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This study aims to extend the cooperative lifecycle theory, which builds on consecutive degeneration and regeneration of ideal cooperative values such as democracy, self‐help, and solidarity by offering a new regenerative mechanism. In this respect, the study imports multilevel imprinting theory from the organizational ecology domain to explicate the punctuated evolutionary pattern of Turkish agricultural credit cooperatives, which displayed significantly different characteristics from Raiffeisen cooperatives that cooperative discourse in Türkiye used for a long as a benchmark. The archival research undertaken in the study asserts that the imprints of Ottoman Memleket Sandiks (OMS) have stamped agricultural credit cooperatives of the Republican era long after their erosion. The resurrection of imprints was enabled by Ziraat Bank, which acted as an intermediary organization and took over the remnants of OMSs. Our analyses also suggest that the State's polity and policy transformations culminate in selective activation of past imprints within the Ziraat Bank, which, in turn, shaped the Turkish agricultural cooperative field.

Purpose -This study aims to solve a historical puzzle in Turkish cooperative history and illuminate the failure of a discursive medium, the journal of Türk Kooperatifçisi, to realize its ambitious goals of disseminating liberal ideas into the field of agricultural cooperatives. Given the strong state influence on Turkish cooperatives for over a century, this article strives to articulate when and how the anti-etatist cooperative discourse experienced an absolute defeat in the face of state hegemony. Methodology -This historical case study carries out hermeneutical discourse analysis on the archival data collected from the National Library of Turkey. Drawing on the first Turkish cooperative periodical, namely the Türk Kooperatifçisi, the researchers have read 214 articles, amounting to 966 pages. After a systematic interpretation of the collected data, the researchers have further situated archival evidence onto a plot and accordingly constructed a historical narrative, thereby illuminating the underlying reasons for the short life span (1930)(1931)(1932)(1933) of a liberal cooperative periodical in early Republican Turkey. Findings-The findings of this study suggest that towards the end of the 1920s, the sharp turn in the economic policy of Turkey triggered a series of events, leading the agricultural cooperatives to become state apparatuses. Correspondingly, the liberal frame regressed in the face of the etatist frame and became defeated in the discursive arena. Conclusion-The contest between frames both shapes and becomes shaped by the ideological shift in the Turkish state polity. However, this macro-level change yielded in the Turkish agricultural-cooperative field an open forum where opposing discourses challenge for the settlement of expedient cooperatives.