The first and heaviest blow of the Counter-Revolution

Although the 20th century had begun, the social structure in the Ottoman Empire, which had missed the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment Revolutions, remained behind even the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

The goal and intention of the Republic, established through the War of Independence in place of the occupied and disintegrated Ottoman State, and its founder Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha, were not limited to a Republic based on the secular and nation-state model required by the era.

At the same time, it was a project to carry the society, which had been governed by a religious-agrarian empire, into the 20th century through Enlightenment Revolutions.

We summarized in the previous article what was done until 1939 for one pillar of the Enlightenment Revolutions, the establishment of the new state's superstructure, and the other pillar, the industrial drive. The third and most important pillar of the Enlightenment Revolutions and bringing society together with the Republic was the change to be made in the rural areas where more than 80 percent of the population lived.

More than 80 percent of the population were peasants, but they practiced primitive agriculture; they were not farmers. Instead of citizenship consciousness, the consciousness of the 'ummah' (religious community) and servitude prevailed. There was a structure that was content with whatever the absolute authority said. The way to break this was to turn the peasant into a farmer and to bring education to all settlement centers of the new state.

The revolution was an effort to initiate a revolutionary dialectic, where the movement that started from the top down would be pushed from the bottom up. Gazi Mustafa Kemal was aware of this in 1919. In his speech at the Ankara Agricultural School on December 27, after his arrival in Samsun on May 19, 1919, he said:

“A movement initiated from the top down must be based on a will rising from the bottom up in order to achieve real success. If it is so, no one can stand before the organ representing the movement.” (Mümtaz Soysal, The Meaning of the Kemalist Approach in Turkish Constitutionalism, Atatürk Symposium, Proceedings and Discussions (1983))

In his 1922 opening speech to the Parliament, while saying, "The peasant is the master of the nation," he also gives important messages for village education in that same speech.

“The owner of this country and the main element of our social structure is the peasant. It is this peasant who has been deprived of the light of education until today. The basis of the education policy we will follow is primarily to eliminate the existing ignorance. I am sorry to go into detail, but I can explain this thought of mine in a few words: to give the peasant, in general, enough geographical, historical, religious, and moral knowledge to read, write, and know their homeland, nation, religion, and world, and to teach the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) is the first goal of our education program.” (Thoughts from Atatürk. Ord. Prof. Enver Ziya Karal, Ministry of National Education Press)

Let us not prolong it. There were two main ways to enter the village and bring the peasant together with the Republic: to send Village Teachers, who represented the Republic, not just as teachers but as Guides-Leaders of the Republic, and to enact the Farmer Land Settlement Law to make the peasant a farmer. (Prof. Dr. Bilsay Kuruç, 21st Century Planning Group Talks, Youtube).

Great strides in education began in 1924. The madrasas were closed, and the Law on Unification of Education (Tevhidi Tedrisat) was enacted. With the transition to the Latin Alphabet on November 1, 1928, there was a rapid increase in the number of people learning to read and write.

There were nearly 40 thousand villages in Turkey, and 50 thousand teachers were needed for the villages alone. The total number of teachers was 17 thousand. Most of them were already in cities and towns. That is why the Village Institutes were important.

The Village Institutes Law was enacted in April 1940, and the Law on the Organization of Village Institutes was enacted in 1942. Those who opposed these two laws were the ones who would oppose the Farmer Land Settlement Law in 1945. Out of 426 deputies, 148 left the parliament, and it was accepted with the votes of 278 deputies. The opposition, consisting of large landowners, merchant representatives, clergymen, and supporters of the caliphate, was led by Celal Bayar, Adnan Menderes, Fuat Köprülü, Yahya Kemal Beyatlı, and Kazım Karabekir, who would later found the Democrat Party. Also in 1945, the Farmer Land Settlement Law was blocked by the same group. The path to the farmer owning land and productive farming was blocked.

With the enactment of the law, there were 21 institutes spread across every region of Anatolia, and between 1940 and 1954, they trained 17,251 village teachers, 15,943 men and 1,308 women. Both general education was provided, and agricultural techniques were transferred according to the characteristics of the region and the soil, and productivity in agriculture was increased. In some institutes, health branches were also opened to train village health officers. (İsmail Hakkı Tonguç, The Village to be Revived, İş Bankası Publications). The goal was 60 Village Institutes, to leave no village without a teacher, and to train 200 thousand farmer families with the Land Law.

