimates that the insignificant nature of industry in this
city amid the damage wreaked by foreign competition by 1889 indicated that
Diyarbakirs fragile industrial base was within course of disappearing.[45]
Naturally, this did not just happen in Kurdistan; there was a general decline in
industry throughout the entire Ottoman Empire from this period onwards.[46]
Ironically, it was probably a measure of the extreme economic backwardness of
Anatolias Kurdish region that the hand-spinning of locally produced raw cotton into
yam continued into the 1890s.[47]
By the mid-1920s, industry was beginning to be transformed, due to the injection of
merchant capital investment, through most of the new Turkish Republic. One useful
index of industrial growth as well as itself being a motor for further development
is the growth of the railways system. In Turkey, as in other developing countries in
their early phase of development, the railways experienced notable growth. But, once
again, such growth was not uniform. Keyder notes that the distribution of railways
exhibited an evident inequality between the market-oriented western regions, the

surplus-producing interior, and the subsistence-farming east, north-east, and southwest.[48]

Meanwhile, those Kurdish feudal landowners who had managed by this time to
accumulate some capital invested it in small industry and commerce in the big cities.
They thus acted as mediators for the Turkish bourgeoisie, in marketing some of the
latters goods. In the cities of Urfa, Gaziantep, Diyarbakr and Mardin, these feudals
controlled 70% of the agricultural land, while they constituted only 7.5% of the total
peasant families.[49]
The comparatively more numerous and economically more advantaged population,
the range of industrial crops and railway network of western Anatolia were all
factors militating in favour of the industrial concentration in this region. In other
words, the existing higher level of economic development in this region were
important reasons for it to experience a continuing higher level of industrialization
than the Kurdish areas.[50]
In 1927, the Western Turkish cities of Istanbul and Izmir accounted for 40% (816
establishments), out of a Turkey-wide total of 2052 industrial establishments
employing more than 10 persons. (Ten employees is usually the benchmark defining a
factory, as opposed to a simple workshop.[51] Overall, 25.7% of all industrial
employment was in Istanbul and Umir.[52] By the late 1930s, according to another
estimation, there were something like 414 large manufacturing establishments, only
seven of which were in Turkeys Kurdish region. These establishments represented a
mere 1.7% of the total in Turkey as a whole[53]
Turkey one of the first states in the Middle East to begin to industrialize has
done so, in a highly uneven manner. The economic history of the post-Ottoman state
has experienced at least three distinct phases. Beginning with its founding in 1923, up
until 1950 can be described as the period of devletcilik-etatism, or massive state
intervention into the economy, including Five Year Plans modeled on those of Stalins
Russia, commencing in 1934. During this period, state economic enterprises (SEEs)
were developed, due to a perceived insufficiency of entrepreneurial skills and capital
accumulation in the private sector and the belief that SEEs were the engines of
industrial and regional development[54]
Like some other developing countries, the young Turkish state justified its strongly
interventionist role in the economy ideologically: industrial catching-up, economic
sovereignty, and social equity were all given as the raisons dtre of public
enterprise, relegating the private sector thereby to a decidedly subordinate role. The
private sector was depicted as weak, given to speculation and profiteering, and prone
to sell out the national good through alliances with national capital. Radical
Kemalism held out the prospect that some day a truly nationalist, enlightened, farsighted entrepreneurial bourgeoisie might emerge, one, however, that would always
play a supporting role in strategies laid down by the state.[55] The Izmir Economic
Congress of 1923 laid down the framework for the state to work as the handmaiden
to the nascent private sector[56] The Congress:
drew up the Principles of Economic Contract, which emphasized the mutual
responsibilities of labor and capital in building economic sovereignty. The

contract embodied ... what is now ... commonly referred to as corporatism,

and it became a lasting feature of the Turkish political economy. In that
spirit, in 1925, all leftist organizations were banned, unions placed under
state control, and the right to strike denied. The state maintained direct
control of a number of monopolies in tobacco, alcohol, salt, matches, sugar,
and petroleum. In addition, the first modern SOEs (state-owned enterprises)
were founded in tobacco processing, wool milling, cotton weaving, silk
spinning, and sugar beet refining.[57]
Behind all government initiatives in this period lay the goal of fostering private
industry. By 1932 there were almost 1500 industrial enterprises.[58] The introduction
of ISI (import-substituting industrialization) in Turkey was a comprehensive and
strategic response to the international economic crisis of the 1930s.[59] It was also,
importantly, a response to a perceived crisis in national self-assertion in the face of
dominant industrial powers. The designers, aware of the structural impediments talked
frequently of skipping stages and leaping directly into the industrial age.[60]
The introduction of ISI, Waterbury argues, was an inclusionist process, that is, one
which facilitated the construction of a broad constituency to sustain this policy as
opposed to the reforms of the 1980s onwards (to be dealt with later), which have
evoked broad opposition, (typically trade unions, the military, the state sector itself,
and the salariat) with only a narrow constituency supporting them.[61]
The period from 1950 to the first military coup of 1960 saw the dominant emphasis
shifting to the development of private enterprise -albeit with prodigious amounts of
government and international investment and loans to both industry and agriculture.
[62] Adnan Menderes whose Demokrat Partisi (DP) had won the 1950 election on
a platform of privatizing many SEEs[63] was unable to carry out this policy due to
opposition from key groups in society. Industrial development by SEEs actually
increased during the Menderes administration, while that of private firms decreased.
[64] The clash between the new DP and the old Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi founded by
Atatrk reflected the conflict between a newly assertive alliance of private interests,
created by etatism, and the old military-bureaucratic alliance that had founded the
republic.[65]
The 1960s and 1970s saw a re-imposition of devletcilik although this time
administered by a modernizing republican technocracy.[66] A State Planning
Organization (SPO) was constituted in the early 1960s and new Five Year Plans were
drawn-up.[67] Throughout the 1970s, however, the new style devletcilik began to give
way to the privatisation and parcelling-up of state agencies[68]
As state-owned enterprises failed to make profits and only worsened balance of
payments problems in Turkey during the 1960s generating inflationary claims on
the public purse the governments initial response was deficit financing and
external borrowing, so as not to compromise distributional arrangements.[69] Wageearners and poor farmers throughout Turkey suffered, but the Kurdish east and southeast was particularly affected, with the average household income in the Kurdish
southern provinces earning only 74.8% of the country average income in 1968, and
the east 83.4%, while Istanbul earned 259.4%, and Ankara 162.0%. Five years later,
in 1973, the south had managed some small improvement, earning a figure of 86.7%.

