[2] 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.

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 (Homeland Funds), which became a law with Homeland Funds Regulations in 1867.

Since the 1930s, Ziraat played an important role in financing agricultural mechanisation in Turkey, which in the postwar period benefitted from support from the US Marshall Plan.

Sarajevo, or simply Ziraat Banka, was founded in 1996 as the first bank in Bosnia after the Bosnian war with foreign capital.