From the 'master of the nation' to the peasant whose property is seized...

The phrase "The peasant is the master of the nation" was one of the key elements of the Republican Revolution. Forget about the peasant being the master; we have reached a point where the peasant's property is being seized, where the gendarmerie uses rifle butts against peasants resisting to protect their land, and where economic policies are impoverishing the farmer.

In light of the increasing state oppression against the peasant and the program of economic collapse, it is time to recall the philosophy of the Enlightenment Revolutions, in the light of Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha's forgotten Populism Declaration and the phrase "The peasant is the master of the nation."

For a long time, the peasant, who has been trying to protect their olive groves, fields, water sources, and pastures against greedy miners and the construction lobby, has been subjected to the rifle butts of the Gendarmerie and state oppression under unconstitutional orders. Their fields and gardens are being confiscated illegally. As if that were not enough, they have now implemented a plan to seize the fields of the peasant—who has been economically devastated and unable to plant their fields for two years due to the prices of diesel, fertilizer, pesticides, and credit debts—through a leasing system.

THEY STOLE THE PEASANT'S MONEY...

The farmer is in ruins. Voices of protest from farmers are rising all over Turkey. Most of the produce has been left in the fields. There is a consumer in the market who cannot buy for 40 liras the product that is worth 2 or 5 liras per kilo in the field and is rotting because it cannot be harvested. Last week, in 12 Punto, I wrote about how they have evaporated the farmer's money through inflation over the last four years. The reason I chose the last four years is that ENAG, which consists of independent scientists, has been measuring inflation since January 2020.

In 2020, the ceiling price for wheat was 1.70 liras. Today it is 9.25 liras. It has increased exactly 5.4 times. Approximately as much as the TUIK inflation. However, the real inflation measured by ENAG is 1803 percent... Prices have increased exactly 19 times. The wheat ceiling price should have been 32.3 liras. They gave 29 percent of it and seized 71 percent through inflation. Of course, that is not enough. According to the law, 1 percent of the national income was to be transferred to agriculture as support every year. Over 20 years, this amount would have been 166 billion dollars. They only gave 24 billion dollars to the farmer, and distributed 142 billion dollars to friends, cronies, and religious sects.

If only it were limited to economic exploitation... For the sake of the short-term interests of greedy miners, the construction lobby, and tourism operators, they have seized the peasant's olive groves, pastures, agricultural lands, and property, unconstitutionally, and moreover, with Gendarmerie rifle butts and state force.

FROM THE OPPRESSION OF ENEMY ARMIES TO TODAY

In the first quarter of the twentieth century, between 1919 and 1922, the Turkish peasant was subjected to the violations and massacres of enemy armies and the burning of their villages. A hundred years later, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, between 2004 and 2024, while trying to protect their olive groves, fields, trees, pastures, and forests, they are being struck with rifle butts, beaten, and subjected to pepper spray attacks by their own flesh and blood, the Mehmetçik (Turkish soldier), by the Gendarmerie. The photos showing the Gendarmerie using force against 80-year-old women and men, who are the age of their grandmothers and grandfathers, are in our memory. Moreover, under unconstitutional orders... The speech given about ten days ago by the Gendarmerie General Commander, who retired due to age, using the slogans of the AKP government, reveals the situation we are in very clearly.

THE DUTY OF THE ARMY ACCORDING TO GAZI MUSTAFA KEMAL PASHA

In the face of the oppression applied to the peasant by the state and the gendarmerie, it has become a duty to recall the Populism Declaration presented by Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha to the parliament on September 13, 1920, and accepted on November 18, 1920. This declaration also forms the basis of the 1921 Constitution, known as the Law of Organization (Teşkilatı Esasiye), of the war and founding period. (I would like to open a parenthesis here and draw attention. The 1921 Constitution is not the first constitution of the Republic of Turkey, as some claim. It is the constitution of the war and founding period. Therefore, the idea of the bigots to ignore the 1924 Constitution and take the 1921 Constitution as a basis is a sinister plan to remove secularism from the constitution. Unfortunately, the Table of Six, which was presented to society as a hope, has also been a part of this sinister plan.)

