Ethnographics Gallery University of Kent

Turkish Village

Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.

Paul Stirling
CHAPTER ONE
TURKEY


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Introduction

In less than twenty years, between the late nineteen-thirties and the fifties the views of Western intellectuals on the future of mankind underwent an extraordinary revolution. Between the wars, most Western people took for granted the gulf in way of life and standard of living between Western Europe and its emigrants and trainees, and the poverty-stricken rest of the world. If not eternal, the difference was fundamental and apparently unchanging. Only the Japanese had succeeded in demonstrating that industrial society could be transplanted without a European ruling class, and this was regarded as a special case - almost unfair. No one dreamt of hundreds of millions of Asians and Africans driving their own cars to work in their own industrial cities. It was not yet customary to measure national success in terms of the annual rate of economic growth, and few had thought of arguing that a completely industrialised world, far from rivalling Western industry, would provide that industry with vastly increased markets.

In the nineteen-twenties, a whole generation before problems of backwardness had been rechristened problems of development and aid programmes and agencies had sprouted in all parts of the world, when most of the West still knew little and cared less about the millions of Africa and Asia and their poverty, Turkey attempted to westernise its institutions and its economy. Turkey was one of the very first `developing territories'.

The thoroughness with which Turkey's legislative and administrative reforms reproduced their European models is startling. By the nineteen-thirties the Turkish Republic could
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claim: a modern European legal system an independent judiciary; women judges, members of parliament, doctors and scientists; a secular outlook free from fanaticism; and the beginnings of industry. All this has been described in a number of books, the titles of which imply renewal and transformation: the Western phoenix springing from the ashes of oriental defeat.1

In these books Turkey is a land of contrasts: the ox-cart beside the combine harvester; the bride in her traditional costume carried to her groom, not on a white horse but in a shiny American taxi. They imply that the quaint and retarding old customs are disappearing before the modern rational revolution. But no author has yet been able to restrain himself from assessing the success of the revolution and perhaps offering advice on how to do it better. No one has asked precisely and objectively what happened to the traditional life of the four-fifths of Turkey's population who work the land and live away from the larger towns and cities and who were forcibly subjected to ideas and reforms modelled on the ideas and institutions of their ancient enemy, infidel Europe.

Social anthropology began as the study of small-scale, pre-literate societies. In these studies, anthropologists learned to place strong emphasis on a long period of intimate acquaintance with one particular community of the society under study. These thorough and detailed studies produced remarkable results, which were not only ethnographically rich and accurate but also stimulated new ways of analysing and interpreting social data. Naive and hopeful, I came into anthropology with the idea of applying similar methods to the study of complex, literate societies with recorded histories, and I chose Turkey for my field more or less by chance. In spite of a training in philosophy and history, I was a beginner in thinking systematically about the problems of society, and I accepted, perhaps rightly, the view of my teachers and colleagues in anthropology that an intensive immersion was the best way to achieve understanding of any society.

How was I, singlehanded, to apply this method to a whole


  1. E.g. H. Armstrong, Turkey in Travail: the Birth of a New Nation (1925); Edib Halide, Turkey Faces West (1930); H. E. Allen, The Turkish Transformation (1935); E. Jaeckh, The Rising Crescent (1944); I. Orga, Phoenix Ascendant(1958).


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nation, whose population ranged from Paris-educated intellectuals to nomadic tribes and isolated, illiterate villages; from Muslim divines to agnostic engineering students; and which contained manifold ethnic and cultural varieties among even its rural and pastoral populations? Add to this problem that I had had a little over a year to learn anthropology, Turkish, and all I could about modern Turkey and the Ottoman and Islamic civilisations out of which it had grown. The task I faced when I set off for Turkey in 1949 appears almost laughable.

But in fact a possible solution was not difficult to find. The kind of research for which my brief anthropological training had fitted me was the study of a small and relatively close-knit community. At the same time, the greatest gap in our knowledge of Turkey was, and still is, how the villagers live. I therefore chose to study one village thoroughly and a somewhat different village in rather less detail.

Although it was not possible to choose a `typical' village, because no such thing exists, it was at least possible to avoid choosing villages with obvious peculiarities. I set out to find an orthodox Muslim, Turkish-speaking village of modest size, fairly far away from the direct influence of the cities, on the plateau which forms the largest part of Anatolia. My final choice was unscientific. When the staff of an American school and clinic situated in the right kind of area, near Kayseri, generously offered to provide a base, and to help with some acute practical problems, my wife and I accepted with gratitude and enthusiasm.

