Murat Öztürk*

The ownership of private land in Turkey has numerous legal, political, economic, and ethnic dimensions, both individually and collectively necessitating discussion. Legally, the transition of the right of land use from state ownership (demesne) to private ownership began with the Ottoman Land Regulation Law of 1858 and was further fortified and safeguarded by the republican-era constitutions and other legal measures during the twentieth century. Legal regulations alone do not determine the nature of the distribution of land to individuals and groups, but they are a strong indicator. Other political and social aspects, such as population exchange, forced migration and displacement, and subsequent land allocation, as well as the influence of the Kurdish agha system in southeast Anatolia, indicate the political aspects of the determination of land ownership in the country. Considering all these factors, the Turkish experience reveals that the distribution of land ownership and usage rights cannot be explained by a single factor and that political considerations need to be taken into account.

Among the political considerations is that of the Kurdish feudal landlord structure and the state’s protection or confiscation of the property of the landlords—aghas and political parties—according to prevailing political interests. Historically, some Kurdish landlords had their lands confiscated and distributed to peasants, while others were accepted as a source of votes and routinely allocated seats in parliament by political parties of both the left and right. In short, land ownership and control became one of the important areas that embodied a harmony or conflict of interests between landlords and the state.[1]

The political pursuits initiated during the Ottoman imperial era culminated in the post-WWI establishment of Turkey as a nation-state, which, in turn, required the construction of a national identity. This led to policies that aimed at transforming rural peasants into citizens of the new republic; over 80% of the population lived in rural areas prior to WWII and relied on agriculture for their livelihood. The land reform efforts from 1925 to 1977 were directed not only at creating loyal Turkish citizens but also at addressing economic needs (in the context of relatively low levels of capital development and food security). From the 1920s to the 1960s, although varying by region, labor was generally a limiting factor in agriculture. Land reform was thus utilized to provide for those with little or no land in order to enhance efficiency and guarantee the role of labor in agricultural activities. The issue of labor scarcity in agriculture also diminished after 1947 due to rapid mechanization and population increase, and agricultural employment continued to rise steadily until the 1960s—and even, in some localities (farming sectors, etc.), into the 1990s. In other areas, however, the rapid population growth had disrupted the balance between labor and land by the late 1950s, resulting in urban and out migration.

During the period of land reforms (1925–1977), the structure of agriculture and the economy played a crucial role in shaping the policies that were pursued. Initially, when the republic was established, rural farmers worked with limited irrigation, fertilization, and machine facilities, relying heavily on animal and human labor to cultivate predominantly low-yield lands (Table 1). Farmers in crop farming and animal husbandry predominantly engaged in labor-intensive agriculture. War and migration had reduced the population, which was weakened by epidemic diseases and the majority impoverished. Land redistribution to these peasant populations aimed to increase production, hence tax revenues, investments, and economic surplus. The early republican governments were aware of the agricultural revolution in the West and developed agricultural policies incorporating the elements of modern farming. Land reform was pursued in tandem with modernization-oriented, development-driven agricultural policies until the 1980s.

The land reform policies comprised an important cause of the proliferation of small landownership in agriculture in Turkey, which, in turn, supported the establishment of small-scale production (family-based smallholder farming) and the permanence of agrarianism.[2] There were two exceptions to this trend: in the Kurdish regions, tribal leaders possessed vast lands, while in the western regions, state privileges and economic power resulted in significant land ownership (Table 2). The 1945 law aimed at distributing land for farming (Çiftçiyi Topraklandırma Kanunu) found a wider application in the provinces where large enterprises were not common—in other words, where there were no large landowners who were influential in the political arena and in the implementation of the law. The land ownership of the Kurdish agas in the southeast can be viewed from this perspective, as the Turkish state tried to expropriate the lands of some agas and distribute them to the peasants—an attempt that was ultimately unsuccessful, partly because the political parties’ need for Kurdish votes to win elections led them to cooperate with the agas. While someone from the agha’s family that cooperated with the state held a seat in parliament, the local power of the agas was maintained. These agas continued to own large lands and control the population. Again, one can see the phenomenon of “good” and “bad” aghas in the context of the politics of land.

Large Kurdish landlords were not only rewarded with seats in parliament but also gained further land, which they could use to extend their local power. Similarly, the families of Adnan Menderes and Emin Sazak, leading figures of the Democratic Party, distributed a significant part of their lands to the villagers. Thus, they maintained their political power—both in parliament, where they controlled some seats, and at the local level—and developed their party and personal popularity as representing the side of the peasants.