The figure for the east slumped dramatically, however, coming in at only 67.5%,
while Istanbul earned 162.7% and Ankara a still respectable 123.5%.[70]
In less than a decade Turkeys debt grew almost five-fold, going from $3.3 billion in
1973 to $15.3 billion by 1980. The situation was exacerbated much more by the
second surge in oil prices during 1978-1979, which pushed Turkey to the brink of
default.(71) This led to an initial response which was an attempt to streamline and
rationalise the statist experiments, to replace redistributive state socialism with costeffective state capitalism.[72]
Turkeys Economic Reforms and their Impact on the Kurdish Region
The end result, by 1978-1979, was a severe economic and political crisis at home, and
an external accounts crisis, which was dealt with through a military take-over and the
authoritarian implementation of a structural adjustment program and a shift to exportled growth.[73] Keyder argues that the military stepped in to oversee the economic
tasks of accumulation, following the 12 September 1980 coup, adding that the states
legitimacy, already eroded in the eyes of the social groups excluded from the populist
equation, declined parallel to its growing privatization, during the 1960s and 1970s.
[74] This seems an accurate assessment, although one which can be easily
misinterpreted, to give the military full responsibility for the economic reforms of
1980 onwards. In actual fact, it was the coalition government of Adalet Partisi (Justice
Party) headed by President, Suleyman Demirel, which on 24 January 1980 initiated
radical measures aimed at breaking the back of very serious balance-of-payments, and
hyperinflation.[75]
At the heart of the radical new economic policy package was the decision to end
devletcilik.[76] Arguably, the failure of Demirels coalition to implement the new
economic policies was a major factor in convincing the generals to act on 12
September 1980.[77] The military endorsed the new policy package, however,
allowing the man behind it, the US-trained economist Turgut zal, to remain in
charge of its implementation.[78] zal forcibly lowered wages and declared strikes
illegal, subsidized exports and devalued the Turkish lira, in a ruthless drive to
deliberately shrink Turkeys domestic market. In such a climate, only the larger,
robust enterprises survived. Protests from the smaller capitalists aside, Keyder
estimates that the bourgeoisie as a whole was quite willing to trade off the economic
and political problems of this period for restricted democracy, ideological hegemony,
and a disciplined labour force.[79]
The economically weakest units workers, unemployed, small producers and the
economically marginal population (which include most of the inhabitants, of the
south and south-east) saw their real incomes drop sharply. Serif Mardin estimates
that the share of wages in the national income dropped from around 35% in 19761978 to around 20% in 1983-1986.[80] Social spending on health, education and so
forth, was cut drastically in the same period.[81]
Turgut zal combined these tough economic reforms with political reforms aimed at
building a constituency which would support the economic changes because they
benefited directly from these. This constituency (an enlarged middle class) would be
an electoral buttress for the government against the opposition of poor farmers and

workers, who would suffer materially from the same economic measures. The
privatization of public housing beginning in the mid-1980s, for instance, both
provided the government with revenue and pleased the middle class, who were able to
buy this housing.[82] zal also significantly liberalized trade and foreign exchange
dealings.
What sector or sectors of Turkish society benefited from these reforms? Investigating
income distribution and equity in the reformed Turkish economy (since these are key
indicators of the evenness and depth of the reforms benefits), leads Hansen to
catalogue what he believes are uncertainties about the effects of strategy change and
reforms in income distribution.[83]
Ozals economic reforms caused subsistence farming to shrink to almost nothing.
[84] This is a factor of immense impact to the predominantly rural Turkish Kurds.
Another observer commenting on the fate of farmers growing crops which are found
in Turkeys Kurdish region cotton and tobacco[85] points out that for these two
commodities, the rapid depreciation of the Turkish lira during the 1980s has been
beneficial to the exporters, but not to the farmer [86]
It is true that Ozal appeared to soften the impact of his economic reforms in the
countryside through the application of support prices (that is, prices established
through intervention by public agencies). Boratov speculates, however, that these
were manipulated in such a way so as to keep intact the adverse price structure which
had emerged during the crisis years; and, at worst, (has) been deliberately used to
depress them even further.[87]
[Under] conditions of declining real prices and increased supplies to the market, as in
Turkish Kurdistan during the 1980s, Boratov continues, peasant farmers should be
expected to run into increased and even extreme indebtedness to cover costs.[88]
There was a political price for the drastic post-1980 economic restructuring, however.
In the earlier, Kemalist, model, economic development had managed to more or less
incorporate the various social classes and marginal (ethnic) groups into the economic,
political and cultural projects of the dominant elite within the Turkish state as a
whole.[89] (Given their long standing level of chronic under-development, the Kurds
were probably the least integrated, but their position was still quite different from that
which stands today).[90] [Turkish] Nationalism, and its claim for a single integrating
principle within political borders, seemed to work.[91] In contrast, the Kurds since
1980 have arguably felt more left out, less like participants in the Turkish economy
and society than ever before.
If this is so, it could indicate that the earlier hopes of economic liberalism leading
almost inexorably to political liberalism (or democratization) were ill-placed, if not
naive. Certainly, there has never been any basis for an economic quick fix in modern
Turkey. Turkish politicians have been unable to solve the countrys intractable
economic problems since the 1950s.
zals privatizations began in the mid-1980s, until, just before the 1987 elections, he
realized that his middle class support base was too small to provide sufficient
electoral support.[92] He therefore reverted to the Keynesianism of his predecessors,
pouring around US $2 billion into the countryside (including, presumably, the

