The alternative consumer cooperatives (ACCs) studied in this book strive to transform the prevailing food production and consumption nexus by re-positioning the petty commodity producers and bridging the gap between the urban middle class and the rural areas. In so doing, the ACCs have introduced fundamental changes such as bypassing the middlemen, de-fetishising foodstuff and experimenting with zero-hierarchy and consensus-based decision-making that challenge the capitalist forms of organizing and doing business. They are not driven by the profit motive and growth-pursuing strategies but instead develop and promote solidarity, collective action and mutuality among and within the urban middle class and rural small producers that have been excluded from the economic realm by the authoritarian implementation of neo-liberal policies. The ACCs are transforming the long-established socio-economic rural– urban relations in agriculture and invite other constituencies (municipalities and professional groups like architects, designers, software engineers and actors) to participate in the diffusion of alternative ways of organizing. The actions taken, tools developed and positions taken are important in understanding this transformation process and assessing its future trajectories. Thus, in this study we have tried to understand and describe how and why the ACCs evolved and how they challenge capitalist logic in food provisioning by experimenting and re-organizing their practices as problems are encountered.

The ACCs are grassroot organizations initiated by petty commodity producers, their representative organizations and the urban middle class who are excluded from the economic and social realm by the implementation of neo-liberal policies. As discussed in Chapter 4, the initiation of the ACCs is marked by the collaboration of petty commodity producers and urban middle-class citizens. As small producers, individual producers (for example, İlhan Koçulu and Ali Ünüvar) that had prior experience with producer cooperatives, Kibele (a producer cooperative) and Çiftçi-Sen (Farmers’ Union) were actively involved in the founding of the ACCs. The association Tohum-İzi Derneği (formerly KEÇI– Solidarity Initiative between Urbanites and Farmers) and the academic and administrative staff of Boğaziçi University were the initial representatives of the consumers. The dominant values that inspired and guided these groups were rooted in the premises of La Via Campesina.

Organizing is politics made durable. From cooperatives to corporations, Occupy to Meta, states and NGOs, organizations shape our lives. They shape the possible futures of governance, policy making and social change, and hence are central to understanding how human beings can deal with the challenges that face us, whether that be pandemics, populism or climate change. This book series publishes work that explores how politics happen within and because of organizations and organizing. We want to explore how activism is organized and how activists change organizations. We are also interested in the forms of resistance to activism, in the ways that powerful interests contest and reframe demands for change. These are questions of huge relevance to scholars in sociology, politics, geography, management and beyond, and are becoming ever more important as demands for impact and engagement change the way that academics imagine their work. They are also important to anyone who wants to understand more about the theory and practice of organizing, not just the abstracted ideologies of capitalism taught in business schools.

Our books offer critical examinations of organizations as sites of, or targets for, activism, and we will also assume that our authors – and hopefully our readers – are themselves agents of change. Titles may focus on specific industries or fields, or they may be arranged around particular themes or challenges. Our topics might include the alternative economy; surveillance, whistleblowing and human rights; digital politics; religious groups; social movements; NGOs; feminism and anarchist organization; action research and co-production; activism and the neoliberal university, and any other subjects that are relevant and topical.

Organizations and Activism is also a multidisciplinary series. Contributions from all and any relevant academic fields will be welcomed. The series is international in outlook, and proposals from outside the English-speaking global north are particularly welcome.

There could hardly be a more essential subject to human life than the focus for the fifth book in our series: food. We buy it, cook it, consume it every day. It is essential to survive, and also plays a pivotal role in our overall health and wellbeing. Yet food is more than this. Food is not merely sustenance; it is a source of pleasure, cultural identity and social connection. From birthdays to weddings, holidays to festivals, food takes centre stage in commemorating these important moments in our lives. Food matters.

Introduction

How did alternative consumer cooperatives (ACCs) emerge and how do they function within a context characterized by an exit from democracy, the rise of political Islamism and the populist neo-liberal policies (see, for example, David and Toktamış, 2015; Toktamış and David, 2015; David, 2016; Öktem and Akkoyunlu, 2016; Özden et al., 2017; Çalışkan, 2018; Adaman et al, 2019; Toktamış, 2019; Adaman and Akbulut, 2020)? In a political and economic milieu characterized by the dominance of a strong state tradition and a commitment to the premises of neo-liberal policies, affecting various aspects of social and economic life as well as the daily practices of citizens, how did a non-capitalist form of organizing emerge from those excluded from the political and economic realm? What were the major factors that mobilized the urban middle class to build networks of solidarity with other excluded groups and the petty commodity producers?

