Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
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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.
- 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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