Kurdish east and south-east).[93] Waldner points out that this unfortunately led to the
triggering of renewed inflation, resulting in austerity budgets that caused a decline in
prices on the Turkish stock market ... The need to secure electoral support, in other
words, undermined economic reform.[94]
A variety of Keynesianism therefore returned in 1987, as subsequent administrations
failed to grasp the hot potatoes of economic reform and privatisation.[95] In early
1994, Turkey therefore faced a new economic crisis, triggered by a run on the Turkish
lira and spiralling interest rates. The Turkish lira plunged from TL 11,000 to the US
dollar in June 1993, when Prime Minister Ciller took office, to TL 38,000 in early
April 1994.[96] According to the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
the crisis stemmed from years of loose fiscal and monetary policies that had
exacerbated inflation and allowed the public debt, money supply, and current account
deficit to explode. Two leading US credit agencies downgraded the countrys
economic rating in response to the January crisis.[97]
On 5 April 1994, Prime Minister Tansu Cillers government announced a harsh
austerity rescue package, aimed at slowing the ballooning inflation rate, by
dampening domestic demand through steep price rises, one-off taxes and spending
and public sector pay cuts as well as also fostering real growth, by closing down or
privatizing several SEEs. It was hoped that this would attract new foreign investment
capital to the country.[98] Three months later, the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
which strongly supported the austerity package, pledged USS 740 million in stand-by
credit to assist the recovery process.[99]
Inflation was reduced by these measures, but stood at 130%[100] by December 1994,
with the annual inflation rate being 126%.[101] Turkeys domestic debt began to grow
alarmingly moreover, as Ankara sought funds to repay the IMFs short-term loan on
schedule. The government subsequently applied for a further IMF loan, principally
aimed at financing a social safety net program for workers, who would lose their jobs
once the state companies they are employed by are privatized.[102]
Spending cuts included sharp cuts in essential services such as public health leading
to the claim in the editorial of a leading Turkish daily newspaper at the time that state
hospitals could not even provide ... patients with bandages and had to tell them to buy
these because of a lack of funds.[103] Despite Cillers austerity program:
real GDP dropped an estimated 5% for the year as a whole, the worst decline
in Turkeys post-war history. At the same time, the government missed key
1994 targets stipulated in the IMF agreement; the budget deficit is estimated
to have overshot the governments goal by 47%; the total public sector
borrowing requirement likely reached 10-12% of GDP, rather than 8.5%
called for in the program; and the Turkish liras value fell 5% to 7% more
than expected.[104]
Meanwhile, it was reported that the governments so called incentive payments for
the first five months of 1994 totalled TL13 trillion (USS 34,210,526.32 at April 1994
rates), a staggering figure.[105] An official from the Foreign Trade Undersecretariat
commented: In fact one should not inquire about which sectors are given incentives
but about which sectors are not. It would be much easier to find out.[106]

Nevertheless, Cillers austerity program managed to secure some dividends. An

examination of the implementation of the 1994 austerity package the following year,
by the international finance and investment firm Morgan Stanley, concluded that
Turkey had managed to pay off USS 10 billion of its foreign debt during 1994. An
American financial agency raised Turkeys economic status from stable to positive.
International economic experts especially praised the great rise in currency reserves.
The reserves of the Central Bank without gold have risen 90% since the
beginning of the year to US$13.51 billion.[107]
Perhaps the most appropriate comment on the success of the governments economic
management during 1994 was made by the prime minister herself, who reportedly
purchased real estate in the United States for investment purposes, after becoming
PM. As one Turkish daily put it, this could indicate that Ciller herself does not
believe in the future of Turkey.[108]
Despite the incentive payments to industry in the middle of a supposed austerity drive,
the government did not cushion the Kurdish region from the sharp edge of its
economic policies. Some months after the governments austerity package had been
released in 1994, the government announced that Kurdish eastern Anatolia would be
exempt from certain aspects of its austerity program. A booklet issued by the office of
Prime Minister Ciller stated: The released funds will be used to develop agriculture,
animal husbandry, energy, roads, housing, forestation and manufacturing.[109] In
December 1994 however, a reliable source reported that economic activity in southeastern Turkey had dropped considerably.[110] The reality is that the shooting war
between Turkish authorities and the PKK is itself a powerful disincentive to new,
developmental investment,[111] not to mention a massive drain on the public purse.
[112]
The economy of the Turkish state as a whole is backward by world standards. To say
that the economy of Turkeys Kurdish region is comparatively much less developed
again is certainly significant. Furthermore, as is often the case in such situations of
under-development, it can be added that under-development begets further underdevelopment.[113] The singular paucity of infrastructure, and low level industrial
development in Turkeys Kurdish region, makes it difficult in the best of economic
climates to attract development capital. Aydin points out that the transfer of the
surplus produced in the region to the developed western part of Turkey is the prime
reason behind this underdevelopment ...[114]
A vicious circle is thus begun which seems to spin even more ruthlessly in the
wake of a harsher climate in the world economy in general. This, in turn, arguably
alienates Kurdish citizens of the Turkish state further from the universalizing
Kemalist myth of Turkish nationalism. Nor has the circle been broken in the period
since Cillers 1994 austerity drive. Little real new economic development would have
occurred in Turkish Kurdistan during that time. Furthermore, given the underunderdeveloped economic character of the Kurdish region, it is important to consider
how any policy of general economic restraint must have a particularly severe impact
on this region. Most workers in Turkeys Kurdish region are employed in a very few
large SEEs, in several very small workshops, or in the largely poverty-stricken
informal economic sector. Of all these, the highest paid are those in the few large

SEEs with a presence in Turkeys Kurdish region, such as Tekel, the state tobacco and
liquor monopoly. Yet these workers, as public sector employees, would not have been
immune from the estimated 40% cut in earnings suffered by all public sector workers
during the year.[115] Apart from a very few large land owners, most of the
economically active Kurds in the Kurdish regions agricultural sector are very poor
often destitute sharecroppers. In virtually none of these cases do these Kurds have
adequate savings to insulate them from further adversity during harder economic
times.
Turkeys economy remains vulnerable. The inflation rate oscillates around the 80%
mark and the state is still burdened with back-breaking debt repayments.[116] (The
treasurys debt rose almost 25% during the first four months of 1996 alone, to USS 30
billion).[117]
Despite blockage of several privatizations in the Constitutional Court by nationalist
and pro-worker-posturing opposition parties, parliament passed legislation on 24
November 1994, according to which USS 5 billion of state assets would now be
privatized.[118] The money from these transactions is to be:
used for one of three purposes: restructuring additional enterprises in
preparation for privatization; paying off outstanding debt; or funding
unemployment insurance. Proceeds may not be used to cover budget deficits.
Bids for block sales of two enterprises the airport ground handler Havas,
and the textiles concern, Sumerbank were issued in January.[119]
Very little of this is of benefit to the Kurds, however. Since mid-1993, at least two
million Kurds have been forced out of not only over two thousand villages by the
Turkish military in increasing numbers, but also out of several cities. From the middle
of 1993 the PKK and the Turkish authorities declared total war against each other.
The authorities in general, tend to increasingly regard all Turkish Kurds as either the
enemy or at least a potential enemy. This is borne out by the treatment Kurds in a
Kurdish region have suffered since mid-1993, as discussed later.
Probably the only Kurdish city not to have been attacked by the Turkish military is
Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish city in Turkey. Diyarbakir has suffered severe
economic stress, however, due to now being swollen many times its size with
unemployed (and unemployable) Kurdish refugees. The Turkish military attacked the
regional capital of Lice on 22 October 1994, during which the city was flattened. The
city of Cizre, like Lice, was also attacked by the Turkish army. Turkish special units,
the death-squads, aimed their attacks on this city. Before this, the cities of Yuksekova,
Diyadin, Akinova, Cizre, Kulp, Varto and Sirnak, as well as several other cities, were
reportedly destroyed by the bombardments of security forces.[120]
The United States Department of States human rights report on Turkey for the year
1994, asserts that the Turkish government security forces forcibly evacuated and even
burned down 2297 villages, and displaced two million people. Resettlement and
compensation from the government was hard to come by and even the promised aid
for 1994 was not disbursed, while there was little provision for assistance in the 1995
budget.[121]