While the Village Institutes were spreading rapidly, the counter-revolution did not stand idle. The 1946 elections were approaching. Circles opposing land reform, large landowners, the Democrat Party, deputies with large landholdings in parliament, representatives of the local notables, and even the victorious commanders of the War of Independence, an important segment within the CHP, the pious crowd who lost their power due to the transition to the Latin Alphabet and the Law on Unification of Education, and bigots, all became one body. Chief of General Staff Marshal Fevzi Çakmak was pressuring İnönü, asking, “When will you close these communist nests?” İnönü could not resist both the CHP group of the time and the army, and in 1946, he removed Hasan Ali Yücel from his post as Minister of National Education and appointed Reşat Şemsettin Sirer, a Nazi admirer who was against the Village Institutes, in his place. The death warrant of the Village Institutes was issued by the CHP, which had come under the influence of counter-revolutionaries, and its execution was carried out by the Democrat Party in 1954, which closed the Village Institutes. (For details, see the interview with İsmet İnönü by Muammer Erten on the official website of the İsmet İnönü Foundation, ismetinonu.org.tr)

The ineffective enactment of the Farmer Land Settlement Law, followed by the closure of the Village Institutes, is the first and heaviest blow dealt to the Republic and the Enlightenment Revolutions. Its consequences are also very heavy. It is the root cause of many problems we face today, both in the economy and in social life.

To summarize the results briefly: A large, uneducated, and unskilled mass settled in cities through irregular migration. Squatter urbanization and infrastructure problems are a separate trouble and a separate subject for an article. A large, uneducated, and unskilled mass was deployed as cheap labor for industry, along with an army of unemployed. And again, the uneducated mass, the “subjects of the religious-agrarian empire - servants of the dynasty” who did not experience the development of the 18th and 19th centuries, with this cultural structure, turned into the class defined in sociology as the lumpen proletariat instead of the working class expected to emerge and strengthen with industrialization. It easily became a vote bank for conservatism and political Islam.

As for the destruction in the economy... First of all, we are still farming very inefficiently in terms of agricultural production. During the AKP era, we already ceased to be an agricultural country. Even before the AKP came to power, we were self-sufficient in agriculture, but we were far behind industrialized countries in terms of productivity.

Turkey could not industrialize. With low education quality, we produce inefficiently in both industry and services. Almost many economists and capital spokespeople call Turkey a country with low factor productivity. It is true. Factor productivity is very low in both labor and the structure of capital. The uneducated mass, especially during the AKP era, has also become distant from skills, thought, and understanding what they read due to religious and vengeful education policies. According to an OECD study, 60 percent of the population in Turkey does not understand what they read.

In 1975, 14 million of the 16 million people employed in Turkey were primary school graduates, primary school dropouts, or illiterate. (Prof. Dr. Bilsay Kuruç, Looking to the Next Century with Atatürk's Vision Conference, İş Bankası, September 28-29, 2023) This is a result of abandoning the Village Institutes. When we reached 2022, 53 percent of the 25-year-old population had received primary education or lower. (TÜİK Population and Education Statistics)

Now, how will we increase factor productivity in the economy with this education and workforce? Including labor and capital, how will we build a high-value-added, high-tech industry from low-tech industrial production with this education level? The share of low and medium-low technology production in our manufacturing industry is 63 percent. The share of our high-tech manufacturing product exports is at the 3 percent level. We used to always compare Turkey with South Korea. Prof. Dr. Ercan Uygur wrote recently. (T24 September 28, 2023) He compared the high-tech product exports of Turkey and Vietnam. In 2002, Turkey's high-tech product exports were 1.6 billion dollars. Vietnam's were 600 million dollars. About one-third of Turkey's. By 2022, Turkey had reached 2 billion dollars, and Vietnam had reached 137 billion dollars. Nearly 70 times that of Turkey... This can only be achieved with good and correct education.

The Republic and the Enlightenment Revolutions aimed to create a 20th-century society from a population that had not previously been introduced to a skill system (education) through enlightenment and industrialization. The Counter-Revolution prevented this. However, this goal is still valid today. Although the calendars show the 21st century, Turkey has not been able to complete the 20th century and has not been able to enter the 21st century. It is our duty to revive the unfinished enlightenment revolutions under today's conditions and to uphold Atatürk's Principles and Revolutions in the light of science. With my economist hat on, I argue that a current account deficit brings misery and slavery to a country. We have a current account deficit, a budget deficit, a savings deficit, all at once. On top of that, the education deficit is increasing day by day. Yes, the current account deficit brings misery and slavery, and ignorance brings the darkness of the Middle Ages.