Common use of Table 7 Clause in Contracts

Table 7. Members according to occupational background. Occupation Ocak Nahiye Kaza Vilayet Total Lawyer 4 1 2 2 9 Doctor 2 0 1 0 3 Pharmacist 1 0 2 2 5 Veterinarian 0 0 0 0 0 Land owner 122 31 6 1 160 Teacher 23 15 6 0 44 Engineer 0 0 0 0 0 Retired officer 3 3 0 0 6 Retired Civil Servant 13 12 2 0 27 Merchant 308 66 43 4 421 Farmer 2047 154 12 0 2213 Worker 318 2 0 0 320 1. This second report that gives the Administrative Committees’ membership for the entire province has to be read together with the ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇’▇ report that is giving the members of the Administrative Committees of the central sub-province, that is the city of Balıkesir from the Vilayet to neighborhood level (ocak), plus the Administrative Committee members of the towns in the Province (sub province level). In Sirmen’s report, i.e. in Balıkesir and the towns of the province, farmers form a tiny, unimportant percentage of the Party Administrative Committee members, while the 1941 report about the entire province reveals a striking 68,9% of farmer members. A 92,4% of these farmer members were registered in the ocak Party level. The ocak is the smallest Party structure corresponding to neighborhoods and, mostly, villages. As for the mighty percentages the consortium of merchants, artisans, and civil servants achieve in the sub-province (kaza) and Vilayet level, it retreats to a tiny 17% of the membership of the entire Party structures of the Province. If we consider these statistics from a different perspective, the percentage of merchant members, for instance, decreases as we descend to the ocak (village) level; from 44% (Vilayet administrative committee), to 58% (Kaza level), to 23% (nahiye), to a 10% at the ocak level. In other words, as we climb the ladder towards the upper echelons of the Party that were definitely more important in terms of decision-making, we observe the preponderance of civil servants, professionals and merchants, or else of urban elites. If we move downwards, towards the villages, the Party membership statistics tend to overlap with the overall population, an observation made by ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇ as well.238 Another rough indication of this tendency can be also demonstrated by a simple comparison of the percentage of illiterates between the Administrative Committee members and the overall Party members of the province of Balıkesir. The 19/3/1941 report239 of the members of the İdare Heyetleri gives a 23% of illiterate members, while the 1942 biannual report240 of the Party membership offers a 42% of illiterate members. Given the known tendency of local Party men to exhibit a picture that looked more amenable to the center, we might also assume that a part of the 45% of the Party members registered as “literate or Primary education” (İlk tahsil veya okur yazar) might have actually been practically illiterate or just able to read. In that case, the actual percentage of illiteracy among the Party membership has to be considered higher. Although the above documents did not differentiate between female and male members, ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇’▇ report gives an indication of the female participation in the Party structures: only one woman is mentioned among the Administrative Committee members of the towns of Balıkesir, Balya, Edremit, Burhaniye, Ayvalık, Dursunbey, Bandırma, Sındırğı, Gönen, Erdek, and Susırlığı. It almost goes without saying that the female participation in the lower Party structures (villages mostly), if existing at all, should have been exceptional, or, more probably, nonexistent. The social and political landscape of a Turkish town in the mid-thirties and forties cannot be fully understood by examining its population and Party structures, or the members and executive of its Halkevi alone. Balıkesir, for instance, hosted a cluster of associations and institutions with varying goals and structures that were apparently attracting, or at least their administrative members came from, the local elites. Some of these associations were local, others had nationwide presence; their level of independence from Party and state varied, some being totally independent only in theory. In reality though, they were staffed and administered by local elites. Moreover, they were inspected by Party and state men, as the following document displays. One of the duties of the Party Inspectors was to inspect the non-party associations, clubs, as well as the local press, and inform the Party about the level of their cooperation with the local Party and state authorities. Similar information were requested by local Party structures; in one of the questions they had to reply in the biannual reports they were sending to the General Secretariat, the local Administrative Committees had to provide information regarding local associations and societies, athletic clubs, workers’ unions and local newspapers. In these reports the local Party 238 ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇, Türkiye’de tek-parti yönetimi, p. 186. 239 BCA CHP, 490.1/276.1106.1. 