Author(s): Vedat ÃALIÅKAN, Selver Ãzözen KAHRAMAN, Faize SARÄ°Å, Berrin GÃLTAY
Traditional fairs which gather buyers and sellers from extensive environments at the specific times of the year for shopping with the contribution of their entertainment and social functions as well are among the most colorful examples of the history of commerce. The traditional fairs that all but represented a beginning at the localities where they were set up once upon a time are organizations which left their mark on the shopping and entertainment culture of a period. There is no doubt that the present traditional fairs are rather distant from their former magnificent and prestigious days. Nevertheless, traditional fairs are still continuing to be an important appeal in those rural environments to which the retail commercial activities developing and flourishing have not been able to draw near yet. Besides, traditional fairs mediate in promoting local and traditional riches and also contribute to the cultural development of the local society. The traditional fairs that display a spatial and temporal distributional order make up a regional, and even a national, trading system in an interconnected fashion. Despite the economic, social, and cultural functions they assume, traditional fairs have not been documented well enough in the Republican period yet. Therefore, with this fieldwork-based research, it was aimed to address the traditional fairs on the national scale. Samples were determined from the traditional fairs in the 13 provinces distributed in 4 geographical regions within the scope of the research. The questionnaires applied to the visitors to the traditional fairs and to the tradesmen (with a total of 3,193 people) constitute the basic source of data for the research. With the research, it was also aimed to determine the functional characteristics of the traditional fairs in Turkey, along with their spatial and temporal distributional characteristics
The Journal of International Social Research received 7760 citations as per Google Scholar report
