Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
Paul Stirling
CHAPTER FOUR
THE VILLAGE ECONOMY
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Page 77
village, because the local manager has local knowledge. But neighbours and kin may still be able to arrange to help each other out. In Elbshï, I came across one case of a man who had not used his own rights to credit, borrowing on behalf of another; and there were probably similar instances.
The Bank also makes special loans, for example it helps with the purchase of machinery. One or two villagers in Elbashï had used this service by I955. In the summer of I950, people in Sakaltutan received special supplementary loans, in bureaucratic theory to pay for the expense of harvesting, but in practice to buy food to last till the harvest came in.
Apart from the Bank, the Department of Agriculture made cleaned seed available on credit to the villagers each year. Not all villagers wanted the government type of seed, but most people accepted some of it. Once again, the rules for issuing were bureaucratically complex, but the requirements were easily met provided the headman was prepared to sign. At least one landless villager obtained and ate an allotment of seed.
In Elbashï, the government veterinary service had introduced another form of government aid. Annually they brought two stallions, one of French farm stock and one Arab, to the village to serve the mares. The villagers appreciated this service. They did not keep the foals in the village but sold them for good prices (p. 83). In 1951, government officials also brought merino rams to cross with the karamanli village ewes. The villagers were dubious about the ability of the progeny to survive their winter, but sai that in any case they had already put the rams to the flocks.
In a much more immediate sense, the government affects the village economy through its control of prices. The prices offered year to year by the Office of Soil Products (p. 73) is decided by the Cabinet itself. These have been above world price for very year except one since the Office was founded. The Democrat Party government made its decisions at least partly on political grounds. This guaranteed price is perhaps the greatest single benefit that the government has conferred on Turkish village agriculture. It destroyed the traditional situation in which prices drop to nothing in times and areas of glut, when the working household has a surplus, and rise to fantastic heights in times and areas of shortage, when the working house-
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