In July 1994, the State Department report continues, Turkeys Minister for Human
Rights announced a government emergency aid program to be applied in 22
provinces in the east and southeast and more economic support to the region.[122]
This is the Turkish governments policy of economic development for the Kurdish
region, referred to above. Writing in early 1995, the report continues: To date, few
villages have been resettled.[123]
At least two million recent Kurdish refugees are now crammed into the conurbations
of western Turkey. All of these refugees have been forcibly transferred from their
villages and some towns. In almost all cases they do not have the necessary liquid (or
easily liquefiable) assets, necessary for a new life in the city. Swollen with all these
refugees from the Kurdish war, Turkeys cities are no haven for the unemployed. As
described earlier, thousands of villages and even some entire cities have been forcibly
evacuated by the military, and often then destroyed.
This recent influx of Kurdish refugees into the cities of western Turkey has added to
the earlier waves of Kurds from the east arid south-east of Anatolia over the past four
or five decades. The continual mechanization of agriculture throughout Turkey from
the 1950s onwards had a side-effect of seriously depleting the total number of Kurds
living in Turkeys Kurdish region. Mechanization, in turn, affected social
differentiation and stratification throughout rural Turkey as a whole. As each tractor
replaced 10 to 50 peasants or rural labourers,[124] this accelerated rural exodus to
cities and towns.[125]
While the region as a whole has been losing people through out-migration, some
centres within the region notably Diyarbakir, Mus and Bitils grew from
inmigration, between 1955 and 1960.[126] If the recent massive transfers are taken
into consideration, 75% of people in Turkey now live in cities.[127] With
unemployment and inflation both running at extremely high, alarming levels even
before this recent mass exodus from rural centres westwards, Turkeys economy was
already in dire straits. It is not hard to see the extreme difficulty which the masses of
sharecroppers (most of whom have only primary school education) would face
surviving economically in the current economic situation.
There appear to be real constraints on the degree to which Turkey can realistically
economically modernize itself. Time and again, the need of Turkish political elites to
secure the political support of various social interest groups has meant that economic
reform projects remain incomplete even though these become more difficult
economically and less palatable politically, the longer they are left unresolved.
The Promise of GAP
This grim picture of industrial development in Turkeys Kurdish region has not so far
considered the promise of the Gneydou Anadolu Projesi (GAP, or Southern
Anatolia Project). GAP is a massive industrial undertaking consisting of 12 large
scale projects, six in the Euphrates and six in the Tigris regions with 22 subsidiary
projects designed to benefit Turkeys Kurdish region. However, even though it is so
very ambitious and large scale, one may ask if this project would be capable of the
miraculous social and economic transformation of Turkeys Kurdish region, that it is
designed to bring about.[128] Successive Turkish governments have heavily promoted

GAP, both at home and abroad, saying it would enrich the project area (which is
within Turkeys Kurdish region) and all of Turkey. Turkish authorities state that the
project area will experience a 17-fold increase in income creating 1.6 million jobs in
the technical and agricultural sectors of the project area. According to the newspaper
Cumhuriyet (9 March 1989), a 50-60% increase in cultivable land is hoped for in the
project area. By the year 2002, GAP is supposed to generate increases in agriculture
by 20%, in the services sector by 10% and in industrial production by 8%. In addition,
authorities aim to at least slow down the rate of out-migration from the Kurdish
region to the west of Turkey and beyond.[129]
A number of political goals are also hoped for by Ankara. The government hopes that
economic development resulting from GAP will help it to minimize the number of
political adherents to extremist Kurdish nationalist groups.[130] The continued
guerrilla activity by the PKK in the project area, however, is a strong disincentive for
prospective industrial investment. Energy produced through GAP will therefore tend
to flow to the west of Turkey, not to Turkeys Kurdish region.[131]
Similarly, dreams of local peasants benefiting from vast new expanses of agricultural
land opened up through irrigation also seem to be an illusion. Land reform legislation
is not planned in conjunction with GAP. Flooding has already led to the displacement
of entire villages.[132] In such cases, it is reported that compensation is paid only to
the owners of flooded land, not to the sharecroppers who cultivate the land. The latter
received only small sums for their houses.[133] Entire villages were relocated as
complete units in very few instances.[134] This has provoked new migration to the
western part of Turkey. Irrigation from the project has therefore tended to have only
negative social and economic effects on inhabitants of rural Turkeys Kurdish region
so far.
Furthermore, the costs of GAP are massive each year [135] with little apparent
economic benefit now or for quite some time to come. At 1991 prices, according to
Osman Tekinel, GAP is equal to Turkeys annual budget ... and is 60% for irrigation
and 40% for energy production. This massive outlay obviously leaves much less
potential government funding available for promoting specifically Kurdish economic
growth and development. Tekinel comments that development in Turkish agriculture
as a result of GAP will occur in the ukurova and especially the Mersin region.
Both of these areas are outside, however.[136]
Considerable technical problems have already caused terrible delays in completing
each stage of GAP. The project was supposed to finish in 1994. Yet, after talking to
engineers and architects on the spot in 1991, Turkish journalist Arslan Baser Kafaoglu
concluded that the whole project would not be completed until 2013! During the same
trip, Kafaoglu discovered that more than the 2,000 workers employed on the project
were not from Urfa or Adiyaman, but miners from Zonguldak and Sivas.[137]
Kafaoglu also questions the extra production and economic activity expected to result
from GAP. He points out that no provision has been made for the extensive
infrastructure needed to accompany this, claiming that GAP is also technically
defective.[138]

