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Rural poverty in Turkey

Rural poverty has declined in the Republic of Turkey over the past ten years, but extreme disparities of income and poverty levels persist across the country. In poor rural areas, family size is nearly twice the national average, adult literacy rates are far lower than the national average, there are fewer doctors, agricultural production per capita is lower, and fewer women are among the employed.

Currently there are more rural people living in poverty than urban people. The overall poverty rate in rural households is 35 per cent, compared to 22 per cent in urban households. That margin is diminishing as more and more rural people migrate to urban areas, mainly in the more prosperous western parts of the country.

Poverty is deepest in remote mountainous areas, where poor rural people tend to be economically, physically, intellectually and socially isolated from the rest of the nation.

Who are Turkey’s poor rural people?

The poorest rural people are self-employed and unpaid family workers. They include small-scale farmers and their households and people who live in remote and isolated areas. Women and unemployed young people are particularly disadvantaged.

Where are they?

The poorest people live in the country’s least developed areas in eastern and south-eastern Anatolia and parts of the coastal regions on the Black Sea. Incomes in those areas are 40 per cent lower than the national average.

Why are they poor?

Common causes of poverty among disadvantaged people in Turkey’s rural areas include:

• the large size of families and the small size of landholdings 
• long-term environmental problems such as overgrazing and soil erosion
• lack of infrastructure such as roads and markets in remote areas
• lack of an effective welfare safety net for very poor people

Source: IFAD