Kemal Tahir’in Modernleşme Alegorisi: Bozkırdaki Çekirdek

This study explores Turkish social realist novelist Kemal Tahir’s (1910-1973) Bozkırdaki Çekirdek (The Seed in the Steppe) (1967) in the light of Bourdieu’s key concepts such as habitus, field, game, capital, illusio and doxa. The essay attempts to review Tahir’s novel as an allegory of the challenges of Turkish modernization. From the very beginning of his writing career, Tahir challenged the hegemonic ideas of his time. As a Marxist writer, the novelist problematizes the problematic sympathy of the contemporary left intellectuals for the Village Institutes (1940- 1953). One of the pressing challenges facing the newly emerging nation was to educate a population living mainly in rural areas. Out of fifty thousand villages, only five thousand had any kind of a school building, fewer had teachers since some of the villages that have school buildings did not have a teacher. The construction of railways and highways, industrial investments and agricultural investments, and the payment of Ottoman debts prevented the Republic of Turkey from allocating sufficient resources to the educational revolution. One of the challenges was to convince the teachers to stay in villages. To solve this problem, the Ministry of Education came up with a plan, recruiting bright students from village primary schools. These candidates were to be trained to teach children, lead the farmers in the village by introducing new agricultural technology and act as a representative of the state. Students at the village institutes did not only study their academic subjects and pedagogy, but were also trained in agriculture, carpentry, health care, economics, music, drama and so on. The project which was started by the second president Ismet Inonu in 1940 proved to be unpopular with the villagers they aimed to enlighten. When free elections were introduced in 1946, even their patron, President Inonu found it hard to back the institutes. The new Democrat Party took over the power in 1950 and the institutes could survive only three years in their rule. Ten years after its dissolution, leftist movements invented a myth of the institutes arguing that Turkey could solve most of its problems only with the education method implemented in the institutes. 70* Assoc. Prof., Dokuz Eylül University Faculty of Letters, Department of Translation and Interpreting, Izmir / Turkey, atalay.gunduz@deu.edu.tr, ORCID ID: 0000-0003-0325-5191 Kemal Tahir’s Allegory of Modernization: The Seed in the Steppe 529 In the novel, the symbolic, economic, religious, social, and political capital owners engage in the battle of position. The new institute was built at a point that pushes the boundaries of the fictional Şirin village. Those dominating the micro-field of the village stage an active resistance against this modern state institution as it threatens their basic accumulations of capital. In this context, reading Tahir’s novel as an allegory of the challenges of Turkish modernization provides us with a new perspective. The title of the novel “The Seed in the Steppe” can be viewed as the author’s criticism of the modernist’s perception of the villagers as an underdeveloped community that need a founder. On the contrary, the novel tries to describe how advanced and complex the strategies and the social habitus of the villagers are. Modernizers aim to activate the potential of the village through modern institutions such as the school. Yet the new institutions stepped on already occupied fields where the traditional position keepers are disturbed by the intruding modernizers. According to the state’s reckoning eighteen-year-old village institute graduates would go back to villages that they come from, introduce modern views and techniques aside from their essential mission, teaching children. Yet economically, socially, physically dominant position holders in the established order would do anything to protect their positions. Modernizers who take the initiative with the illusio of an ideal, are effective so long as they have the backing of the political power. On the other hand, the capital accumulation and game feelings of the capital owners of deeply rooted traditional structures are so powerful that the actors in the field of education are often weak and helpless in the battle of position. Bourdieu’s field theory gives us a great opportunity to read Tahir’s novel since the city, town and village as social spaces of interaction are the places where games are played in the novel. Agents with illusio, faith and stakes in the game invest in proportion to their commitment to the game. Whether an agent is to be taken into the game is determined by certain capitals required in the field. In every field, there are power positions that have been held by the right capital owners. Since the capital accumulation of those who have just succeeded in entering the game is low, the desire to gain room in the game is perceived as a threat by the former capital holders, thus incurring resistance. Tahir’s novel suggests that the task imposed on the institutes is not compatible with the facts and therefore remains far from fulfilling its function. Although the institutes do not reach the desired success, still a synthesis is reached at the end of the novel