Özge Sezer (Cottbus): »Village as Production: Inheriting the Planned Rural Settlements in Early Republican Elazığ, Turkey«

From the first years of the early republican period of Turkey (1923 –1950), formation of the modern Turkish village had a crucial place in the state’s programmes which lead to series of changes in cultural, social and economic environment in the countryside. While the reconstruction of village economy and materialization of a deep-rooted peasantry evolved into urgent subjects within the development plan, the rural life became conceptualised, analysed and culturally re-structured within the nation-building agenda of the state. This went unavoidably hand in hand with reforms in the rural landscape by construction of the new villages according to state planning strategies. In other words, the village emerged as a synthesis of cultural, national and economic production. At the end, it developed into an architectural production that allows an observation about the «cultural techniques» as significant motives of the governing power. Starting from this point of view, the paper aims to unfold the transmission process of «cultural techniques» in making the modern Turkish village during and after the early republican period of Turkey. It demonstrates the state strategies for shaping the genealogy to produce the early republican heritage, yet, the lived experiences of people and the conflicts and / or acceptance developed in time. As crucial examples, the paper focuses on the spatial negotiations in the villages established in Elazığ that developed into an emerging city in eastern Turkey after the Armenian and Kurdish deportations, population exchanges and immigrations from the late 19 th century to the mid-20 th century. By introducing these settlements and their «production» process during and after the early republican period of Turkey, this paper seeks to have a better understanding of the aspects that have remained visible or become invisible in the construction / destruction courses of different inheritance due to the time, people and politics.