Let us close the parenthesis and return to the Populism Declaration. Let us quote one article from its first four articles.

"The Grand National Assembly of Turkey possesses an army established with the determination to defend against the attacks of imperialist and capitalist enemies who attempt to assassinate the life and independence of the nation, and to teach them a lesson for this purpose. The authority of command and control belongs to the moral personality of the Grand National Assembly."

Let us quote from the telegram sent by Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha to Tevfik Pasha, who was to be sent to London on January 29, 1921, in modern Turkish:

"Our nation has been under the pressure of two destructive forces for centuries. The first of these is the sultanate, which claims to govern the country and the nation, and the second is the entire imperialist and capitalist world."

What happened to this declaration and these principles that they disappeared? How did we drift from a Parliament and an army fighting against imperialism to a management mentality that crushes the peasant, the laborer, and the retiree, and uses violence against its own nation?

THE PEASANT IS THE MASTER OF THE NATION...

The principle that "Sovereignty belongs unconditionally to the nation" is one of the fundamental conditions of the Republican Revolution and Atatürk's Revolutions against the sultanate. During the founding period of the Republic, the primary element of the nation is the peasant. They make up 85 percent of the population. A community of peasants whose produce was seized by tax collectors on behalf of the sultanate, who ran from war to war and lost not only their production power but also their lives, and whose population was decreasing... Of course, not a nation, but a subject part of the ummah. While Europe was realizing the industrial revolution, the Renaissance, and the Reformation and entering the 20th century, it was a religious agricultural empire living in Middle Ages conditions...

The foundation of the Republican Revolution is to build a nation-state on this peasant society, to turn people who were subjects of the sultan into equal citizens and free individuals before the law. This is the essence of the Enlightenment Revolutions. Therefore, it is necessary to make the peasant, who is the primary element of the nation, the master of the nation. For this, as Gazi Mustafa Kemal stated in his various speeches, it was necessary to improve the farmer's agricultural techniques, provide land to the farmer, save the farmer from the primitive plow and spread the use of machinery, and most importantly, introduce the farmer to the republic through an education campaign both in terms of production techniques and the establishment of citizenship consciousness.

Work was done for this. During his lifetime, Atatürk requested 4 times in parliament that land reform be carried out to provide land to the peasants. However, there were risks to land reform that would be carried out before the peasant's education problem was solved. It had to be postponed. Priority was given to education. After Atatürk left us, these efforts continued until 1947. In 1940, Village Institutes were established. In 1945, the law on providing land to the farmer came to parliament. However, the known group; the alliance of landlords, merchants, and clergymen in parliament, and even the top management of the Army, the heroes of the War of Independence outside the parliament, both prevented the land reform and ensured the functionalization of the village institutes in 1947, and completely closed the village institutes in 1952. Thus, the peasant, the primary element of the nation, could neither become a productive farmer nor the master of the nation. They remained the sharecroppers of the landlords, merchants, politicians, and the ulema team that used them.

The root cause of all the problems we are experiencing today is this first Counter-Revolution move made against Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's Enlightenment Revolutions, which unfortunately reached success. How sad it is that the uneducated Turkish peasant has been the vote bank of the ruling classes who have assigned this role to them until today.

Here, at the stage we have reached today, the Turkish peasant, who tries to protect their field, olive grove, and water sources from greedy interest gangs, has been dragged into misery by the intervention of the gendarmerie and economic policies. And now, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is going to lease the land of the farmer who is economically desperate and has not planted their land for two years.

Let us say what will happen. They will do this leasing business in cooperation with NGOs and capital. These NGOs will be supported by EU funds. In return for this support, Syrian, Afghan, Iraqi, and African refugees will be employed on these lands. After a while, the leased and cultivated lands will be transferred to the refugees who plant and harvest, supported by European Union funds and our taxes.

It does not seem that this will be prevented by the opposition of the current political parties. It is time for the Turkish nation to stand up and form a broad democratic opposition union in the light of Atatürk's Principles and Revolutions.