For all these reasons, therefore, it must be concluded that, despite its magnificent
promise, the Guneydogu Anadolu Projesi will be of little direct economic benefit, in
the final analysis, to the inhabitants of Turkeys Kurdish region. It represents not so
much the development of Turkeys Kurdish region, but a further development of
western Turkey.
Devletcilik and Stunted Industry
The picture of the effects of industrialization on Turkeys Kurdish region thus appear
disarmingly simple. Kurdish industry has remained permanently stunted.[139] This
means a bitter continuing fight for survival with other, more advanced, industrial
centres elsewhere in the Middle East.[140] This continues to impose a cruel burden on
those employed in Kurdish industry, for they are exploited more severely as social
legislation is evaded on a large scale.[141] In some ways, Turkeys Kurdish regions
stunted economic development deserves the name of under-development rather than
development. Industrial progress is blocked.[142]
Michael M. Gunter, whose book The Kurds in Turkey:/t Political Dilemma, is, in the
large part, a plea for critics of Turkeys treatment of the Kurds to be more
understanding of the dilemma of the Turkish state,[143] has offered some of the most
damning evidence of the under-development of Turkeys Kurdish region. Gunter
writes that:
there, of course, can be no doubt that south-eastern Turkey suffers from
serious problems of economic under-development. The CIA Report, for
example, stated that the eastern provinces have received only 10% of state
industrial investment and only 2% of all commercial investments. What is
more, hospitals and educational facilities are thinly spread in the east.
Unemployment is well above the national average. Illiteracy in Turkish
among the Kurds is high as 80%; and electricity, piped water, and passable
roads are non-existent in more than half of the villages.[144]
Van Bruinessen notes that Kurdish villages are not connected with each other (except
by foot-paths) but with district capitals and the state capitals. From any given village
in Kurdistan it is easier to reach Amsterdam than most other villages. Kurdish
villagers who have never even seen a town before have been forced by economic
pressures to immigrate to the highly industrialized West.[145]
The type of bold economic reform attempted by a developing country such as Turkey
requires a more or less steady flow of investment funds to facilitate industrialization.
This creates serious political dilemmas for the ruling elite who depend on their own
predominant agricultural sectors as the principal sources of savings to finance
industrialization. However, in the process of development, rural living standards
stagnate, new industries face inadequate domestic (especially rural) demand and are
too inefficient to enter into exports, and losses are covered by deficit financing and
foreign borrowing.[146] As Turkeys ruling elite has sought to push the country as a
whole towards economic modernization, it is the rural sector which carries an
inordinate proportion of the burden. Turkeys rural sector is much larger than its
Kurdish region, of course. However, the Kurdish region is overwhelmingly rural, and

the most backward sector of the Turkish economy as a whole, and continues to remain
so.
Conclusion
Our investigation reveals that the Kurds in villages, towns and cities in Turkeys
Kurdish region have benefited the least and suffered the most from the
countrys economic reforms to date. Turkeys unprecedented urbanization, caused by
economic pressures and the militarys policy of forcible village clearances, has
resulted in appalling economic conditions leading to overcrowding, poverty and
unemployment. Kurdish villagers recently arrived from south-east Turkey are
arguably the least likely to find employment in Turkeys swollen cities and make a
place for themselves in the crowded urban environment.
Thus, Turkeys developmental dilemma is doubly bitter for the Turkish Kurds. If a
sharp turn towards aggressive and equitable economic reform is not taken before very
long, the Kurds face the worst consequences of all from a deepening unemployment
crisis and the return of uncontrollable inflation. However, if (or more likely, when) a
return to a program of strong, ongoing, economic reforms is made, the danger is that
this will now need to be so drastic as to be impossible to implement without a return
of the same sort of political regime which supervised the last serious bout of
economic liberalization and adjustment in 1980-1983. In other words, it might require
a further period of direct military rule, and the suspension of Turkeys fragile
parliamentary democracy. This also seems to be the lesson of the massive strike
movements of 1994 and 1995 in opposition to Cillers half-hearted austerity drive.
The practical ramifications of direct military rule for all of Turkey, however, are
certain to make life even more precarious for the Kurds.
Whatever economic policies are pursued in Turkey, history seems to be telling us, at
the very least, that the Kurds appear destined to derive the least benefit from them.
Nor have political liberalization and democracy flowed inexorably from economic
reform and liberalization for the Kurds. Having already missed out on constructing
their own nation-state, at least two million Turkish Kurds have now also even lost the
right to live in their own village, town or city. The inhabitants of Turkeys Kurdish
region have become the worst casualties of Turkeys problematic attempts at
integration and economic reform.
NOTES
1. M. S. Lazarev, Kurdistan i Kurdskaya Problema (Moscow, 1964), in The
Economic History of Turkey. 1800-1914, ed. Charles Issawi. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1980, pp. 65-66.
2. Op. cit., p. 66.
3. Op. cit., p. 207.
4. Op. cit., p. 221.

5. From Table 2, Percentage Distribution of Farms by Size (Acres), 1863, in op. cit.,
p. 203.
6. Op. cit.. See also p. 221.
7. Op. cit., p. 207.
8. Op. cit., p. 208.
9. Op. cit., p. 220.
10. Op. cit., p. 271.
11. Issawi, Op. cit..
12. The Ottoman Empire participated in the world economy, of course, especially
during the nineteenth century. It did so as a still largely pre-capitalist economy,
however. See Caglar [Caglar] Keyder, The Definition of a Peripheral Economy:
Turkey 1923-1929, London: Cambridge University Press & Paris: Editions de la
Maison des Sciences de lHomme, 1981, p. 180.
13. Zulkuf Aydin, Underdevelopment and Rural Structures in Southeastern Turkey:
the Household Economy in Gisgis and Kalhana, London: Published for the Centre for
Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies, Ithaca Press, 1986, pp. 28-29. See also Rosa
Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971,
chapter XXX, especially pp. 439-445, for a theoretical discussion of the phenomenon
of capitalist penetration and domination of an economy from the outside.
14. Aydin, (op. cit., p. 45), argues that The regional under-development in Turkey is
not a result of racist state policy, but is an outcome of the uneven development of
Turkish capitalism. Aydin, (op. cit., pp. 24-28) also crificises the internal
colonialism model of Gunnar Myrdal (Economic Theory and Underdeveloped
Regions) and others, like the Turkish sociologist and supporter of the PKK, Ismail
Beiki (Krtelin Mecburi Iskan), who explain Kurdish underdevelopment as a
consequence of racist domination of Kurds by Turks, rather than in class terms:
There must be something more than ethnicity as the main cause of the regional
underdevelopment in eastern and south-east Anatolia. In fact, concludes Aydin, it
can be shown that dominant classes in Eastern Anatolia have benefited from their
incorporation into the state apparatus in Turkey.
15. See Jarius Banaji, Modes of Production in a Materialist Conception of History,
in Capital and Class, number 3, Autumn, 1977, pp. 1-44.
16. Aydin, op. cit., p. 11.
17. Keyder, op. cit., passim.
18. Commenting on how the historical background lies at the roots of todays unequal
land distribution in eastern Anatolia, Aydin comments (op. cit., pp. 16-17):

