When introducing this survey, it is necessary to say a word of justification about the time limits adopted. The year 1500 has been selected as an approximate starting point, because only during the reign of Sultan Bayezid II (1481-1512) do Ottoman tax registers become frequent enough to allow even approximate conclusions with respect to agricultural production. However when dealing with certain regions of the Empire, we need to adopt an even later starting point. After all, part of this paper deals with ‘Syria’ in the broad sense of the word, that is, the region bordering the eastern Mediterranean between Anatolia and Egypt; and this area was only conquered by the Ottomans in 1516. As to Tunisia, to which the present paper will also refer, this country only became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1533 or 1570.

Since the beginning of liberal pluralist politics in 1950, Turkey has experienced three military coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980. Of these military incursions the ones in 1960 and 1980 were the most serious in scope. Each time the armed forces remained in power for a short time, 1960–1961 and 1980–1983, and completely revised the existing constitutional framework. These were unlike the 1971 intervention which did not result in a complete revision of the political system, but only in an amendment of the constitution to provide the state with more powers in dealing with domestic violence. In this respect, the 1960 coup marks the end of the First Republic. The subsequent period, 1961–1980 is the Second Republic.

This is a paper tracing the history of an ideology, in the classical Marxist sense of the term: a framework of thought which purports to make sense of reality but which in fact masks its real dynamics, and which is developed in the service of class interest (Marx, 1970). The ideology in question here has to do with the ways in which social scientists conceptualize and analyse the dynamics of those societies usually described as the Third World. In recent years, following the failure of functionalism and such developmentalist schemas as Rostow's stages of economic growth, there has begun to emerge an interest in thinking about Third World societies in terms of social and cultural pluralism. It is this framework of thought which is to be examined here.

The characterization of agrarian structures in contemporary underdeveloped countries has been haunting social scientists for a long time. As in Latin America and India, from the late sixties onwards a strong controversy emerged among Marxists in Turkey concerning the question of why capitalism had not transformed rural structures in Turkey (J. Harris, 1982; R. L. Harris, 1978; Aydın 1986). The question of capitalist transformation of the countryside occupied the minds of classical Marxist thinkers like Kautsky, Lenin, Luxembourg at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.