Forming the Rural Settlements in Early Republican Turkey

Abstract

In the early Republican period of Turkey transformation of the rural areas occurred in a development programme that involved peasants. On the one hand, rural lifestyle was idealized in the nationaland cultural context. Also, the Turkish peasantry was considered as a significant labour resource for the agriculture-based economy. On the other hand, policies aimed to control the rural population in the newsettlements, which were forms of internal colonization practiced especially during the second half of 1930s. Starting from this point ofview, the new rural settlements, built from 1934 to the end of 1930s, emerged significant examples to explain the Republican programme tomodernize the village community under a united Turkish identity, even incompletely diverse localities. This paper aims to re-open the discussion of Turkey’s nation-building and modernization process from a perspective projected to the rural ideals, specifically to the Turkish village. It seeks to demonstrate how the policies of early Republican authority controlled rural Turkey in economic and socio-cultural terms,and altered the environment of the village community. It particularly focuses on the elaboration of ideas in architectural implementationduring the early Republican period of Turkey. Consequently, this paperintroduces the new rural settlements, emerging in the late 1930s inTurkey, pointing to their values as the historical monuments in Turkey’sarchitectural culture.