DYNAMICS OF INTERNATIONAL LAND DEALS IN THE 2000s: THE CASE OF TURKEY

Abstract

This study aims to provide a comprehensive framework of international land deals accelerated in the 2000s and to reveal the motivations and dynamics behind them. This inquiry will be developed by the framework of “land grabbing” literature, with regard to Financial Crisis and Food Crisis as of 2008. It will then be exemplified by the case of Turkey regarding land deals abroad and within its own territories in this period. By doing this, it is argued that financial liberalization process, launched in 1980s, impinging balance of payment problem on individual states in global scale appears to Turkish state in the form of currency deficit and cash constraint. In this sense, lands and other resources have been re-organized in their property regimes in order to facilitate foreign investment, specifically on agricultural lands, and for the investors from Gulf countries.

Keywords

• Land grabbing
• financial liberalization
• Turkey
• international land deals

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