In 1913, according to the agricultural census, there were one million people involved in agriculture, most of whom were peasants and farmers. They worked their own lands as hereditary and perpetual tenants and engaged in sharecropping and laboring elsewhere. Despite significant inequality in land ownership—5% of households owned 65.5% of agricultural land in 1913, while 87% of households owned 34.5%—there was minimal wage labor, with peasants also cultivating the larger land holdings. By 1927, the population had reached 13.6 million, with 1.75 million farming families. The number of farming households (agricultural enterprises) increased to 2.5 million in 1950 and 3.1 million in 1963, reaching 3.9 million in 1991 (Turkstat, Agricultural Census 1991). The number of farmers who received land through land reform totaled 769,424 households (See Table 1) . Meanwhile, agricultural )employment increased from 4.9 million in 1927 to 8.3 million in 1966 and, while fluctuating in some years, reached a historical high of nine million in 1991 (Turkstat, Laboour Force Statistics).

The uneven land distribution did not change, especially where the Kurdish agas continued to maintain large properties, although in many regions, the division of lands through inheritance decreased. For example, in 1991, just 2.5% of the farmers in the southeast region had 500 hectares or more, but they held 37.2% of the total land cultivated there. In the same year, these rates were 0.31% and 10.7% for Turkey in general. In other words, the proportion of enterprises with 500 hectares or more in the southeast was eight times higher than the national average, and the share of the land that they cultivated was some 3.5 times greater. At the same time, the rate of landless farmer families was just over 30% across Turkey but 43% in the southeastern Anatolia region. The average amount of land given to farming families in this region between 1947 and 1972 was 8.165 hectares. Among the provinces there, the most intense land distribution was made in the provinces of Muş and Bitlis, followed by Van and Urfa, then Bingöl, Diyarbakir, Siirt, and Mardin, and finally (the least) Hakkari (Korkut, 1984, p. 52).

According to the 1927 Agricultural Census, there were just 4.3 million hectares of cultivated land (6.6 million including fallow land) as compared to 46 million hectares of pastureland. With the opportunities provided by tractor usage, pastures were converted into agricultural fields, leading to an increase in cultivated land to 26.4 million hectares by 1969. This expansion of agriculture facilitated the implementation of land reforms. Much of the land distributed through the land reforms would largely come from publicly owned mainly scrub, grassland which previously used for grazing  and other type lands.

In summary, between the years 1925 and 1977, numerous land reform laws were enacted, resulting in the distribution of lands primarily owned by the state along with closed foundations, emigrants, and a small number of large landowners to migrants, landless and small-landholder peasants, and newly settled nomads. It cannot be said that a comprehensive land reform was implemented, considering the relatively modest amount of land subject to reform and the inequality in land distribution. Nevertheless, the proportion of households receiving land was significant. Between 1927 to 1950, the number of farming households increased by around 750,000; if we assume that all the distributed lands until 1945 went to landless households, then approximately 44% of this increase was comprised of households that thus became new landowners. Since these included immigrants from abroad, most of whom were settled in central and west Anatolia and Thrace, it can be said that the land distribution in this period was mostly carried out in the western half of the country.

Conclusion

Brought to the fore by issues around food and sustainability as well as equity and democracy, the subject of land reform maintains its importance as one that benefits from extensive discussion and research, both theoretical and practical (e.g., legal, technical), and political as well as socioeconomic). In this regard, the Turkish experience stands as a rich laboratory that includes all these aspects, but the subject is still under-researched. Developed within the framework of relations between the landlords, the state, and the political parties, the land reform efforts in Turkey clearly reveal this as very much a political issue, both in and outside the parliament.

Specifically, the political, social, and economic significance of Kurdish landlords historically and still today is undeniable. On the other hand, it is clear that the institution of the agha also underwent an evolution. Individual observations indicate that some aghas became capitalist farmers while others lost their status, but quite how the aghas and (tribal) agha families evolved over time is a subject that remains to be investigated. Insofar as the aghas also evolved, for example, then how meaningful is the discussion of feudalism based on the historical size of the agha’s territory and their influence over the villages there? From this perspective, it is known that there are still some agha households with large lands, so what should be a land reform policy that is both economically efficient and socially equitable in the use it makes of agricultural lands? The wide-ranging impacts of the measures that have been and will be taken will become clearer when answers are sought to such questions in relation to agriculture and farmers.

