Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2015
Many specialists in comparative farming systems and agrarian social structures have recognized in recent decades the resilience and vitality of non-capitalistic family farming (Harriss, 1982; Shanin, 1987). For Turkey, both the general characteristics and many regional variations were well established by Aresvik (1975). Recent work by Çağlar Keyder (1983) has traced the genesis of modern Turkish rural society back to the Ottoman period and outlined the different trajectories that particular types of community may undergo, utilizing an explanatory framework grounded in political economy. The main thrust of Keyder's argument is that the free peasantry which played an important role throughout Anatolian history has been emphatically consolidated in the Republican period. In particular, the dramatic changes of the 1950s ushered in an era of petty commodity producer domination.