I was in Sakaltutan from November 1949 to August I 950, my wife joining me in March. It had an excellent water supply, more or less regular lorries into Kayseri, and eleven other villages within an hour and a half's walk.

In 1951 we returned to the area. From August to November we lived in the second village, Elbashï, some five hours' walk east of the first, and, in the summer vacation of 1952 I returned alone to this village for two months. I chose Elbashï because it appeared to provide certain contrasts with Sakaltutan, being richer, more dependent on agriculture, more sophisticated, and less isolated. It was also the centre of the District, Nahiye. In fact, as it turned out, it was the similarities which were the more impressive.
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The Ottoman Empire

The westernising revolution of Kemal Ataturk's Republic has its roots in the series of reforms and changes which are conventionally said to begin with the new model army, formed by Selim III (1789-1807), because of the serious defeats of Turkey at the hands of Russia in the wars of 1768-74 and 1788-92. Perhaps the most critical event was the defeat in 1826 of the Janissaries, the Sultan's unruly praetorian guard, by the new model army of Mahmud II (1808-39) (Lewis (1961), p. 77) .1

During the nineteenth century, partly under the influence of the spontaneous spread of ideas through personal contact and study, partly under direct political pressure from the Western powers, the central government made periodic attempts to introduce Western political and social institutions by promulgating decrees which there was little or no machinery for implementing. The model, Western Europe, was itself in a state of violent and accelerating change. Concepts such as universal suffrage, education for all and equal rights for minorities, were developing in Europe spontaneously and indigenously, in a close relationship to the new technology, and to the new forms of society it rendered possible. These ideas, wrapped up with, and based on other older Western notions, such as secular legislation and secular justice, were to be applied from the top downwards, by order of a centralised authority, to a society whose social structure and morality were fundamentally different from those of Western Europe.


The central government, in the name of enlightenment, justice, liberty and efficiency, was forced into an unprecedented absolutism. Yet the imposed changes either caused unanticipated and complicated results far from the legislator's intentions, like the 1856 Land Registration Act, or else had little or no effect, like the 1878 Constitution. But it is pointless to discuss these attempts at reform in terms of rationality and success. They were the reactions of the ruling class to new social situations, and symptoms of profound social changes, the course of which they did no more than influence. The reactionary regime of Abdul Hamid from 1878 to 1908 did little to slow down these


  1. Lewis (1961) gives an excellent account of pre-Republican Turkey.



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social changes, though it did inhibit both government reforms and overt radical opinion.

The splendid confusion of ideas held by the Committee of Union and Progress which combined to overthrow Abdul Hamid and ruled Turkey from 1908 until the end of World War I, embraced pan-Ottoman parliamentarianism, rights for minorities, pan-Islamism and pan-Turanianism,1 together with a flavouring of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and a practical admixture of Turkish nationalism and Prussian absolutism. The political unit to which these ideas were to be applied contained numerous violently nationalist minorities, Islamic as well as Christian, each as much against its neighbours as against the Turks, and in many cases so dispersed and mixed territorially that, once the system of the independent `millet'2 of the Ottoman Empire was abandoned, no satisfactory political substitute could be found. Moreover, the vast majority of the inhabitants on whom this hotchpotch of political and social ideas was to be imposed were illiterate peasants, many living in places inaccessible to wheeled transport, for whom government meant the tax collector and the drafting officer, both foreign and hostile meddlers with village life. Few of the minor officials who would be responsible for the detailed administration and application of the `reforms' had any knowledge of the models on which they were founded, or any comprehension of the purposes they were intended to achieve.

The founders of the Republic, headed by the great figure of Mustafa Kemal, were the heirs of this confusion. Historical events had solved some of their problems and given them the means of solving others. The European Christian peoples and the Arabs were now entirely independent of them. The end of the political power of the Sultan and Caliph and the break-up of his dominions meant the end of any serious political pan-Islamism. Pan-Turanianism was pointless in face of the Russian


  1. A movement to unite politically all the Turkish-speaking peoples of Central Asia, then under Tsarist rule.
  2. Non-Islamic communities were outside Islamic law. They enjoyed some degree of political separateness and internal autonomy under their own religious leaders, albeit as second-class citizens. The criterion of membership in such a community was not place of residence, but religion. The word millet is now the standard word for nation.


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Revolution and the relative weakness of Turkey.

