Performing property in Göllüce: land enclosures and commoning struggles in 1960s Turkey

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the ‘double movement’ of enclosures and commoning practices that took place in Göllüce village in İzmir in Turkey. This case shows how landlordism gained strength in complicity with the green revolution and how it paved the way for fresh plundering by new agricultural corporations. This process ultimately produced its antithesis, giving way to the occupation of the previously confiscated land by peasants, who took part in one of the largest peasant movements against enclosures to occur in the country. This article deals with the transformation of power relations between social classes by analyzing the changing claims and actions of actors over land property rights.

KEYWORDS:

• Private property
• enclosure
• commoning
• 1960s
• peasant movements
• land occupations
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Mehmet Öner Martin, Bengi Akbulut, Fırat Genç, and three anonymous reviewers for their creative and sharpening comments and to Nazım Hikmet Richard Dikbaş, Helen Macreath, and Emrah Irzık for their meticulous editing. I also thank all students in 2016 'Sociology of Social Movements' course, who helped me conduct the initial phase of this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The title pasha refers to a high rank (in the military) or office in the Ottoman Empire. Literally meaning ‘master’ or ‘lord’ the term agha refers to a military commander or official and was used for a person owing a large estate as in landlord/lady.

2 The struggle of Göllüce peasants against Defne Corporation in 2015 triggered academic interest in the peasant movements of the 1960s, especially concerning land occupations. See, Fırat (2019a; 2019b) and Kurtege-Sefer (2018). Fikret Babuş’s (2011) short memoir on the relation between the student movement and peasants’ movement is still the one and only source on land occupations. Sezgin Tüzün (1970), who was a sociology student in the Middle Eastern Technical University at the time, took part in the first land occupation in Elmalı, and conducted an empirical research in Elmalı and neighboring villages. See also Gürel (2014; 2020).

3 According to the Turkish Statistical Institute’s numbers based on the results of Address Based Population Registration System of 2019, http://www.turkstat.gov.tr/

4 Petition presented to İzmir 6th Administrative Presidency to file no. 2016/270 by the İzmir Governorate Food, Agriculture and Livestock Provincial Directorate. I would like to thank Şehrazat Mercan, the attorney of the village, for sharing this document with me.

5 Adnan Menderes (1899–1961) served as prime minister from 1950 until he was deposed by a military coup in 1960. He founded and was head of Turkey’s first opposition party, the economically liberal and politically conservative Democrat Party, which became the first party to be elected in the first free elections held in 1950. On May 27, 1960, a military coup overthrew the Menderes government and Menderes was subsequently sentenced to death and hanged.

6 The total number of tractors, which was 1,756 in 1948, increased to 40,000 in 1955 with the tractors imported from the USA, and the land under cultivation increased by 50 percent (Keyder 1983, 141–142).

7 A report titled ‘Events of the Year’ published in Milliyet newspaper on 31 December 1969, stated that ‘the year 1969 was full of unprecedented protest movements, clashes and occupations’ and that ‘the newly discovered awareness of the people’s own democratic rights, the atmosphere of democracy that enables mass demonstrations and the existence of social imbalances that cause such movements has led to great social turmoil’. The protests listed included: The setting on fire of US Ambassador Komer at METU (6 January); university boycotts attended by 44,294 students at 23 faculties demanding university reform (April); the indefinite closure of Istanbul University (31 May); ‘Bloody Sunday’ on 16 February; the occupation of the Singer Factory in Kartal by 450 workers (10 January); the occupation of the Demir-Döküm factory in Silahtarağa for 6 days (31 July); the Topkapı Gamak Factory resistance (29 December); the Great Teachers’ Rally in Ankara (15 February); the 4-day ‘teachers’ boycott’ organized in collaboration with TÖS and İlk-Sen (15 December); the continuing protests against the Sixth Fleet. The report also states, under the heading ‘Peasant Movements’, that ‘1969 was a year when villages became the scene of protest movements, occupations and attacks, that are not a familiar sight in villages’. These actions included: A crowd formed mostly of peasants burning down the police directorate in Konya Ereğlisi in protest against claims of torture and clashes with the police (14 February); a similar incident in Konya; the organization of demonstrations by tobacco workers in the Aegean region and hazelnut and tea workers in the Black Sea region; and cotton workers in Adana demonstrating with tractors. The most interesting development in the field of agriculture, according to the report, was ‘land occupations of peasants, which are increasing at a significant pace’: ‘After Elmalı, Atalan and Göllüce villages, the peasants of Değirmenköy, too, occupied the Esece Farm on 10 November. Another action by the peasants was the armed factory ambush by 500 people from 24 villages upon the claim that in Burdur, pulp was being sold at 15 liras to the middleman, but at 40 liras to the peasants (13 December).