Todays large estates and small peasant holdings have been structured by this
specific historical development of landownership in the region.
Yurtluk/ocaklk and serbest mr-i miranlk lands constitute the basis of
todays large estates, whereas the lands tax-farmed out to mltezims and
worked by reayas constitute the basis of small peasant holdings. For the
reayas became the owners of the land over which they had only usufructuary
rights before the Republic.
19. Keyder, op. cit., pp. 13 & 19.
20. Keyder, op. cit., p. 14.
21. Op. cit., p. 15. Stress in original.
22. Aydin, op. cit., p. 13.
23. Maarten van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State. On the Social and Political
Organisation of Kurdistan. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Utrecht. Rijswijk:
Enroprint/Secondprint, 1978, pp. 22-23.
24. Van Bruinessen, op. cit., and Majeed R. Jafar, Under-Underdevelopment. A
Regional Case Study of the Kurdish Area in Turkey, Helsinki: Social Policy
Association, 1976, p. 63. Keyder, (op. cit., p. 16), adds: In 1952, 32% of the peasant
families in all of Turkey could be considered as middle peasants. Aydin (op. cit., p.
6), cites 1963 census figures which indicate that share-cropping families were then
15% of all fanning families in Turkey.
25. Van Bruinessen, op. cit., p. 23. See also Ghassemlou, Kurdistan and the Kurds,
Prague: Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences & London: Collets, 1965, p. 117
(footnote) & Hasan Yildiz, Un pays sans frontire: le Kurdistan, Paris: EVRA-KOM,
1992, p. 85.
26. For a treatment of an earlier period of agricultural commercialisation, see Aydin,
op. cit., pp. 32-34. For a concise examination of the effects of the mechanisation of
agriculture throughout Turkey, see Ronnie Margulies and Ergin Yildizoglu, Agrarian
Change: 1923-1970, in Turkey in Transition, New Perspectives, ed. Irvin C. Schick
and Ertugrul Ahmet Tonak, especially pp. 278-285 & also Kemal H. Karpat,
Structural Change, Historical Stages of Modernization, and the Role of Social
Groups in Turkish Politics, in Social Change and Politics in Turkey. A StructuralHistorical Analysis, ed. Karpat, pp. 58ff.
27. Van Bruinessen, op. cit., p. 23. See also Jafar, op. cit., p. 64 & Yildiz, op. cit., p.
85. The extent of out-migration will be discussed later in this article.
28. Aydin, op. cit., pp. 59-62.
29. This is a legacy of the old Ottoman yurtluk/ocaklik system.
30. Aydin, op. cit., p. 59.

31. Aydin, op. cit., p. 61.

32. Aydin, op. cit., pp. 61-62. See also Ismail Beiki, Dogu Anadolunun Duzeni:
Sosyoekonomik ve Etnik Temeller, Ankara: Yurt Kitap Yaym, 1992, pp. 90-95.
33. Van Bruinessen, op. cit., pp. 22-23. See also Jafar, op. cit., pp. 60-63, 65-66 & 6667, for a more specific discussion of the depressed state of agriculture and livestock
production in Turkish Kurdistan up to more recent times.
34. Van Bruinessen, pp. 23-24. See also Lazarev, op. cit., in Issawi, op. cit., p. 66.
35. Van Bruinessen, op. cit., p. 24. See also David McDowall, The Kurds, London:
Minority Rights Group, Minority Rights Group report No. 23, new edition, 1989. p. 8,
as well as Stephen C. Pelletiere, The Kurds: An Unstable Element in the Gulf, Boulder
and London: Westview Press, 1984, p. 18, and Mehrdad Izady, The Kurds: A Concise
Handbook, Washington, Crane Russak, 1992, pp. 229-231.
36. Van Bruinessen, op. cit., p. 24. Van Bruinessen adds (p. 25) that these tribes
generally have a number of zozan, which they use consecutively.
37. Op. cit., pp. 24-25.
38. Op. cit., p. 26.
39. Op. cit..
40. Peter Beaumont, Gerald H. Blake & J. Malcolm Wagstaff, The Middle East: A
Geographical Study, London: John Wiley, p. 430.
41. Report by Bertrand, Turquie dAsie (1889), in Issawi, op. cit., p. 305.
42. A.D. Novichev, Ocherki Ekonomi Turtsii, in Issawi, op. cit., p. 300, cites the
report of an observer who states that, by the early twentieth century, Diyarbakr
formerly so renowned for the production of velvets, satins and silk stuffs, do [es]
not now produce a tenth part of what they yielded from 30 to 40 years ago.
43. Op. cit., pp. 26-27 and Issawi, op. cit., p. 272-278. See also Issawi, op. cit., p. 298,
who cites a British officials report about Diyarbakir in 1840: in Diyarbakr, which
formerly had 2,000 looms, there exist but a few hundred looms half employed.
44. Report by Bertrand, in Issawi, op. cit., pp. 305-306.
45. Bertrand, in Issawi, op. cit. See also Yildiz, op. cit., pp. 83 & Jafar, op. cit., pp. 5458. Aydin (op. cit., p. 30) states: As a result of this free trade, Ottoman manufacturing
industry collapsed and Ottoman Turkey became integrated into the world system
through trade.
46. See Sevket Pamuk, The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism, 1820-1913.
Trade, Investment and Production, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987,

