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Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
Paul Stirling
CHAPTER THREE
VILLAGES AND HOUSEHOLDS
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Page 34
village for defence against other villages, although the vastly increased efficiency of the national maintenance of order has largely rendered this dependence obsolete. But if politica dependence is minimal, economic dependence on the village. is still very real. Shepherds and watchmen and common pastures are indispensable. Refusal to allow a man to use them would cripple him. Moreover, the annual switch from one side of the village territory to the other ties all the villagers to the alternate year of fallow (p. 48). The introduction for example, of a revolutionary crop cycle is impossible without disrupting the whole village farming system. Meanwhile, the legal freehold of land i subject to the de facto common right of the village to pasture flocks and herds on it every other year.
Other Villages
Loyalty to the superiority of one's own village did not prevent the existence of a rough hierarchy of prestige among the villages of the area. This scale was not openly discussed, but was expressed in discussions of marriage, in the respect in the area accorded to the leaders of certain villages, and in the consensus of scorn for some of the poorer and remoter villages. The evaluation is not consistent, nor does it follow a single and simply applied standard. Perhaps the most commonly expressed pair of ideas, or rather those which command most general assent, are medeni, 'civilised', on the one hand, and kaba, `coarse', or vaksi, `wild', on the other. Medeni implies good order, urban manners and style of living, and the absence of violence. It is sufficiently vague to allow people systematically to avoid admitting inferiority in specific cases. Yet in general the villagers often bewail their backwardness and lack of medeniyet.
Villages with a tradition as administrative centres, with greater wealth, and which had possessed distinguished men with urban influence, ranked higher on this scale. The differences between villages were particularly related to the treatment of women. More `civilised' people keep their women more closely confined and give them less work, especially less agricultural work. Where the differences were marked, decent families would not consider letting a daughter go to a less civilised village. For example, women from the villages nearer
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