Economic Development and Structural Change: The Role of the Agriculture Sector in Turkey

During the last two decades, Turkey implemented a number of structural adjustment programmes, and changed the economic structural priorities from agriculture to manufacturing sectors. However, agricultural sector has still remained as the most important sector in terms of employing almost 29.5% of total employment in the economy. Despite this situation share of agricultural production in total value added has drastically declined. This research aims to enlighten changing role of agricultural sector in Turkish economy. In doing so, we employ input—output model, in which sectoral inter-linkages can be defined. Our research uses input—output tables from 1968 to 2002 and analyzes the importance of agricultural sector basing upon the forward and backward linkages calculated under different hypothetical cases. Therefore, we can examine the changes in total production in the economy. Through such a sensitivity analyses, we are able to investigate the extent of which other sectors rely on the production of the agricultural sector.