Politics and the Peasantry in Post-War Turkey

Social History, Culture and Modernization

Sinan Yildirmaz

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781786720726
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 21st Century History
• Index: History

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed following the First World War, the feudal system which had survived untouched in much of Anatolia began to change. Kemal Ataturk's task of building a nation 'from the people up' meant that the peasantry, by far Turkey's largest ethnographic group, became an important symbol of social cohesion. Here, Sinan Yildirmaz analyses the history of modern Turkey through the material culture of this peasantry - their speeches, social club documents, art and diaries - and reveals a rich social and political life which flowered after the Second World War. Politics and the Peasantry in Post-War Turkey is the first history to show how the changing peasantry laid the foundations for the modern Turkish state, and will be essential reading for students and scholars of the Ottoman Empire and of the History of Modern Turkey.

CHAPTER 1

PEASANTS IN THEORY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY IN TURKEY

“Savoir pour prévoir et prévoir pour pouvoir”
[“Knowledge for prediction, prediction for power”]

A. Comte

Eric Hobsbawm says the following on the condition of the peasantry in the world and Turkey after World War II:

For 80 percent of humanity the Middle Ages ended suddenly in the 1950s; or perhaps still, they were felt to end in the 1960s.… The most dramatic and far-reaching social change of the second half of this century, and the one which cuts us off for ever from the world of the past, is the death of the peasantry.… Only one peasant stronghold remained in or around the neighborhood of Europe and the Middle-East-Turkey, where the peasantry declined, but, in the mid-1980s, still remained an absolute majority.¹

One of the most important developments of the post-war period was the “depeasantization” process, or what Hobsbawm refers to as “the death of the peasantry.” The peasantry was an important component of the reconstruction process of the world's economic and political order during the post-war period. As seen again in Hobsbawm's words, the importance of Turkey during this period must be emphasized. Although Turkey followed the depeasantization process later than its European counterparts, it began to be affected by this development during this period. The depeasantization process occurred differently in Turkey, due both to the changing preferences in socio-economic policies and the transformation of the rural structure after World War II.

Depeasantization can be defined, in short, as a gradual decrease in the rural population, as opposed to an increase in the urban population. Farshad A.Araghi says that the depeasantization process occurs as a result of a dual relation. According to him, the process of depeasantization includes, on the one hand, “deruralization,” which means “the depopulation and decline of the rural areas” and, on the other hand, “over-urbanization,” which means “massive concentration of peoples and activities in growing urban centers.”² This development process, together with the economic development models that were created after World War II, brought about rural transformation, especially in Third World countries, where capitalism was less developed. Again, Araghi defines the main factors that affected the depeasantization process during the 1945–73 period as follows: “1945 to ca. 1973, the period of the construction of the world market and the establishment and institutionalization of the new global political and economic order under the hegemony of the American state.”³

Later chapters will analyse how the peasants changes in economic and political terms during this period. This chapter, however, seeks to show how the peasants were defined in theory in relation to the overall transformation of the world system during the post-war period. Within this framework, the various definitions of peasantry in relation to capitalist development and the depeasantization process will first be presented. After that, analysis will turn to the development of a peasant-related theoretical field in Turkey, namely that of rural sociology, which was affected profoundly by dominant post-war theoretical developments.

During this period, the field of rural sociology became one of the most important theoretical areas in the world in problematizing the peasantry. With the development of the world market and the international economic division of labor after the war, the peasants became one of the most important components of the new world order. The necessity of improving the relatively underdeveloped structures– at least up to a level that would prevent the creation of problems which might obstruct the progress of the system– made it necessary to gain knowledge of these structures. Such knowledge could then be used in the creation of policies that would assist the integration of these structures into the new world system in an unproblematic way.

It is difficult to create either political or economic projects for the components of a society about which its knowledge has not been gathered. For this reason, the process of theorization of the peasantry during this period was directly related to the requirement of achieving a “real” knowledge of the peasants. This relation, as will be told in detail below, developed the production of knowledge through experimental sociology. This methodological approach was used widely and became dominant in most sociological studies of the period, as an applied social science discipline. In this way, just as the peasants were undergoing an economic and political transformation, so knowledge of the peasant groups was being redefined by these studies. This situation, as will be asserted in every chapter of this study, made out the peasants as a “real” entity on a theoretical basis. The idealized and glorified ideological imaginary of the peasants that had been dominant in the previous period transformed them into the “real” components of society as a result of the theoretical concerns that were dominant during this period.

