| example in Africa, the person who acts as the lower link in the executive chain has permanent office, and therefore has some interest in supporting, or at least in making use, of the powers above him, that he finds himself in the difficult position of representing the ruler to the ruled, and the ruled to the rulers, attacked from below as a traitor for co-operation, and from above as the stumbling block to the fulfilment of the plans of the administration. The Turkish village muhtar, being no one of consequence in the village, but regarded simply as a temporary government dog’s body, cannot be said to be the representative of the government in the village. He is, of course, liable to be accused of using his office for his own interests, or of being unfair or spiteful. If, for example, he needs money for the village chest, whomever he approaches will probably object, saying that so and so has not paid yet, let him go and get it out of him first. The muhtar of Sakaltutan heard just before the harvest, from Sl village, that money could be raised from the Agricultural Bank, by people not already in its debt. He went off with a small number of his friends to Kayseri without announcing the news publicly. As a number of village households were seriously short of food at this time, his failure to make the news public angered a good many people, and the old man Haci Ali (DT 1) took it on himself to announce another public expedition to Kayseri. In fact, they met the muhtar on the way back and returned with him, as he had been told at the bank to come back a few days later. Since any bank loan requires the muhtar’s stamp and signature, it is not possible for villagers to obtain a loan without his co-operation. But though his duties expose him to grumbles and animosity, he is in all matters firmly on the village side. He does not raise objections to signing any statement that is likely to help a villager to extract an advantage from the authorities, so long as there is no serious danger of an official check up, which might cause trouble to himself. Wheat is distributed for seed by the Vilayet authorities in spring and autumn; the muhtar did not hesitate to sign applications for villagers in which they gave land holding figures related not to reality but to the amounts of seed they required. Equally, he is unlikely to invite official interference if it can be avoided. For example, neither the assault of a man on his cousin whose husband was doing military service, (3) nor the unsatisfactory state of the village accounts was reported to the mudur. Although the administration talks |
| and behaves as if the muhtars were responsible and reliable officials, carrying out government regulations and policy, in fact, very often, no one in the village is a responsible or reliable ally of the administration, the muhtar no more than anyone else. |
| 7. | Political parties |
| Previous to 1945 only the government Republican People’s Party was legal in Turkey, but in that year opposition parties were made legal, and among several minor parties, the Democratic Party was founded, by a break away from the Republican People’s Party. In the five years up to 1950, this party was efficiently organised on a national scale, and attempts were made to win support in the villages. In Sakaltutan, as in all the villages which I visited, each party had a local “president”, but they did very little. some of them had had the title thrust on them by a visiting party official and had accepted more out of politeness or respect for middle-class authority, than out of any interest in the party in question. From time to time, there would be informal discussions of politics in the odalar, or in groups sitting in the open, but never in terms of policies. In fact, the Democratic Party did not have any clear cut policy, and confined itself to criticism in detail. Those most interested in the parties were the men who went away to work, who were all Democrats. They hoped for more interest in the villages and more work in the towns under new government. The main motive was a simply desire for change of government. All persons in official positions in the villages, such as the muhtars, and the schoolmasters, regarded it as their duty to support the Republican People’s Party, and many of the villagers who were full time agriculturalists also remained loyal to it, though why they should do so I do not altogether understand - possibly from loyalty to the memory of Ataturk, undisturbed by the propaganda to which their co-villagers were exposed in the towns. The election caused much excitement, but, I think, as much as a social occasion involving a break in the normal routine, as because of the political issues. Everyone in the village came and voted, the women voting as their husbands told them to, often without knowing what they were doing. The voters put a slip of paper, which those who could not read brought with them, having |