240 BCA CHP, 490.1/624.49.2. structures were also asked about their cooperation with non-Party associations; the level of the associations’ commitment to the regime’s ideals; the existence of any discord between the local Party and non-Party associations; whether their chairmen or Committee members were Party members, and similar questions. In 1944, the Party Administrative Committee of the province of Balıkesir, following the No. 9/2483 Party directive of 1/12/1943, informed the General Secretariat on the local Associations.241 Ten Associations are mentioned (Türk Hava Kurumu, Kızılay, Çocuk Esirgeme Kurumu, Ulusal Ekomomi ve Arttırma kurumu, Yüksek Tahsil Talebe kurumu, Öǧretmenler ve kültür müntesipleri biriktirme yardım birliǧi, Yoksulları Gözetme Birliǧi, Avcılık kulübü, Çehir kulübü, and Yardım Sevenler Cemiyeti). With the exception of the Türk Hava Kurumu, Kızılay, and Çocuk Esirgeme Kurumu, all the remaining associations were established in Balıkesir after 1932. The document also lists the names of the members of the Administrative Committees of the above associations and whether they were Party members or not. Out of 69 names 53 were Party members (one of them also a teacher), three were identified as not Party members, three as civil servants (memur) and 10 as teachers. Moreover, it seems that some of them were not just Party members. At least 12 of the persons mentioned in the above document also appear as members of the Party Administrative Committees of the town of Balıkesir, according to the 1936 inventory of ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇ mentioned above, although there was an eight years distance between the two documents. Next to these societies, the city of Balıkesir hosted a Teachers’ Academy (Muallim Mektebi), a ▇▇▇▇, and a number of (▇▇▇▇ okul) High and (Ilk okul) Primary schools. The existence of these educational structures, their staff and students is essential for an understanding of the local society and, consequently, of the local People’s House, its clientele, its administrative and working personnel. Based on articles by the local newspaper and the Halkevi journal, we immediately realize what most of the sources and the secondary literature on the People’s Houses mention, i.e. the predominance of schoolteachers in the Houses and their activities. In short, the Balıkesir Lisesi with its 51 teachers,242 not to mention their colleagues in the High and Primary schools and the Teachers’ Academy with their students, function as one of the local nuclei (in all probability the most energetic and important) of personnel the local House is based on. To recapitulate, the social and political associations and clubs of the city of Balıkesir in the 1930s and 1940s were by majority staffed on the one hand by members of local notable families, be it merchants or professionals, and, on the other, by state employees and teachers, some of them locals, but mostly outsiders appointed to Balıkesir. The placement of local elite members in various local structures/associations appears in other sources as well, such as the reports sent occasionally to the General Secretariat of the local Party Administrative Committee members by Party Inspectors or the applications 241 Letter No. 27 dated 31/1/1944 signed by the chairman of the Party Administrative Committee of the province of Balıkesir contained in BCA CHP, 490.1/595.58.3. 242 Alkım, Balıkesir Lisesi Dergisi, No 18-22, (15 May – 15 September 1938). sent to the Party Headquarters before the national elections by the same members – a source to be treated below. These sources display the control of the Party structures and the non-Party associations and unions by the same group of people. Nevertheless, these sources offer a rather ‘frozen’ picture of these actors’ participation in, or rather membership of these structures. The dynamics of the symbiosis of people with obviously different occupational and educational profiles within the existing social and political associations of Balıkesir is missing. In other words, the above sources offer a highly static picture of their coexistence and interaction, bereft of any conflicts or antagonisms that are inherent in any given political landscape occupied by actors competing for a limited number of resources, and especially within a context of an extensive top-down sociopolitical change wherein a wide range of well entrenched habits, mentalities and attitudes (from political legitimization and religious outlook to everyday attire) were rendered obsolete and even treacherous, thus creating breaches between social actors that could be used in their struggles. Any set (new) sociopolitical order creates its enemies and the Kemalist regime was no exception to that; ‘reactionaries’, ‘Islamic lodges’, ‘foreign ideas and movements’ (catchword for communism), to state a few proclaimed threats of the regime, were prescribed categories ready to be used against adversaries. Given that the Houses, as we have seen in the case of Kayseri and, now, of Balıkesir, were one of the structures local elites occupied next to the Party branches and other local associations; given the conflictual nature of local politics – politics defined here as the exertion of actors to occupy a limited number of positions of power, status and authority, then the People’s House being such a structure of power and authority cannot but have been the locus of conflicts and struggles between local actors. The case of the first chairman of the Halkevi of Balıkesir to be treated in the fourth chapter offers a more dynamic picture of the coexistence and antagonisms between local elite actors.