Do Peasants Make History? Authoritarianism and Rural Resistance in Contemporary Turkey

Date

2025-01-01

Author

Medeıros Rıbeıro, Jose Duarte
Hoşgör, Hatice Ayşe

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On a sunny afternoon at the end of October 2021, following a dry summerthat deeply affected the grape production in the Alaşehir region—alreadyaffected by dozens of geothermal centrals dispersed in this region—, wemet for an interview with a middle-aged peasant-farmer who owns a familyfarm of grape production. To the initial question, “What meanings does theword peasant have for you?,” with which we started all our interviews withpeasant farmers linked to Çiftçi-Sen, this peasant-farmer answered with aquote: Atatürk’ün sözlerinden gidersek [köylü] milletin efendisidir.1The Turkish word “efendi” can be literally translated as “master,” mean-ing that the peasant is the backbone of the nation or the social group thenation mostly relies upon. The word is also employed figuratively with themeaning “respectful” or “the one that complies with.” Regardless of the lit-eral or the figurative meaning, the importance of this quote is the role givenby the state to the peasantry,2which for the ones acquainted with the rhetoricof the newly founded Republic, comes attached with a strong paternalisticanalogy. It is not by chance that “Devlet baba” (“father state”)3is still a commonlyused expression.It is not intended here to overvalue the symbolical features of a singlequote in a single interview, but only to illustrate the main argument of thischapter: the striking characteristic feature of the Turkish peasantry is its lackof continuous and structured organization and political mobilization. Thisis linked to the historical paternalistic appropriation of the peasantry by theTurkish Republic,4a trend that has been reinforced by the authoritarian populism of the ruling party in last two decades, the Justice and DevelopmentParty (A.K.P.).

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https://www.peterlang.com/document/1490155
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/117573

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Department of Sociology, Book / Book chapter