| 17 |
| renting or sharecropping, thus releasing more male labour to earn remittances in the towns. From 1974 to 1984, I visited the village briefly many times, and was able to observe that these processes were continuing. Households continued to leave; young men to go off to work. In 1973, the oil crisis in Europe made it very difficult to get into Europe to work, except with the help of close kin, or by risky 'tourist' adventures. [Adadan Unat et al ed 197 ] Instead, men already established there took their village or urban Turkish households to Europe; mostly to Germany. In 1977 or thereabouts, some men from S got themselves established, nearly all in the building industry, in Saudi Arabia. Saudi regulations, it seems, required every foreign worker not employed by a company to have a native Saudi sponsor. Sponsors had a lot of power, and exercised it in different ways, some ruthlessly; the migrants complained a lot about them. People found sponsors for their kin and friends, often charging quite large fees for this service. Most of the those who went seemed to make very good money, but many complained about their sponsors. By 1981, I listed 100 men born in S working in Saudi Arabia, and in 1986, 150, of whom less than 50 were from urban households. By 1993, hardly any men of S were still in Saudi Arabia, but a considerable number were working in Russia, paid by Turkish companies in US dollars. In 1986, at least 80% of the 153 households in the village had at least one member earning outside the village. Those that did not had no one to send, and some of these had kin resident in the towns who helped to provide for them. (ii). Population The total population of the village (Table 1) in 1950 was 636. The households in Table 1 are those |
| 18 |
| descended patrilineally from those 636, including incoming wives, but excluding daughters who married out. On this imprecise measure - and a few people must have slipped through our research net -, while the national population grew by slightly less than 2.5 times, the village grew by almost three times; the direct result of a falling death rate, especially among very young children. Such a sudden change in the number of surviving children has multiple consequences, not only for economic viability, but also for kinship, for the structure and fission of households, and for marriage arrangements. Marriage to cousins is common, and when several siblings have eight or ten surviving children each, the number of available cousins rises sharply [Stirling 1995]. (iii). Income I have found it impossible to offer any index of the rise in incomes, either of the households, or of the village as a whole; still less of the migrant descendents of the 1950 villagers. This village, indeed, this whole area, seems to have done a good deal better than the national average, partly by luck. I estimated above that the national product grew about 8 times, and the total product per capita about 3 times between 1950 and 1986. Such numbers mean little in the village context, but it is possible to describe the rise in the material standard of living, and in the available resources. In 1950, people went about in patched clothes, or in rags; some women and children had no shoes to wear in the winter snow. Even the well to do households, following a harvest failure, had extremely modest diets; most of the poor were hungry and malnourished by the time of the next harvest. In the winter of 1949-50, most households lived in one room to save fuel, and a few only possessed one room anyway. Only nine households provided heat for a `guest' room, misafir odas, in which nine |
| 19 |
| rooms all the men of the village assembled every evening after a meal and prayers at sundown, aksam,to gossip before the fifth and final prayer and bed. Every household head claimed to be in debt; and I had good grounds to believe most of them. [Stirling 1965, pp.44-98] By 1986, virtually everyone in the village had plenty to eat, and adequate clothes. Virtually all households had a television set, and most had refrigerators. Most had at least one decent sitting room, and most had at least two heated rooms in the winter; at any rate, whenever it was socially desirable. Men no longer congregated in the evening, but sat at home, or visited as they wished; sometimes in mixed company. The village owned 26 tractors, a large number of milk cows of European breeds, and so on. What is much more significant, though obviously everyone still complained about shortages of cash for weddings, for investment in new housing and so on, is many owned land or housing in the towns. Of course there were a few poor households, but even these were not as poor as the poor majority of 1950. Of course, people borrowed for specific purposes, and there were debts, some serious. But by and large, most operating costs of agriculture were met by remittances, and no households faced the grinding debts of 1950. Not a rich community, though one or two households were quite well-to-do. One for example had built a busy petrol station just on the village border,and owned and operated a large petrol tanker to supply it. The quality, availability and affordability of medical services were incomparably greater. The village was several times better off in material terms than in 1950. This improvement was almost exclusively due to remittances from migrants. Agriculture had changed, though the main structure was similar. With mechanisation - I photographed the last pair of oxen in 1984 - , fertilisers, different crop patterns and new varieties, and much more milk production, overall production had perhaps doubled, at the cost |
| 20 |
| of investments and much higher operating costs. And from around 1960, village girls had begun to weave carpets commercially, more or less as wage labour working in their own homes. But these two sources accounted for only a small part of the rise in the standard of living. Even in 1950, this village could not have survived without income from its migrant labour, and the most conspicuous consumption was the houses and furnishings of the successful migrants. But by 1986, remittances were the main source of the community income. I cannot measure this; but I offer a guess, based on questions asked and notes made on various visits to the village. Very roughly, in 1950, 80% of total income was from agriculture, and 20% from remittances. In 1986, remittances may have been about 60%, a more productive agriculture about 30%, and carpet weaving by women about 10%. These figures ignore small percentages, for example, kilims in 1950, and from investments and pensions in 1986. In this guess, I have of course ignored the urban migrants. A few who have suffered misfortune or who cannot find or do well paid work are poor, struggling to feed the household in low grade rented housing. Most are at least moderately successful, and own their own town houses. Many are well off, owning real estate, and running small businesses. Three or four are wealthy; one runs one of the largest building firms in Adana. Some of these successful people keep close ties with village households, supporting the elderly or unfortunate, helping with special needs like weddings, or co- operating in investment projects. Several groups of siblings co-operate in this way, sometimes with their father or a brother in the village. Very recently (1993), three of four households with adequate land holdings and elderly heads have moved to town, and now derive a part of their urban income from their their village land. |