pp. 82 and 108-129, for a discussion of the general decline of the centrally important
Ottoman cotton industry.
47. See Donald Quataert The Age of Reforms, in An Economic and Social History
of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914, edited by Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 906-907.
48. Keyder, op. cit., p. 29.
49. Yildiz, op. cit., p. 85.
50. Beaumont, et al., op. cit., pp. 430 & 440-443.
51. Keyder, op. cit., p. 56.
52. Keyder, op. cit., p. 51. See also Beaumont et al., op. cit., pp. 431-432. For a
general discussion of the development of industry in Turkey see Aydin, op. cit., pp.
34-37.
53. Jafar, op. cit., p. 54. Jafars definition (op. cit., p. 42) of Turkeys Kurdish region
comprises of the following 14 provinces: Adiyaman; Agri; Bingol; Bitlis; Diyarbakr;
Elaz; Erzincan; Hakkri; Mardin; Mu; Siirt; Tunceli [Dersim]; Urfa and Van.
54. Mehmed Bilgic, Privatization: The Case of Turkey; in Privatization and
Development, ed. Steve H. Hanke, San Francisco: a publication of the International
Center for Economic Growth, Institute for Contemporary Studies Press, 1987, p. 104.
Initial growth was real, but nonetheless slow. According to Z. Y. Hershlag, (Turkey:
The Challenge of Growth, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968, footnote number 4, p. 121),
Turkeys per capita income grew by 19% in constant prices between 1929 and 1939.
55. John Waterbury, Exposed to Inuumerable Delusions. Public Enterprise and State
Power in Egypt, India, Mexico and Turkey, New York: Cambridge University Press,
1993, pp. 4-5. See also pp. 36-37 of the same text.
56. Waterbury, op. cit., p. 37.
57. Op. cit.
58. Op. cit., p. 38.
59. Op. cit., p. 25.
60. Op. cit.
61. Op. cit.
62. Beaumont et al., op. cit., pp. 433-441. Jafar, op. cit., p. 52, notes that most of the
269 machine-operated plants, employing some 17,000 workers were destroyed or
severely damaged during World War I or Turkeys independence war. By 1927,

modem industry was, for all intents and purposes, next to non-existent, less than 4%
of existing factories employing 10 workers or more each.
63. The DPs 1950 election program stated (taken from: Waterbury, op. cit., p. 42):
The basis of our economic and financial views, it can be said, is to shrink as
much as possible the state sector and to broaden as much as possible the
private enterprise sector and to provide it security.
64. See Anne O. Kreuger, Foreign Trade Regimes and Economic Development:
Turkey, New York: Columbia University Press for the National Bureau of Economic
Research, 1974, p. 7.
65. Waterbury, op. cit., p. 42.
66. alar Keyder, State and Class in Modern Turkey. A Study in Capitalist
Development, London: Verso, p. 224 & Beaumont, et al., op. cit., pp. 439440.
67. Kreuger op. cit., pp. 9-10.
68. Kreuger, State and Class in Modern Turkey, p. 223. Significantly, Kreuger reports
(op. cit., p. 10) that the Second Five Year Plan (1968-1972) featured greater
incentives upon incentives in the private sector.
69. Op. cit., pp. 5-6.
70. This information is from a table from evket Pamuk, Income Distribution in
Turkey, 1986 (unpublished), cited in Bent Hansen, The Political Economy of Poverty,
Equity and Growth: Egypt and Turkey. Oxford: Published for the World Bank by
Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 277.
71. Op. cit., pp. 77-78.
72. Op. cit. , p. 6 .
73. Op. cit..
74. Keyder, State and Class in Modern Turkey, p. 223.
75. Waterbury (op. cit., p. 77) states that Turkeys debt trebled in less than a decade.
76. Bahri Yilmaz [Ylmaz] summarises the January 1980 Basic Decree (Decree
8/168) and its two amendments of 16 May and 8 October 1980 which stipulated the
economic liberalisations as follows:

An initial 33% devaluation of the Turkish Lira against the US Dollar and the
adoption of a partly flexible exchange-rate policy followed by frequent
devaluations; export-promotion measures; the liberalization of external trade
and payment regulations; consolidation of Turkeys private non-guaranteed
commercial debts and the introduction of a new foreign investment policy

a restrictive monetary policy; a high interest rate over the inflation rate aimed
at increasing domestic savings and at improved resource allocation;
reorganization of SEEs through substantial price increases and the elimination
of price controls
coordination of economic policy oriented and responsible ministries and
departments for increasing the efficiency of political decisions.

77. There is also evidence, of course, that it was certain powerful international bodies
such as the OECD and the IMF who heavily influenced zals original policy
package. See: Bent Hansen, op. cit., pp. 385 and 387; Mehmet Ali Birand, The
Generals Coup in Turkey: an Inside Story of 12 September 1980. Translated by M. A.
Dikerdem, London: Brasseys Defence Publishers, 1987, Chapter 8, passim and
Yilmaz, op. cit., p. 6.
78. Hansen, op. cit., pp. 383-385.
79. Keyder, State and Class in Modern Turkey, p. 225.
80. Serif Mardin, Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?, in
Dedalus, Winter, 1973, quoted in Keyder, op. cit., p. 225. Korkut Boratov (Inter-Class
and Intra-Class Relations of Distribution under Structural Adjustment: Turkey
During the 1980s, in The Political Economy of Turkey. Debt, Adjustment and
Sustainability, ed. Tosun Aricanli & Dani Rodrik, 1990, p. 206) comments on:
the picture of a substantial decline on wages both in absolute and relative
terms during the 1980s. Between the highest level in the 1970s [1977 or
1979 for (state and private sector employees respectively)] and 1985, the
decline in real wages is 52.1% and 28.6% for all employees and for
manufacturing workers, respectively.
See also Table 9.5, in Boratov, op. cit., p. 209.
81. Keyder, State and Class in Modem Turkey, p. 225.
82. David Waldner, Avoiding the Inevitable Pain. The Politics of Turkish Economic
Reform, in Middle East Insight, volume XI, number 3, (March-April, 1995), p. 40.
83. Hansen, op. cit., pp. 419-420.
84. Op. cit., p. 423.
85. Cotton crops are found especially in the vicinity of the town of Irdir in Turkeys
Kurdish region, while tobacco crops are found throughout the Kurdish region in
Turkey.
86. Boratov, op. cit., p. 215. Emphasis in original.
87. Boratov, op. cit., p. 217.

88. Boratov, op. cit. Boratov bases this statement on a 1984 field study of the
ukurova region by F. and A. S. Doruel.
89. Keyder, State and Class in Modern Turkey, p. 226.
90. Beaumont et al., after noting that the south and south-east are the least urbanised
areas of the Turkish state, comment that The most urbanised regions are those which
received heavy public investment during the 1960s. See Beaumont et al., pp. 441443.
91. Keyder, State and Class in Modern Turkey, p. 228.
92. Waldner, op. cit., p. 39.
93. Op. cit.
94. Waldner, op. cit.
95. As Waldner explains (op. cit., p. 41): Financing the government deficit is
achieved at the cost of high inflation, which in turn exacerbates Turkeys nagging
trade defecit. Furthermore (op. cit.):
Control over a large public sector is a powerful tool of patronage, allowing
the government to institute policies that elicit electoral allegiance. Privatizing
the public sector, on the other hand, would ultimately cause economic
hardships for millions of voters. The government that reforms the economy,
in other words, is undermining the basis of its electoral success.
96. Waldner, op. cit., p. 39.
97. US Central Intelligence Agency, CIA Factbook: Turkey, downloaded on 18
December 1996, from: http:cliffie.nosc.mil/~NATLAS/wfb/T/Turkey/html
98. Amberin Zaman, Knight Ridder Financial News, Ankara, 12 December 1994.
99. US CIA, op. cit. & Amberin Zaman (op. cit., 12 December 1994), who puts the
IMF loan at only $US 720 million.
100. Amberin Zaman (op. cit., 12 December 1994).
101. US CIA, op. cit.
102. Amberin Zaman (op. cit., 12 December 1994).
103. Editorial by Ilnur Cevik, Turkish Daily News, 11 August 1994, Does Citizen
Osman believe iller?
104. US CIA, op. cit.
105. Turkish Daily News, 11 August 1994.

