Mediterraneanizing Turkey: Gateways to Regional Agrarian Transformation

Abstract

Greenhouse tomato farming has arrived in Antalya at the same time as its ancient Roman sites are revived in what has become cast as the quintessential Mediterranean city of Turkey. Becoming a major off season vegetable production center with a new wholesale market (hal), regulating the regional, national and global circulation of tomatoes, Antalya region has become globally indexed by tomatoes as the tomato itself has become naturalized as a Mediterranean fruit. Juxtaposing the archival findings on the regional development project, which paved the way for global investments in tourism, mining, real estate and agriculture, with the ethnography of region-formation on the ground, this dissertation focuses on the transformation of social relations since the inception of greenhouse tomato farming in the region. The contract farming arrangements became formative of new class relations, and in contrast to predominant representations of this form of farming in the town, the tomato has meant new dependencies and loyalties. Diverging from the prevailing metaphors of verticality, this ethnography offers the locally embedded concept, or role, of kâhya to understand the formation of new class relations.