The Changing Structure of Agricultural Supports and the Causes of High Agricultural Supports: A Comparative Analysis for Turkey

Agricultural support payment is an important policy for the protection of agricultural sector. In terms of the ratio of agricultural support payments to GDP, Turkey is the country that has the highest agricultural supports among the OECD and the EU’s countries. This situation largely arises from the structural problems of the Turkish agricultural sector. In this framework, the reasons, which cause high agricultural support in Turkey, establish the subject of this study. Therefore, the data that belong to the OECD, EU and Turkey were taken into account and analyzed comparatively. At the end of the work it was revealed that, the main reasons of high agricultural supports which are implemented in Turkey are; agricultural employment, manufacturer’s level of income derived from agricultural activities, the feature of support and product-based support policies.