Civilization has started with the agricultural revolution and has proceeded with the industrialization. The beginning of settlements forms the roots of today's urban areas in which most of the world population resides. However, this trend never demolished the importance of rural areas. The term "rural area" was used originally as the home of agricultural activities to identify the areas which were not urban. However, defining rural areas as the non-urban space or the domain where agriculture and physical landscape are important is inadequate to describe today's complex reality. The discrimination of rural and urban areas becomes increasingly fuzzy. Consequently, rural areas are increasingly a part of the modern leisure industry, with mass tourism on the one hand and small-scale recreation on the other hand. In other words, further than the traditional productive function of rural areas viz. supplying agricultural, agro-food, forestry goods, goods from extractive industries and craft products, rural areas have become an environment for living and leisure activities. "Rural area" is an often used term in policy circles as well as in the scientific community and public debates; nevertheless, there is no unequivocal definition of this term, which often combines regions with many diverse features. Rural is a fuzzy concept which is contested in terms of identifying the critical parameters of rural space. Various ways of classification and definition in the literature are derived to define rurality including the level of population density, the rate of population loss or gain, settlement size, local economic structure and landscape. Actually, the meaning of rurality depends on the perception of each individual who integrates visions of rurality into everyday life. Moreover, rural has also been used in different contexts from developed countries to the underdeveloped ones. The developmental processes of social, economic and political restructuring in many countries are reshaping rural areas, and pushes governments to focus more on them. Especially in Europe the future of rural peripheries as well as the future of rural societies becomes an important development and planning issue in the EU. The globalization, liberalization, free market activities and changes of cultural values have led rural areas to become more consumerized and more externally interrelated. 80% of Europe is now rural by sheltering 25% of its population. The European Commission describes rural areas as complex economic, natural and cultural locations, which cannot be characterized by a one-dimensional criterion such as population density, agriculture or natural resources. Rural areas considered in terms of their cultural, social, political, and economic aspects -and especially in terms of their futures - have attracted much attention of governments. From this perspective, rurality of a candidate country is often the last negotiation issue taken into consideration by the EU. Turkey as the most discussed candidate is now in the accession period and during the negotiation its rurality will certainly be addressed. The complexity of Turkey's rurality is recognized by the EU and the academic world. However, its rurality is not yet evaluated as a whole. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to compare and evaluate Turkey's rurality with the EU countries on the basis of selected rural indicators. The data and information used for comparison and evaluation of 26 countries are based on Eurostat and World Bank data. A multidimensional classification technique, factor analysis, is deployed to reduce 15 indicators, while 5 main factors, viz. underdevelopment, demography, urbanization, higher education and industrialization levels are used to define Turkey's rurality in the European context. The study first offers a literature review to identify rural indicators that are often used to measure rurality of a region. In the following, the EU and Turkey's rurality are compared while giving information about the data and methodology of the study. The paper concludes by discussing the results of the study while proposing some guidelines for further study. The results of our study show that Turkey has the lower and upper values and even becomes sometimes an outlier in regard to each chosen indicators compared to the EU member states. In other words, Turkey having the highest score of rurality is rather far from EU-25. The nearest countries to Turkey are Ireland and Portugal. Therefore, rurality of EU-25 is also different between all of its member states. Keywords: Rurality; Turkey; rural areas, European Union.Avrupa’nın kırsal çeperleri ve toplumunun geleceği Avrupa Birliği (AB) tarafından kalkınma ve planlamanın en önemli konularından biri olarak görülmektedir. Pek çok araştırmacı ve uluslararası kuruluş (ör: OECD, AB) kırsal alan dinamiklerini anlamak ve uygun politikalar geliştirmek amacıyla farklı kırsallık göstergeleri belirleyerek çeşitli kırsal alan tipolojileri geliştirmişlerdir. Bu tipolojilerde kullanılmak üzere belirlenen göstergeler, nüfus, göç, ekonomik yapı, performans, sosyal refah, eşitlik, çevre ve sürdürülebilirlik gibi pek çok farklı konuyu içeren geniş bir yelpazeye yayılmaktadır. Ancak genel yaklaşım, kırsallığı daha çok nüfus, nüfus yoğunluğu gibi demografik göstergelerle ölçme yönündedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, seçilmiş kırsal gelişme göstergeleri temelinde Türkiye’nin kırsal yapısını AB üye ülkeleri ile karşılaştırmalı olarak değerlendirmek ve Türkiye’nin AB içindeki yerini tanımlamaktır. Çalışmada 25 AB ülkesi ve Türkiye’yi içeren bir örneklem ile Eurostat ve Dünya Bankası verileri temelinde karşılaştırmalı bir değerlendirme yapılmıştır. Bu değerlendirmede çok değişkenli analiz yöntemlerinden faktör analizi kullanılarak Türkiye’nin Avrupa içindeki kırsal yapısı gelişmemişlik, demografi, kentleşme, yüksek öğrenim ve sanayileşme faktörleri temelinde değerlendirilmiştir. Sonuçlar, AB ülkelerinin kırsallık bağlamında homojen bir yapıya sahip olmadığını, Kuzey ve Güney Avrupa ülkeleri arasında önemli farklılıklar olduğunu göstermektedir. Öte yandan, çalışmanın sonuçları bu genel yapı içinde Türkiye’nin Avrupa ortalamasından oldukça uzak olmasına karşın göreli olarak Güney Avrupa ülkelerine daha yakın durduğunu göstermektedir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Kırsallık, Türkiye, kırsal alanlar, Avrupa Birliği
