Rural Poverty Dynamics: An Evaluation on Agricultural Policies of Turkey

The meaning of rural areas started to change, due to both the inability in forming sufficient agricultural policies, and altering relationship between the urban and the rural. Yet it is argued in this paper that the deepening rural poverty in Turkey is not shaped only in relation to the recent developments but, from the 1980s to today, changing rural policies, subsidies, and forms of production have prepared the dissociation in rural areas which had an impact on the changing interaction between the urban and the rural as well. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the dynamics that shape rural poverty in Turkey (regarding the new relations between the urban and the rural, as well) through agricultural statistics starting from the 1970s until today.