Poetry of Turkish village institute-educated poets: poetic language as cognizance of the village and the village

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Background of the Research This research aims to capture the lived experience of the villagers/villages in an era of large-scale changes in early 20th century. Aftermath of 1923 witnessed an era of sychnronised series of changes. This transformation period coincided with an adaptation enigma in different parts of Turkey. Changes were embraced in the urban centres wholeheartedly while merely touching the countryside. This was a concern because 80 % of the population lived in the countryside, and illiteracy rate was 90 % nationally. Thus, tackling illiteracy in the countryside was a priority for the changing Turkey. This realization created the Turkish Village Institutes (TVI) movement through the leadership of Ġsmail Hakkı Tonguç. TVI imagined to bring education to the countryside and achieve literacy in the countryside. TVI brought a visible increase in the literacy rates, which was 30.5 % for those 10 year and older at the aftermath of TVI (Altuğ, Filiztekin and Pamuk, 2008; Progress of Literacy in Various Countries, 1948). As with all educational reforms, education was not the sole purpose of TVI. Other goals of the TVI were achieving economic development, obtaining political power as well as inspiring motivation for secularization in the countryside. Turkish Village Institutes was born as an educational project to educate the people in the countryside as well as synchronizing a changing outlook in the countryside. The experiences of villagers are important in studying the effect of TVI. Mehmet Basaran and Talip Apaydin‘s poetry books are chosen as data sources of this inquiry who are exemplary representatives of TVI trained village intellectuals. Their poetry has great potential to shed light into the experiences of villages in the face of multi-faceted changes. Not only poetry books but also other literary texts such as short stories and novels can be ideal data sources for the study. Poetry is purposefully chosen for this study because of poetry‘s artistic and expressive power. Flexible nature of the poetry discourse allows a certain degree of liberty in expression and indirect criticism (Finley,2003; Sadoff, 2009) which would be more challenging in prose discourse. According to the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), discourse is both created by the context in which it came into existence and shape the social conditions from which it emerges. From this perspective, literary products such as poetry books can be investigated as a means of reflecting people‘s values and everyday realities as well as their responses or reactions to their lived experiences. The study provided a closer understanding of the experience of change in the countryside as well as the problems and aspirations of the villagers. The economy of Turkey was not very stable in the early years of the Republic. This instability in Turkish economy was due to several reasons. One of the main reasons was due to the large foreign dependency of the nation as well as the internal debts inherited from the Ottoman Empire (Özelli, 1974; Hale, 1981). Also, 1929 World Depression hit Turkey economically as it did many countries of the world. World Depression affected agriculturally dependent Turkish economy negatively making economic planing a priority in 1930s. This economic hardship felt enormously at the countryside, which were already poor and had few social resources. Many villages did not have hospitals, schools or teachers, which contributed to the econmic impasse experienced in the countryside. Unfortunately, Republic did not improve the lives of small landowners and landless peasants with comfort or wealth (Karaömerlioğlu, 2000). These economical concerns targeted the village context for economical and educational development. Governing body proposed that education and literacy needed to be spread in the countryside in order ‗‗to foster and engineer economic development (Özelli, 1974: 88). It is within these contextual factors that Turkish Village Institutes came into exisence with an economic focus as well as aspirations to improve literacy. They hoped that TVI would make Turkish economy self-sufficient (Arayıcı, 1999; Korur, 2002). A campaign such as TVI, is a material evidence of the increasing peasantist ideology in the 1930s