Although the neo-liberal turn in Turkey started with the 1980 structural adjustment programme, its full-blown implementation happened in the early 2000s when the ruling party, with the guidance of international organizations, instigated a political project to refashion Turkish society by combining neo-liberal economic policies, democracy and Islam (Çelik, 2015; Tuğal, 2015; David, 2016; Tansel, 2018). The model, usually described as ‘passive revolution’ in Gramscian terms (Tuğal, 2009), was implemented in a top-down fashion by the appointed bureaucrats and elected politicians. This neo-liberal Islamic model was successful in facilitating the inclusion of some groups (pro-government entrepreneurs, journalists, academics, bureaucrats) to the economic and political domains of society. The model also had a neo-liberal populist character in its capacity to include the new urban poor and informal sector workers by addressing their needs for housing and social assistance (Özden and Bekmen, 2015; Batuman, 2019). The government took certain initiatives (gentrification, low interest rates) to solve the informal housing (gecekondu) problems which later gave way to urban exclusion and the occupation of public spaces by mosques and shopping malls (Alonso, 2015). This neo-liberal populist, political Islamist project with its emphasis on the inclusion of the urban poor with the pro-AKP factions was, at the same time, exclusionary (Tuğal, 2015).

In recent years the Turkish political domain has witnessed a multitude of solidarity initiatives such as consumer cooperatives, women-owned producer cooperatives and neighbourhood assemblies formed by citizens in an effort to express their discontent with the hegemonic neo-liberal project and the tone of its implementation. These initiatives, in response to full-blown neo-liberalism and the increasing drift towards authoritarianism, can be taken as enclaves of ‘hope’ where, through direct democracy and solidarity among various constituencies, excluded groups can be repositioned within the political and economic realm and citizens can have a voice in politics. Activists involved in these initiatives demand a ‘just’ distribution of resources within society and claim that by realizing their capabilities, by pursuing their ideals and by offering their time and labour they can shape power relations at the local level. Participants from diverse social and economic backgrounds – workers, professionals, university students, the unemployed – question the predominant norms of the existing political system and develop alternatives that can lead to change. In this book we focus on one of these initiatives: the alternative consumer cooperatives (ACCs) as spaces for prefigurative food politics.

In Turkey, the ACCs are different to conventional consumer cooperatives (CCCs), which have been instrumentalized either by the state or by companies for private gain. The ACCs proliferated after the 2013 Gezi Park protests as a reaction to the hegemony of capitalist relationships in the production and distribution of foodstuff. They are governed by activists who disregard managerialist logic and experiment with alternative ways of governance such as a zero hierarchy and consensus-based decision-making. The daily activities of the ACCs are carried out by consumers who offer their labour voluntarily and who provide examples of non-marketable forms of economic transactions such as reciprocity and social obligation. Given all these features, in this book we view ACCs as spaces of prefigurative politics where politically positioned consumers not only experiment with and gain insight into alternatives to the capitalist logic, but also reshape the existing power relations in and around the ACCs. In so doing, we expose the strategies employed by the government in the construction of a globally oriented capitalist production/consumption nexus in agriculture and explore how ACCs develop counter-strategies to resist and challenge the status quo.

Introduction

In recent years, following the 2013 Gezi protests, citizens across Turkey have expressed their discontent with the prevailing neo-liberal system and political regime by establishing various forms of solidarity initiatives – consumer cooperatives, producer cooperatives and neighbourhood solidarity initiatives. These initiatives, while adhering to the spirit of Gezi, were driven by a claim to take an active role in issues concerning all the citizens in a specific locality. Gezi protesters, while responding to ‘the institutionalization of neo-liberalism and centralization of powers’ (Akçay, 2021, p 93), also developed a hope that through direct democracy, resistance and solidarity, citizens could have a voice in politics (Öztan, 2013; Parlak, 2013; Sevinç, 2022). In the local initiatives that proliferated after Gezi, through forums and neighbourhood assemblies (Mahalle Meclisleri), public opinion on issues such as food, child abuse, violence against women, betterment of labour conditions and collective action for resolving persistent problems was developed (Doğançayır, 2022; Kahraman, 2022). Mahalle Meclisleri (Olcan, 2020), were later named as district solidarity initiatives and, as noted by Fırat (2022), proliferated during the COVID-19 pandemic. After the announcement of the Coronavirus Support Programme by the government, 17 new solidarity initiatives were established in İstanbul, Ankara, Bursa, Ayvalık and Mersin. In this chapter we focus on one of these initiatives, the alternative consumer cooperatives (ACCs) and elaborate on their work in reclaiming the public sphere with a transformative potential that is shaped through the politicization of consumers and petty commodity producers. In so doing, we investigate how a public sphere concerning food politics in Turkey has been developed, who the main actors are, what types of media they use, and which other constituencies have been drawn in.