| received it from someone whom they trusted, into an envelope, and the envelopes were then dropped into the ballot box. This system meant reliance on the slips of paper, and on the person who distributed them. Large numbers were printed and distributed by the two leading parties, whereas the minor parties and the independents relied on people writing out their names in order to vote. Hence the villagers in every village of which I obtained a report thought only in terms of D.P. and R.P.P., and one of the minor parties, nor the independents, got any votes at all from them. Except in villages where the Party line-up followed the lines of pre-existing local enmities, the whole affair was treated light-heartedly, and aroused quite a bit of amusement. At one of the weddings in Sakaltutan just before the election young men dressed up as bandits, and divided into two teams called R.P.P. and D.P. and played at chasing each other and capturing each other’s mock girl - much like copes and robbers. Party affiliations did not follow kinship or local ties, because they were not considered of sufficient important. Nevertheless, the sweeping Democratic Party victory roused some enthusiasm and hope among almost all the villagers, and the idea that the people can bring about a change of government has undoubtedly made an impression. Much depends on whether the Democratic Party is willing and able to bring about a real economic improvement in the villages. The danger is lest the main reaction be, not the development of political interest and responsibility, but disillusionment and a sense of importance, a feeling that, after all, all governments are much the same. |
| XI. | LAND AND INCOME |
| 1. | Agriculture |
| From politics we turn to economic questions, beginning with a consideration |
| of agriculture. Agriculture is basic in several senses. It is the main occupation, the main source of income, everyone in the village indulges in it to some degree, and almost everyone puts work in the fields before work in any other sphere, both in order of practical priority, and in emotional regard. During the winter months, weather conditions make outside work impossible. The women are busy in the houses, using time spared from the daily cooking and cleaning for weaving, mending, knitting and spinning, but for about four months from the end of November to the end of March, the men have no work but to feed and water the animals, which are stowed in the stables and fed on straw, eked out with some meal or bought feed. As soon as the spring comes, the men get busy. The oxen must be got into training, and spring ploughing and sowing must be done. The sheep are lambing, the ox herds and shepherds take charge of the animals, and in each household a woman must be ready at mid-day to milk the sheep. Ploughing and sowing of spring wheat and barley is immediately followed by the ploughing of the year’s fallow, which goes on perhaps into May, even until June, depending on individual circumstances. Meanwhile, the vineyards must be dug over, potatoes and other vegetables sown. Most of this later work is done by women. In June, all the grasses and weeds growing in odd places among the crops are cut for hay, again mostly by women. during late May and June the men are comparatively idle. In July the harvest begins, first with vetch and lentils, then with the main crops of rye and wheat. Threshing follows the reaping, threshing and storing together lasting for about two months, two months of ceaseless activity for everyone. In September the pressure eases off again. As soon as rain falls on the hard baked ground - even before, if the rains are late - the men must plough again and sow their rye and winter wheat. By November there remains for the men only a visit to town to lay in supplies of cheap vegetables, coffee, paraffin, salt and so on for the winter months of isolation, and then idleness again until the |
| spring. One villager, unsolicited, told me derisively that the peasants only work four months a year - a month in the spring, a month in the autumn, and two months at the harvest. Perhaps this overstates the case but certainly the idea of having, like an English agricultural labourer, to work all the year round was greeted with horror. The main crops are rye and wheat. Almost every household grows also some barley and “burcak”, a plant resembling lentil. These latter crops are used mainly for animal feed, but some barley bread is eaten if there is no alternative. Near the village, potatoes, onions, and, on a small scale, other vegetables are grown. Every house owns or aims to own a small “bag”, in which vines and fruit trees, mainly apricot, are planted. This is an innovation only ten to fifteen years old, and still steadily expanding. All the crops, other than cereal, are in fact fairly recent, and though they mean greater variety of diet, and also some additional income from sales, they are really regarded as secondary to the business of cereal growing. In all the villages of this area, a two year fallow system operates. The village lands are divided by a line through the village; one half is sown one year, and the other left fallow and used for pasture. The village herds and flocks are transferred from one side to the other during the harvest, to glean the harvested fields and eat the stubble. Soon after the completion of the harvest, autumn ploughing and sowing of the old fallow land begins, the fields from which the crops have been reaped becoming fallow for the next year. This system prevents any individual from planting the same fields in successive years, except for a few fields immediately adjoining the village, where manuring the rotation of crops make it agriculturally advantageous, and the animals can easily be kept off. Each man, however, farms his own plots quite independently of his neighbours, so that he is free as to times of ploughing and sowing, as to the kind of seed he plants, and can and does occasionally leave land fallow for longer periods. |
| 2. | Tenure and Distribution |