*Murat Öztürk is associate professor at the  Department of Economics at Kırklareli University in Turkey. He is scheduled to speak at the workshop titled “Contentious Politics in Kurdish Studies: Land, Nature, and Infrastructure”, September 1, 2023. For the complete program, see: https://ruralsociologywageningen.nl/2023/05/23/contentious-politics-in-kurdish-studies-workshop-land-nature-and-infrastructure/

References

Atlı, Cengiz,. Arşiv Belgeleri Işığında Türkiye’de Tarımsal Durum (1923- 1937), İçtimaiyat Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 4, 2020, pp. 47–61.

Boll, Heinrich, Stiftung Derneği, Toprak Atlası, 2015, Berlin.

DPT, Kırsal kalkınma, ÖİK Raporu, 1984, Ankara.

Hür, Ayşe, Osmanlı’dan Bugüne Kürtler ve Devlet: Kürt Milliyetçiliğinin ‘Geç’ Doğumu, Taraf [newspaper], 19–25.10.2008.

Korkut, S., Toprak Reformu ve Türkiye, TBMM Kütüphane, Dokümantasyon ve Tercüme Müdürlüğü Yay, 1984, Ankara.

Toprak, Zafer, Türkiye Tarımı ve Yapısal Gelişmeler 1900-1950, in Şevket Pamuk & Zafer Toprak, Türkiye’de Tarımsal Yapılar (1923-2000), Yurt Yay, Ankara. / Türk Sosyal Bilimler Derneği, 1988, s. 19-35.

TÜİK (TurkStat), Agricultural Census 1991, Ankara.

TÜİK (TurkStat), Labour Force Statistics 1991, Ankara.

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[1] Of course, not all agas and Kurds were the same in the eyes of the state, for different reasons in different historical periods. After the PKK raids on Şemdinli and Eruh in 1984, for example, villages in east and southeast Anatolia were divided into two, as ‘reliable’ or ‘unreliable’, the former peopled by tribes that had previously given soldiers to Abdülhamit’s Hamidiye regiments and thus become integrated into the then Ottoman state (members of these tribes continued to receive state salaries through their wives until the 1950s) (Hür, 2008).

[2] Factors that promoting the continuity of small-scale agriculture included the labor-intensive character of agriculture, the division of lands by inheritance, the inability of non-agricultural sectors to absorb the idle agricultural labor force, and the durability and flexibility of the small commodity producer structure.

Tables

Table 1. Amount of land distributed by land reform implementations and numbers of benefiting households

Period	Distributed land (ha)	Beneficiary households
Up to 1945	1,098,814	335,089
After 1945	2,231,300	434,335
TOTAL	3,330,114	769,424

Sources: Atlı (2020), Boll (2015), Toprak (1988), DPT (1984).

Table 2. Regional proportions of farms and lands worked by farm size (1991)

Region	Percentage share of farms (A) and land (B)
			Farm size (ha)
			1-4.9		5-9.9		10-49		50-99	100-199	200-499	500-999
Central north	A	23.33		30.89		22.33		14.66		7.91	0.78	0.11
	B	2.87		12.95		19.9		22.72		28.8	6.66	3.1
Aegean	A	43.08		35.32		15.08		5.11		1.31	0.06	0.04
	B	10.95		2982		27.99		18.36		10.19	1.06	1.63
Marmara	A	30.51		33.27		22.43		10.59		2.86	0.33	0.01
	B	5.29		19.8		28.64		26.68		14.28	4.04	1.27
Mediterranean	A	44.17		30.09		15.74		6.6		2.83	0.38	0.19
	B	8.29		20.28		23.2		18.79		17.28	5.56	6.6
Northeast	A	36.21		27.49		19.19		11.03		5.27	0.72	0.09
	B	5.43		14.22		22.22		23.99		24.93	7.53	2.68
Southeast	A	28.23		21.2		18.61		16.43		10.45	2.58	2.5
	B	1.28		4.83		8.97		15.19		20.66	11.86	37.2
Black Sea	A	49.9		36.02		10.48		2.82		0.72	0.02	0.04
	B	17.57		37.52		23.65		12.48		6.17	0.47	2.14
Central east	A	29.75		34.43		20.52		10.42		4.17	0.56	0.16
	B	2.8		18.75		23.26		23.02		19.45	5.78	4.59
Central south	A	27.45		25.37		21.52		16.37		8.11	0.98	0.2
	B	2.8		10.05		18.2		27.5		27.3	7.45	6.7
Turkey	A	36.55		17.53		17.53		9.42		4.27	0.59	0.31
	B	5.63		19.94		19.94		20.99		19.82	6.39	10.7

Source: TÜİK (1991).