106. Op. cit.

107. Handelsblatt, 11 August 1995.
108. Cevik, op. cit.
109. Reuter (Ankara), 13 September 1994.
110. US CIA, op. cit.
111. A PKK bomb caused $US 40,000 damage to an oil pipeline owned by the state
oil company, in one incident alone, on 14 December 1994, according to Reuter
(Ankara), 19 December 1994.
112. Expenditure by the Turkish military in 1994 alone on the Kurdish war amounted
to more than 12 billion German marks ... This figure was quoted by a government
minister, according to one noted Turkish writer. (Yasar Kemal, Der Spiegel, issue
number 2/95.)
113. See the discussion of this point in Jafar, op. cit., pp. 80-81, & 131-133, the table
on p. 104, which compares employment in large manufacturing industry across
Turkey, region by region, and the examination of gross disparities in the provision of
infrastructure and basic services in the Kurdish region, compared to western Turkey,
on pp. 108-27.
114. Aydin, op. cit., p. 7.
115. Handelsblatt, op. cit. The plight of public sector workers provoked extensive
public sector strikes throughout Turkey in late 1994, involving up to 400,000 workers.
116. Turkey has 80% annual inflation and gaping budget and trade deficits according
to Reuter, Ankara, (3 October 1996). See also James Wyllie, Turkeys new posture:
change or continuity? in Janes Intelligence Review, 1 September 1996, who writes
that annual inflation exceeds 80% while the service of government debt eats up 37%
of the budget.
117. Kyle Pope, Turkey Government Shake-Up May Help Stock Market, Investors
Say, in the Wall Street Journal, 26 June 1996.
118. Waldner, op. cit.
119. Waldner, op. cit.
120. Institut Kurde de Parris, Information and Liaison Bulletin, After Mountain
Villages: the Turkish Army Bombards and Destroys Kurdish Cities,
August/September 1993, p. 3. The Diyarbakir branch of the Insan Haklar Dernei
compiled an 8 page List, by Name, of Kurdish Villages Evacuated by Force and
Destroyed by the Turkish Army, up until August 1993. This list is reproduced in
Institut Kurde de Paris, Information and Liaison Bulletin, (August-September 1993,
pp. 20-27).

121. US Department of State, Turkey Human Rights Practices, 1995.

122. US Department of State, op. cit.
123. US Department of State, op. cit.
124. Yildiz, op. cit., p. 92.
125. Karpat, Structural Change, in Karpat, op. cit., p. 58 and van Bruinessen, op.
cit., p. 23. See also Jafar, op. cit., pp. 87-90. Hershlag, op. cit., pp. 29-30, discusses
demographic change on a Turkey-wide basis, as does Frank Tachau, Turkey, The
Politics of Authority, Democracy and Development, New York: Praeger Special
Studies/Praeger Scientific, Praeger, 1984, chapter 7, passim.
126. Erol Tumertekin, Turkiyede I Gcler, cited by Aydin, op. cit., p. 58. See also
Table 46 in Ta, Turkiye Kurdistani Ekonomik ve Sosyal Yapi, no place: 1985,
Ozgrlk, Yolu Yayinlari, p. 182. This is entitled: 1975-1980: Proportion of Net
Migration in Turkish Kurdistan, and claims to be based wholly on Turkish
government statistics.
127. James Wyllie, (op. cit.) states:
More than half of Turkeys people are under 25 but growth is too low to
provide employment. The country is urbanizing at an amazing rate. In 1945,
only 18% of the population were city dwellers; now, it is over 75%. Ten
years ago, Istanbuls population was 5.5 million; now, it is over 12 million.
128. Erhard Franz, Das Gneydou Anadolu Projesi/GAP in Stichworten, in
Dokumentation der Internationale Konferenanz Menschenrechte in Kurdistan,
Bremen, 1989, p. 187.
129. Franz, op. cit., pp. 188-189.
130. Franz, op. cit., p. 191.
131. Franz, op. cit., pp. 195-196.
132. Franz, op. cit., p. 197.
133. Op. cit.
134. Op. cit.
135. Op. cit., p. 198.
136. Osman Tekinel, Possible Effects of GAP on the Economy, in Newspot Turkish
Digest, 23 May 1991, p. 2. See also Franz, op. cit., pp. 191-193.
137. Arslan Baer Kafaolu, Proje Mi, Balon Mu?, in Demokrat magazine of April
1991, pp. 44-45.

138. Kafaolu, op. cit., p. 45.

139. This is not to deny that Turkey as a whole is not under-developed, compared to
the industrialised West, of course. (See The Political Economy of Income Distribution
in Turkey, ed. Ergun zbudun and Aydn Ulusan, New York: Holmes and Meier,
1980, passim.) The point is that the Kurdish region is chronically underdeveloped,
even compared to western Turkey.
140. Van Bruinessen, p. 27.
141. Op. cit.
142. Op. cit., p. 28. See also Issawi, op. cit., pp. 272-278. Aydn comments (op. cit., p.
18):
the underdevelopment of eastern Anatolia (including south-eastern Anatolia)
is the result of the regions integration into the capitalist economy. Capitalism
develops unevenly: while bringing about development in one part, it causes
underdevelopment in another part.
143. Michael M. Gunter, The Kurds in Turkey. A Political Dilemma, Boulder:
Westview Press, 1990, p. 127.
144. Gunter, op. cit., p. 125. The August 1979 CIA report he refers to is a secret
document seized during the occupation of the United States Embassy in Tehran in
1979. It was entitled The Kurdish Problem in Perspective. See also Jafar, op. cit., p.
77.
145. Van Bruinessen, op. cit., pp. 28-29.
146. Waterbury, op. cit., p. 70.

This is an electronic version of an article published in the Journal of Muslim Minority

Affairs 1998 Copyright Taylor & Francis. The Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs
is available online at www.tandfonline.com
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