From Tax to Proteins: State Fishery Policy and the Disregard of Tradition in Turkey

Abstract

In a popular review article about fisheries in Istanbul, Professor Oztiirk, a leading Turkish marine scientist, asserts that Turkish fishermen, 'unlike fishermen in European countries or in Japan, have absolutely no tradition of protecting the fishing grounds or controlling fishing areas'.1 I examine critically both the content and context of Oztiirk's statement. First, I will demonstrate that his claim is not correct. Historical sources provide evidence of very detailed and locality-specific customary rules for the protection and control of fishing grounds in Ottoman fisheries, particularly in Istanbul. Furthermore, ethnography on contemporary fishing in Turkey shows that, although of more limited scale and consequence, there are also living traditions for customary, locality-based restrictions on access. The historical and contemporary practices described in some detail counter the content of Oztiirk's assertion.2 However, I also intend to go beyond a description of practices and ask: what makes statements like Oztiirk's possible in the context of modem Turkey? Why have customary practices of restriction on access in the fisheries not been incorporated in the republican state's approach to fishery management? I argue, basically, that this is primarily an effect of extreme futurism in Turkish development ideology. In the first sections I provide a historical overview3 that tracks simultaneously the fishermen's traditions and the changing approach of the state to fisheries from the Ottoman era until the present. What interests has the state had in the fisheries? To what degree and in what manner has the state influenced fishing practices? At a general level there has been a shift in emphasis in state policy from taxation to economic development. To the modernizing and westernizing Turkish state, production and proteins have become the main concerns and challenges in the fishery sector. The developmental ideals for the fisheries have been instrumental in instilling in the bureaucrats, managers and scientists, the idea of a decisive break between past traditions and new developments. This study surveys this developmental ideal in some detail. The growth of the Turkish marine sciences has been