The various definitions of the peasantry bear political meaning, no matter from which perspective it is viewed, because the attempt to gather a group of people with broad and differentiated characteristics under a single definition is a political effort in itself. Tom Brass says that these attempts at definition create a politically instrumental “agrarian myth.” According to Brass, “the agrarian myth is an essentialist ideology which in most contexts is defended with reference to a mutually reinforcing set of arguments to do with the innate aspects of ‘peasant-ness,’ national identity and culture.”⁴ Even though Brass develops this concept as a way of defining populist and post-modernist views of the peasantry, it is possible to assert that every unified definition of the peasantry has such a mythological side.

This mythologization of the peasants indicates a kind of pragmatist/instrumentalist approach which constructs actually non-existent characteristics as the origins of structures in order to legitimize the definition with a historical origin. This process of mythologization has three images or discourses. First, the perspective can be observed in “the peasants-as-the-backbone-of-the-nation” discourse. In this discourse the peasants are defined both as the labor force that helps the nation to achieve self-sufficiency and as the source of military conscripts that will protect the country against all evils. In this way, the peasants are defined both as the founders of the nation and the protectors of the country.⁵

Second, the peasants are defined as the main component of a political structure in which the peasant household is the basis of a self-sufficient economic unit. The existing political and economic forms are not questioned in this structure because the structure is mainly organized on the basis of the rural family, in which the individualist perspective is dominant. Due to that, this structure has a role of protecting the existing social hierarchy and political stabilization. If this structural organization is held in a sustainable position, it also will guard against the spread of class-based political thoughts, such as socialist thoughts.⁶

Third, the agricultural structures are considered in this perspective as the origins of the “traditional” and “natural” value system, which bears the cultural function of eliminating the “evil” effects of industrialization.⁷ These three discourses, in fact, developed in order to find a solution to a problem that arose with the development of capitalism, “the peasant question.” All of these discourses try to prevent the creation and the development of certain facts. With the development of capitalism and the disappearance of the peasantry, some problems may occur which can lead to class struggle and end with the disappearance of the existing structures. In order to eliminate this development, basically, the older structures need to be redefined according to their new roles in the changing structures and be transformed into politically functional foundations in the new order. The theoretical developments during this period followed this path and the peasants were redefined in theory according to the requirements of the new order.

The importance of defining peasant types is actually related to the process of peasants' gaining political importance. As Eric R. Wolf says, peasants “are important historically, because industrial society is built upon the ruins of peasant society.”⁸ As Wolf's statement makes clear, the definition of the peasants or the definition of the peasant question is more closely related to the transformation of society itself than to the actual peasants. The most problematized aspect is not the peasants' living conditions, but their transformation, and how to maintain the main characteristics of the society during the subsequent transformation. During the current age and especially during the period under study here, the peasants became important due to the effects of industrialization on rural structures.

There are three main approaches to theorizing the peasants and the peasant question in general. These are the Marxist “dissolution of the peasantry” thesis, A. V. Chayanov's populist “peasant mode of production” thesis, and the definition of peasants according to modernization theory and development economics. Modernization theory will be discussed separately here, because it had the greatest effect on the definition of the peasantry during the period in question.

In Marxist theory, the peasantry is mostly evaluated in relation to the capitalist development process. According to the Marxist “dissolution of the peasantry” thesis, the labor force that is needed for urban industrial production will be provided by the dispossessed peasants with the development of capitalism in the countryside. When capitalist relations of production develop, the older agricultural forms of production will be eliminated and new capitalist forms of agricultural production will emerge. Korkut Boratav describes this thesis in general as follows:

As a starting point this thesis emphasizes the diffusionist dynamic of capitalism and in relation to that its force of eliminating all kinds of older modes of production. The peasantry makes up the first free labor depots of capitalism through dispossession during the primary accumulation of capital, and in this way the pre-conditions of the capitalist industrialization occur. The matured type of this process is the English-type capitalist agriculture.⁹

The Marxist “dissolution of the peasantry” thesis was developed after Marx through the discussions of Lenin and Kautsky on the continued existence of the peasantry even in capitalist society. Lenin, departing from the unitary definition of the peasantry in classical Marxism, emphasized the differentiation among the peasants according to their relation to the mode of production. Henry Bernstein says that, “Lenin provided a model of three basic peasant classes– rich, middle and poor peasants– which anticipated their (eventual) transformation into classes of agrarian capital (rich peasants) and proletarian labor (poor peasants), with a minority of middle peasants joining the ranks of the former and the majority joining the ranks of the latter.”¹⁰ According to Lenin, the differentiation among the peasants also bears a political meaning. The poor peasantry, defined as the “rural proletariat,” was accepted by Lenin as among the forces that could realize a socialist revolution together with the working class, especially for the countries in which the working classes were not well developed, such as Russia.