8 One donum is equal to one tenth of a hectare.

9 Butler and Athanasiou (2013) detect a link between the words property and proper/propriety to associate them both with the possessive liberal white, colonialist, male, and establish proximity between property ownership and properness.

10 According to the Encyclopedia of Socialism and Social Struggles, some of the land occupations that took place in the period of 1967–1971 are as follows: In February 1969, peasants declare parts of the land belonging to the landlords to be public land and till it in common in the Uzunburun village of Tokat and the Kortuna, Pancar and Kuşçuburun villages of Torbalı. Towards the end of April 1969, Karadibek peasants of the Oğuzeli district in Gaziantep seize three thousand decares of landlord land, which were to be rented out to others. Peasants and the landlords’ men clash in the Çolaklı village of the Manavgat district in Antalya when the landlords wish to seize 350 decares of land; the village is taken under control by gendarmerie commandoes and 13 peasants are arrested. In June 1969, Akyayla peasants of the Dursunbeyli district in Balıkesir occupy public lands. Muratoba peasants in Gemlik protest the nationalization of their already insufficient lands due to a dam construction, without an alternative spot being provided. Peasants are wounded by the landlords’ men when clashes erupt as a result of the peasants taking to arms and rising up against the landlords upon landlords repeatedly occupying lands belonging to peasants and the public in the Tekmen district and Malatya, Düzyurt, Kelef, Hıdır, Çekaluk and Madralı villages of Erzurum. Peasants in the villages of the Polatlı district in Ankara also demonstrate and protest against large landowners buying the Karailyas village wholesale. In the Kırıkharmanı village, however, landlord lands are seized. In September 1969, the people of the Değirmenköy village of Silivri occupy half of the public land which owners of the Esece farm had seized. The Varışlı peasants of the Reyhanlı district in Hatay meanwhile enter the public lands occupied by the landlord and sow. In 1970, Araplar peasants of the Besni district in Adıyaman seize landlord lands. Irmakbaşı Kilise and Küçükkaldırım peasants in Adana commence a struggle against landlords. In May, Olukpınar peasants take back the lands usurped by the landlord. Kızılcaavlu peasants of Tire descend upon the farmstead of the landlord and burn his storehouses and dynamite his engines. In August 1970, landless people of 30 villages hold a public meeting. Yenioba and Kızılcaavlu peasants of the Tire district in İzmir occupy landlord lands, peasants of the Osmanoğulları, Kuzuyatağı villages, the Narlıdere village of Nallıhan, and the Köskenli, Aslanbey, Zeyneppınar, Filo and Dedeler villages of Pazarcık seize landlord lands and clash with the gendarmerie in Gaziantep. Emiroğlu peasants of Maraş occupy the lands which Hacı Ömer Ağa had seized from the public. Peasant leader Ali Rıza Keskin is killed by Şeyh Halit Gürpınar’s men in the Teşt village of Siverek during their struggle to take back the lands usurped by Gürpınar (1988, 2151–2152).

11 Hikmet Çetinkaya (1969) reported on the deed surplus rates.

12 Land occupations took place in Antalya (Manavgat, Çolaklı Village-May 1969), Gaziantep (Oğuzeli Karadibek Village-April 1969), Silivri (Değirmenli Village-November 1969). FKF organized ‘Land reform Against the Alliance of Landlords, Industrialists and Merchants’ rallies in Akhisar on 7 February 1969 and in Ödemiş on 10 February 1969. In April 1969, again in Akhisar and Ödemiş, a ‘Land Reform and Independence Rally’ was held, which was organized by different organizations (Aysu 2014).

13 The FKF was a revolutionary university students’ organization founded in 1965 in Ankara. For the views of revolutionary students regarding the land occupations in Göllüce and Atalan, see Kurtege-Sefer (2018).

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Begüm Özden Fırat

Begüm Özden Fırat is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology in Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, Turkey. She is the co-editor of Commitment and Complicity in Cultural Theory and Practice (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009), Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas, Possibilities (Rodopi, 2011) and Aesthetics and Resistance in the Age of Global Uprisings (İletişim, 2015). Her book entitled Encounters with the Ottoman Miniature: Contemporary Readings of an Imperial Art was published by I.B. Tauris in 2015.