The agreement with Greece over the exchange of populations (1923) and the flight of most Armenians rid Turkey of any numerically significant non-Muslim minority. Nationalism became the driving principle of Ataturk's party, a nationalism directed at raising the prestige of Turkey by efficient Westernisation rather than by an attempt to recover the Empire. Confusions remained, for example between the glorification of everything Turkish, carried to the point of xenophobia, and an open admiration for the technical and social achievements of the West; or between an anti-religious secularism, and a pro-Islamic hostility to Christianity. Vast administrative and social problems also remained. The illiterate peasant majority was unconcerned with, or hostile to social reforms, and the minor local officials were ignorant of the purposes and functioning of Western institutions, and incapable of administering new laws and regulations based on them. Nevertheless, so many of the confusions and problems of the Young Turks had disappeared or been cleared away, that it was possible to tackle seriously the task of converting the new Republic into a modern national state on the Western model.

Ataturk, to use the surname he adopted later, had established himself as a military commander of outstanding ability during World War I. In 1919 he was sent to the Third Army in Anatolia, as Inspector-General, to supervise its disarmament on behalf of the Sultan's government. Five days before he landed at Samsun, in May, Greek troops, with British and American naval support, landed at Smyrna on the pretext of preserving order, but in fact for reasons of international jobbery. Ataturk at once set about organising nationalist opposition to the Sultan and the Allies. His Nationalist movement secured an official General Election at which it won a big majority. The elected Assembly, meeting first unofficially in Ankara, drew up a National Pact, (17th February 1920) (Toynbee (1923) pp. 207- 10) demanding full sovereignty for a new State to include all territory of the Ottoman Empire not containing a majority of Christians or Arab-speaking Muslims, and the withdrawal of all foreign troops. They then went on to Istanbul to meet as Parliament, but their attitude was not sufficiently submissive, and the Allied authorities occupied Istanbul and arrested many
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of them. Ataturk had with prescience stayed in Ankara. He at once organised a new Assembly and an alternative government - the first Turkish Grand National Assembly. In August I920, the Sultan's government signed the Treaty of Sèvres with the Allies. This Treaty, which would have reduced Turkey to the north-west corner of Anatolia, and divided the rest of her present territory between Greece, Italy, France and an independent Armenia, roused a fresh wave of nationalist fervour and determination. By this time Turkish irregulars were engaging Greek troops advancing eastwards from Smyrna. The war intensified and became a fully organised campaign. After a desperate defence during 1920 and 1921, the Nationalists, strengthened by steadily improving organisation, by the departure of the French and Italians from Cilicia and Antalya respectively, and by the support of the new Soviet government, launched an offensive against the Greeks, who were growing weaker as time passed, and drove them into the sea. An armistice on Turkish terms was arranged in the autumn of 1922. In October, the Ankara government declared the Sultanate at an end and the last Sultan, Mohammet VI, fled in a British warship. His son remained as the Caliph of Islam, shorn of political powers. Ataturk's right-hand man, Ismet Pasa, later to be called Inonu, in tough negotiations which lasted till 1923, won practically all the points of the National Pact of February 1920

On the 29th October I923 Turkey was declared a Republic with Ataturk as President. Only in the light of the power and prestige which Ataturk acquired during these events can his success in carrying through his staggering programme of Westernisation be understood. The victory of the Turks over the Greeks restored their morale. Indeed, the villagers today do not think of the First World War as a defeat at the hands of the Allies, but as a victory over the Greeks.

Republic and Reform

From October I923 until the end of the Second World War Turkey was a one-party state, virtually under the control of a dictator. The organisation which began as a nationalist movement against the Allies in 1919, was re-christened the Republican
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People's Party and became Ataturk's organ of control and propaganda. The most serious opposition at this time was from organised religion. In 1924 both the Caliphate and the Ministry of Sheriat (Islamic Law) and Evkaf (Pious Foundations) were abolished, and schools and law courts secularised. In the following year, the Kurds revolted under a Nakshibendi sheikh. The revolt was suppressed, but Ataturk took the opportunity to increase his hold over the state machinery. All dervish orders, which were widespread in Turkey, were made illegal, and their premises closed. To make clear to the people what he intended, Ataturk next decreed the abolition of the fez, currently the symbol of Muslim superiority over the infidel, and its replacement by infidel hats, henceforth to be the symbol of Turkey's identification with Western civilisation. This measure was imposed with firmness - in a few cases even ruthlessly. In 1926 the Ottoman codification of Islamic law, which was still in force for all personal matters, was replaced by a slightly amended translation of the Swiss Civil Code. At the same time the French-based Ottoman codes of commercial and penal law were also replaced by composite codes based mainly on German and Italian models. In 1928 the sacred Arabic alphabet was made illegal and replaced by a Latin script, which is in fact better adapted to the needs of the Turkish language. In the same year Islam ceased to be the established religion of Turkey. Nominally, in five years, the country had adopted an entirely new constitution, within a new set of frontiers; crushed the power of the vested interests in the established religion; separated Islam from the state; changed completely the system of law, and introduced a new way of writing.