Kautsky, on the other hand, while in large measure accepting the Marxist thesis, highlighted the continuation of peasant forms under the capitalist mode of production. As Deborah Fahy Bryceson writes, “Kautsky stressed that the dissolution of peasant production is a slow process whereby peasant petty commodity producers co-exist with agrarian and urban industrial capitalism, gradually shrinking over time under the force of urban migration.”¹¹ During the discussion with Lenin, Kautsky asserted that the smallholder peasantry, in particular, could continue to exist in the capitalist mode of production without creating a totally awkward situation for capitalist development.

This development, Kautsky asserted in his arguments against Lenin, was to be observed in many Latin American countries. It is also valid for the depeasantization process in Turkey. In the Turkish example, as opposed to the classical Marxist approach's expectations, the peasantry was not totally eliminated; instead, a new rural structure was created in which many intermediary forms existed simultaneously.¹² However, this development did not create a contradiction with the capitalist way of development. Shapker Thapa describes such developments in agriculture as follows:

Because capitalism needs, a free and landless worker who must sell his labor does not provide the additional alternative of capitalist development proceeding without an increase in depeasantization. The advance of capitalist relations of production does not necessarily imply a reduction in the number of smallholdings or proletarianisation of the peasant household. The process of proletarianisation is not as rigid as the Marxists suggest. It is relatively slow in most underdeveloped countries compared to industrialized nations.¹³

Within this framework, Kautsky's thesis seems to be more valid for explaining rural developments, especially in late capitalist societies such as Turkey.

Another thesis that explains the development of the peasantry in the capitalist mode of production, which was developed as an alternative to the Marxist thesis and became popular again especially during the 1960s, is A. V. Chayanov's “peasant mode of production” thesis. The Russian populist approach, which was influenced by Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Aleksandr Herzen, agreed with Marx's thesis in a way. Although it was not “progressive” as defined in Marx's thought, the destructive effects of capitalist development on rural structures were accepted by the populists, too. However, consequently they supported policies that sought to prevent the development of capitalism in Russia in order to eliminate the destructive effects of capitalist development.¹⁴

This populist perspective is best represented in A. V. Chayanov's theory. Chayanov's perspective differs from the others in that it defines a kind of mode of production and behavior which are peculiar to the peasantry. According to Chayanov, the peasant mode of production works differently from the capitalist relations of production: peasants produce, not to make a profit, but to meet the requirements of their families. As a result, even in the countries in which capitalist relations of production have not developed, this mode of production survives.¹⁵

The perception of Chayanov and the populists in general was based on the prevention of the structural destructions that could occur due to the transformation of rural structures after capitalist development. They tried to manage these destructive effects in order to protect the existing socio-cultural structures from getting more damages. Tom Brass makes the following comment on this neo-populist definition of the peasantry:

… neo-populism in general and Chayanovian theory in particular reconstitutes the peasantry as an undifferentiated category that resists socio-economic change, a politically conservative position which does not involve a transition to socialism, entails no expropriation/redistribution of existing property, and hence presents no threat to the continued rule of capital.¹⁶

This perspective also coincides with the economic and political perceptions of the peasantist ideology in Turkey. The idealized definition of the peasantry was created in accordance with this theorization. Also, the thoughts of peasantism in the efforts to create a “classless society” can be related to such a definition of the peasantry.

This theorization of Chayanov came forward again during the 1960s as an alternative to Marxist peasant studies, which were dominant at that time. The anti-Marxist social scientists of the 1960s, in particular, sought to develop the classification and theorization of Chayanov in their analysis of village and peasants.¹⁷

During the post-war period, modernization theory had a greater influence on the perception and definition of the peasantry than did either of these approaches. For this reason modernization theory– both its definition of the peasantry and its effects on Turkey– require a detailed analysis.

Modernization Theory and t...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Peasants in Theory and the Development of Rural Sociology in Turkey
• 2. Peasants Moving Towards Cities: the Transformation of the Rural Structure, Rural Migration and the Gecekondu
• 3. The Peasantry as an Active Component of Politics
• 4. The Making of the “Village Literature”
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Back Cover