Conference: Presented at "Reinventing the Commons," the fifth annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Bodoe, Norway, May 24-28, 1995.
Abstract: "It is a common assumption that in modern societies, well defined rights to property, be they individual or common, are dependent on regulation and sanction by a powerful State. Eastern Turkey is economically underdeveloped and suffers from a major social and cultural upheaval due to the Government's harsh policy towards the Kurdish minority. There are 750 Kurdish tribes in Eastern Turkey with varying potentialities for political mobilization. This fact lends an anarchic feature to the regional, social organization. Access to and management of land rights are dependent on the ability of different social groups to mobilize political force against each other. This fact has a profound impact on the control and distribution of common resources. Pastoral resources basic to the Beritans' nomadic adaptation, fall into a variety of categories of property from collective rights to use of commons to individuals' private titles to land. However, Beritan nomads do not own land and do not have collective rights to pastures.
"During the last generation the development of the system of land tenure in the region has reduced the space of the commons in the sense of 'common resources which everybody has a right to exploit'. Nomadic pastoralism in Eastern Turkey is an adaptive specialization within a complex, regional resource management system. The social division of work in this region is influenced by the interdependence between the productive regimes of agriculture and pastoralism, a relationship that is accentuated by the fact that land can be used alternatively for agricultural or pastoral purposes. This paper is about how Beritan nomadic groups gain access to pastures that are either completely or partly controlled by settled groups of people. In pursuing their nomadic way of life, the Beritan enter into relationships of either competition or symbiosis with settled agriculturalists. The main pastures used by the Beritans are controlled by other people who demand pasture fees. Fees can be considered as one of the mechanisms regulating the balance between people, animals and pastures so that, at least in certain periods, resources are managed in sustainable ways."
Harald Skogseid                     Back