Obviously, the implementation of the new institutions, which at first existed, not in people's behaviour, but merely on paper, was not a matter of overnight transformation, but of years of learning and adaptation. The process is still going on. But these were no passing gestures of transitory enthusiasts; the work that was done has remained.

The early reforms were socially fundamental, more so than anything that has followed. But westernising activities did not stop with the introduction of the new alphabet and legislation; they have continued up to date and are likely to persist. In order to explain what had happened, and to spread knowledge
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of the new ideas, the Republican People's Party launched, in 1932, a programme for establishing Party clubhouses, called People's Houses, in all townships of Turkey. These were intended as general adult education centres and for indoctrination in the new ideas. In many cases, minor Party branches were established in the villages, and up to I950 nearly all village headmen and schoolmasters, and a good few others, declared themselves supporters of the R.P.P., but often without much knowledge of what this implied, beyond the fact that the Party was the Government.

It was not until the nineteen-thirties that a serious attempt to establish industry was made. A five-year plan was announced in I934, to include sugar, cement, paper and textile factories, coal and metal mining, and a steel mill; and a further plan on similar lines was announced in 1938. The Second World War put a stop to these activities, but after the war, with foreign, largely American, aid, further ambitious plans for increasing industrial output, improving transport, and raising the productivity of agriculture were put into operation. Private capital played a relatively restricted part in development. Progress was slow. Official estimates show no significant rise in per capita national income from 1938 to 1948. (Istatistik Bülten No. 27, Ankara, May 1956, quoted in Robinson (1956 p178.)

It is difficult to state in figures the relative importance of agriculture and industry round about 1950. Some eighty per cent of the population worked in farming, forestry or fishing. (International Bank Report (1951) p. 16.) Official figures show agriculture as producing almost exactly half the national domestic income, (Istatistik Bülten No. 27, Ankara, May 1956, quoted in Robinson (1956) p. 178), but very probably they make no allowance, or an inadequate allowance, for the large amount of agricultural produce consumed on the spot by its producers without ever reaching the market. Moreover, part of the national income not attributed to agriculture is directly concerned with buying, selling or transporting agricultural products or in some sense serving agriculture. From 1927 to 1955 (Turkey: Census 1955, p. XLIV), within two or three per cent, three quarters of the population lived in villages; besides these, many of the small places classified as towns are large villages; and even the major towns like Kayseri have large farming
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minorities. Thus undoubtedly agriculture is by far the most common occupation and by far the most important source of income. It is true that in the area in which I worked - and without doubt in many other parts of Turkey too - some villages exported non-agricultural migrant labour in order to supplement an agricultural income insufficient to maintain the village population. But this phenomenon is not large enough substantially to qualify what I have just said.
At least among the educated city-dwellers, Turkey has developed more than a superficial respect for a Western type of one citizen - one vote elected parliamentary democracy, with guaranteed civil and political rights. From the beginning the Party firmly declared its belief in liberty and the rule of law. Such professions may seem to go ill with a one-party system and the absolute, and at times arbitrary, rule of Ataturk. But he made a great point of separating military and civil office, and established a truly independent judiciary. In form at least, the constitution was democratic; a single assembly was elected by universal suffrage, and in turn elected the President, who chose the Prime Minister, and approved the appointment of other ministers. The President could be overruled by the majority of the Assembly. 'All citizens are endowed at birth with liberty', -and all the usual rights - freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to travel, and so on - were listed.1

After Ataturk's death in 1937, Inonu took his place as President. An attempt in 1931 to found a loyal opposition party had been abandoned. In 1945 permission was again given for the foundation of other political parties, and among others the Democrat Party was founded, mainly by defection from the R.P.P. (Karfat (1959) Chap. 5). In the election of 1946 it gained only some sixty seats out of about four hundred and eighty. But the Democrat Party set to work to build up an organisation, and to campaign for reform of the electoral law. This reform was carried out, and the election which I witnessed in 1950 was fair and satisfactory to all parties. The R.P.P. was defeated, and handed over power to the Democrat Party after twenty-five years of rule. It seemed that a two-party system had been established over-night.


  1. The constitution was abolished after the coup d'etat in 1960. The new one is more complex but, in theory, at least equally liberal, and safer.