Borrowing on the Habermasian (1981, 1987, 1989) concept of the public sphere we see the ACCs as a space for the development and articulation of a special discourse. We consider the public sphere as a formation where groups of activists come together and question normative arrangements. We focus on the discourse, that is, how activists reflexively negate and question prevailing habits, practices and assumptions, and how the ACCs try to re-moralize everyday activities (for example as consumers, as volunteers), re-politicize the politics of food and build awareness for an ‘alternative’.

Introduction

The impact of globalization and neo-liberal policies in Turkish agriculture has been marked by the subordination of the petty commodity producers to market forces and their displacement from land and farming tradition. After the 1980 structural adjustment programme, governments with legislative reforms withdrew subsidies, reduced price supports and privatized parastatal organizations which in turn compelled small producers of agricultural products to rely on their own resources in their struggle within local and international markets. The pervasive implementation of neo-liberal policies, especially after 2002, transformed both production and consumption in agriculture.

On the production side, with the increasing dominance of agro-food companies and the commodification of foodstuff, petty commodity producers were driven out of the market. According to the official data of the Social Security Institute (SGK), in the last twelve years the number of insured farmers has dropped by 48.6 per cent (see Figure 6.1) and, in the last eighteen years, the amount of arable land has decreased by 3.150 million hectares (Tuncer, 2019). Small farmers deprived of government subsidies became more reliant on bank loans for the provision of their seeds, pesticides and machinery. As explained by the president of Çiftçi-Sen (the Farmers’ Union), the petty commodity producers’ debts for agriculture to the banks and credit cooperatives increased 53 times between 2002 and 2020 (Çameli, 2021), while subsidies were reduced by 48 per cent. In this transformation process, as well as increases in input prices, petty commodity producers faced stiff competition from imported foodstuff. However, it is worth noting that, currently, due to foreign currency fluctuations and the Turkish lira losing its value drastically, lowering trade barriers does not work as a viable strategy. In such an economic and political milieu, the petty commodity producers are left with a choice between leaving their farm and/or negotiating contracts with the agro-food companies.

On the consumption side, after 1980, with the implementation of free-market operations and the deregulation of agriculture, a major transformation in the food industry took place; the number of foreign companies increased and major international food processors and retailers entered the Turkish market either as greenfield operations or as joint ventures with local big capital (Yenal, 1999; Atasoy, 2013; Değirmenci, 2021).

Introduction

During the last two decades, with the implementation of populist neo-liberal policies, Turkish agriculture has gone through a comprehensive restructuring which has led to economic and social transformations. Petty commodity producers have become distanced from agriculture, the peasantry has declined, and a majority of the young rural population has moved to the cities, and comprise an informal labour force. Those who stayed in the rural areas have became proletariat on their own land with the pervasive implementation of contract farming by the agro-food companies. These transformations on the production side are coupled with the food crises, namely price rises and low-quality foodstuff, in the cities. Alternative consumer cooperatives, (ACCs) with their alternative provisioning system, governance model shaped by direct democracy and a commitment to the premises of the food sovereignty movement, can provide a solution in reconfiguring the prevalent production– consumption nexus. Especially after 2013, as awareness of the social, political and economic effects of capitalism grew, we began to witness the progression of alternative cooperatives in Turkey. In the Turkish context, alternative consumer cooperatives, besides forming a site for the development of an alternative to the capitalist forms of organizing, provide a remarkable example in terms of divergence from the conventional consumer cooperatives (CCCs).

The cooperative movement in Turkey is rooted in the examples that were developed during the decline of the Ottoman Empire. These early examples provide the background to understanding the evolution of the CCCs; they were established by the deliberate efforts of statesmen in an effort to provide a solution to the problems faced by villagers. Secondly, although there were some initiatives for a cooperative model based on the example in Rochdale, their operations were terminated by the ruling party. These grassroots initiatives, shaped by the ideas of the intellectuals Mustafa Suphi, Ethem Nejat and Ahmet Cevat, were expected to by-pass the middlemen and support the consumers to be their own producer. These experiences are important in underlining the dominant role of the state and the tensions between the ruling cadres and the intellectuals, and provide an explanation of how cooperatives are instrumentalized by the state. Similar tendencies shaped the cooperative movement in the early days of the Republic; cooperatives were mainly initiated by a state-owned organization (for example, a bank or factory) with the aim of providing affordable foodstuff to their members and to control price rises.