A Discussion on Rural Transformation in Turkey

Rural areas represent an indigenous culture and richness of a native society. The environment made by this society is a product of local culture, built by the use of available local materials, considering local production and lifestyle of the villages. Continuity of rural areas is necessary for safeguarding a specific landscape – which has specific features – on earth with its components. A specific landscape can sustain only with a continuous rural life. For a sustainable rural life, the income source of the inhabitants which is mainly based on production should be continuous. In Turkey, in rural areas, most of the population used to deal with the agricultural production. However, the number of people living in rural areas has decreased gradually because of the policies applied as a result of the worldwide movements and trends such as industrialization, mechanization, modernization and globalization. These policies affects the national policies and rural areas lost importance and improvement of urban areas become the foremost aim of the state. The outcomes of the changes in national policies threatens rural heritage achieving a positive contemporary transformation. In this text, the transformation of rural areas in Turkey regarding the applied policies by the government is introduced to understand basics of the problem for conservation of rural areas. The alterations in the agricultural, legal and administrative policies in Turkey are discussed. The regulations made in the policies caused traditional rural practices of small land owners lost their validity by elimination of human force and discovery of new cultivation methods. The common crisis has been the unavoidable migration from rural to urban. This initiated improvisation of the peasants and annihilation of rural life and architecture. This process is also seen in rural areas of foreign countries and discussed on global platforms. Therefore, a general approach for conservation of rural areas is put forward through international charters comparing it with the approaches in Turkey