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The new government deliberately set out to please the villagers, partly by a more tolerant treatment of religion, partly by a more friendly attitude on the part of its officials towards villagers, and partly by reducing taxation (p. 75). Economic expansion, pursued by inflation, brought a sharp increase in village earning power, and the party won an even greater victory in 1954. But the Government had begun to hamper the opposition and even to interfere with the judiciary. Economic and political troubles increased, and the party's ten years of rule was ended by the 1960 coup d'état. The army claimed that it had intervened in the defence of genuine democratic rule by representative government, and the military junta revised the constitution, conducted elections and handed over to a civilian government in October 1961. Yet the political situation continued to be uneasy.

Government

Turkey is divided into provinces or vilayets, numbering sixty-three in 1950, each under a vali, appointed by the central government. Each province is divided into smaller areas (sing. kaza) varying from four to sixteen or so per province, centering on towns, and each under a centrally appointed kaymakam who nowadays must be a university graduate. The kaza is divided again into districts called nahiye, containing a number of villages, sometimes as many as twenty, under a nahiye müdürü, a townsman who should be a high school graduate and is appointed by the vali.

The vilayet has an elected assembly, of which the vali is ex-officio chairman, and which has certain limited powers and local duties. But, except for the law courts, practically all matters are under the control of the vali, who has an impressive array of officers under him - finance, education, agriculture, public works, security - though many departments are responsible also to their own chiefs in Ankara. His officers also directly administer the central kaza which surrounds the main town of the vilayet. The other kazas, each under its own kaymakam, have a much smaller number of officials. The number of kazas to a vilayet varies - in Kayseri, it was six.

The district officer or nahiye müdürü has no one to assist him
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save a sergeant or corporal of gendarmes. The rural areas are policed by a corps of gendarmes, which is part of the army permanently seconded for this purpose. The NCOs are regulars, but the men are conscripts, villagers like the people they police. Very often the district officer is posted to a village where he is without the company of any of his own social class. Kaymakams and valis form a branch of the service of the Ministry of the Interior, but the majority of district officers are casual government employees who vary greatly in quality, and who have no hope of promotion to the next grade in the service.

The village, the smallest recognised political entity, chooses its own headman and council of elders. The relationship between the villager who is acting as headman, and the urban-bred district officer who is his immediate superior, is the critical point in the rural administrative system - it reflects the break between the educated and largely Europeanised townspeople and the still largely illiterate and traditional peasantry.

Towns, among which are classed many small entirely village-like district centres, have an elected mayor and council, under the supervision of the vali or kaymakam as the case may be. Town wards have headmen, but these are far less important than the village headman, most 'of the work being done by the mayor.

Government is highly centralised. Officials are appointed or at least approved by Ankara, and most major matters, for example, disputes between a vali and his elected council, must be referred back to the capital. Initiative, in fact, still comes mainly from the top downwards. What is not expressly permitted is generally assumed to be forbidden. Even in the judicial system disputes of importance before civil courts have to be referred for decision on documentary evidence to Ankara.

Between attempting to carry out orders which pour from above, and dealing with matters which well up from below, senior officials tend to be extremely busy. Most doors, even the vali's, are permanently open, and no one works on a strict timetable or a system of appointments. Relatively little business is done by letter. The office of a vali, kaymakam or senior official is liable to be full of people from his immediate juniors in the hierarchy to patient embarrassed villagers, all trying to catch the great man's attention to extract a decision,
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a signature or a favour. The whole system gives the impression of being highly hit and miss, of decisions taken ad hoc; a system in which the word of one having authority counts far more than written laws and regulations, and in which getting things done depends on influence or on making a tactful nuisance of oneself in person.

Efficiency commonly declines with distance from - or rather with difficulty of communication with - the centre. Such a decline is inevitable, the more so with a highly personal and ad hoc system. Moreover, all officials hate rural isolation and scheme for transfer to greater comfort and urbanity. If we may assume some correlation between success and efficiency, then on average the more remote the post the less efficient the incumbent, from valis down to village schoolmasters.

The dependence on personal authority and the decreasing efficiency as one moves away from contact with the bright lights mitigate against the effects of a highly centralised system. The more foolish or tactless rules and regulations promulgated by the centre may be unknown, and if known safely ignored, by dozens of local officials and local communities. Indeed, it is surely this built-in inefficiency, which was greater in the nineteen-twenties, that saved the revolutionary reforms of Ataturk from provoking effective opposition. People did not know, or did not understand, or did not care what the central government was doing.



Contents

Edited by Michael D. Fischer

Updated Tuesday, October 6, 1998