Ziraat Bank
Turkish public sector bank
Ziraat Bankası (lit. 'Agriculture Bank') is a Turkish public bank founded in 1863. The bank provides commercial loan support to companies and tradesmen, as well as personal loans such as consumer loans, vehicle loans and housing loans.
History
During the first half of the 19th century, with the adoption of western models of trade and finance, foreign banks began their activities in the Ottoman Empire. At that period, there was not enough capital to found a national banking system and no one could mention the existence of national banks as a source of capital. This situation was more harmful to farmers because they made up the majority of the population, and since they did not have any institutional financial structure to which to apply, they had to borrow money from the usurers at high-interest rates.
Under these conditions, the governor of Niš province of the Ottoman Empire, Midhat Pasha (1822–1884) began to take the first steps to overcome these difficulties in 1863 and achieved the reorganization of Memleket Sandığı (English: Homeland Funds), which became a law with Homeland Funds Regulations in 1867. Homeland Funds was the first agricultural financial institution founded by the state and operated with a state guarantee.
In 1888, Homeland Funds was renamed Ziraat Bankası (English: Agriculture Bank), and Ziraat Bank's head office in Istanbul began to function. The Greco-Turkish War between 1919 and 1922 affected the bank's policy. The Greek forces opened a Ziraat Bank Management Center in İzmir and occupied branches and funds were taken to the new center's management.
The public source identifies “Ziraat Bank” as turkish public sector bank. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ziraat, Bank and Turkish.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q696003. VIAF identifies the subject as 130297279. The Library of Congress control number is n88267772. 3 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1863, 1822, 1884 and 1867.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ziraat Bank” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.