Binghamton University The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB) Graduate Dissertations and Theses Dissertations, Theses and Capstones 4-10-2018 The Apotheosis of the Green Revolution and the Throes of Landless Peasant Women in Two Aegean Villages of Turkey in the 1960s Bengu Kurtege Sefer Binghamton University--SUNY, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://orb.binghamton.edu/dissertation_and_theses Part of the Sociology Commons, and the Women's History Commons Recommended Citation Kurtege Sefer, Bengu, "The Apotheosis of the Green Revolution and the Throes of Landless Peasant Women in Two Aegean Villages of Turkey in the 1960s" (2018). Graduate Dissertations and Theses. 73. https://orb.binghamton.edu/dissertation_and_theses/73 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations, Theses and Capstones at The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB). 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THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE GREEN REVOLUTION AND THE THROES OF LANDLESS PEASANT WOMEN IN TWO AEGEAN VILLAGES OF TURKEY IN THE 1960S BY BENGU KURTEGE SEFER BA, Bogazici Unversity, 2007 MA, Bogazici Unversity, 2009 MA, State University of New York, Binghamton, 2013 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate School of Binghamton University State University of New York 2018 @Copyright by Bengu Kurtege Sefer 2018 All Rights Reserved Accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate School of Binghamton University State University of New York 2018 April 10, 2018 Benita Roth, Chair and Faculty Advisor Department of Sociology, State University of New York, Binghamton Leslie Gates, Member Department of Sociology, State University of New York, Binghamton William Martin, Member Department of Sociology, State University of New York, Binghamton Kent Schull, Outside Examiner Department of History, State University of New York, Binghamton iii Abstract The debates on the historical processes of agrarian transition and the experiences of rural women in these processes have never lost their appeal for sociological study, although the studies have focused on the political economy of development and rural women in development in the 1960s and 1970s and have then shifted to microeconomics, power relations, and the formations of subjectivities since the 1980s. This thesis develops a framework, which helps analysis of the global and local processes of agrarian transition across gender and class lines in Turkey in the 1960s. In the existing literature, it was generally assumed that petty commodity production deployed itself and rural poverty and class inequalities abandoned in Turkey after World War Two. By testing this hypothesis, this dissertation illustrates the negative impacts of the global economic development project, the Green Revolution, on landless peasant women in two Aegean villages, Göllüce and Atalan, in Turkey by focusing on the changing material conditions of production, the genderless class-based organization of land occupations, state policies targeting rural women, mutually constitutive relations between patriarchies and agrarian capitalism and competitive party politics and political reactions to the mobilization of women through land occupations and women`s resistance to all of these factors. These factors and women`s agencies are interpreted by using two-part theoretical model that combines the insights of feminist Marxists and intersectional theorists to present a grounded and coherent analysis. iv By using this theoretical model, this dissertation reveals five patterns in two villages. First, it explains the social, economic, and political processes that resulted in social inequities and unequal distribution of the benefits of the Green Revolution for landless women in rural Turkey. And it sheds lights on local processes of differentiation and pauperization among peasants across gender and class lines and the places of these women in rural economy and politics. Secondly, by probing the relations between politics, peasantry, and rural women’s activism in two chapters, the thesis shows that the genderless organization of land occupations by the leftist student organizations and the youth branches of the political parties did not alleviate gender and class inequalities. In addition, different reactions of the politicians to peasant struggles, specifically land reform attempts by occupations, and to the political mobilization of women left intact class specific relations of agrarian production and patriarchal control over female labor power in two cases. Thirdly, the thesis elaborates on how gender-based state policy targeting rural women, home economics projects, and the ways it was implemented were intended to recast and reinforce gendered divisions of labor at the disadvantage of women by pedagogically essentializing conventional role of housewifery and ignoring them as agricultural workers. Fourthly, the thesis scrutinizes intertwined relations between patriarchies and agrarian capitalism in two cases. By evaluating the workings of these farms as it relates to rural female labor power, I reveal how landless women, as a class, were marginalized in the processes of the consolidation of agrarian capitalism, how gendered expectations and norms affected the uses of rural female labor power, and how they struggled against their marginalization by strategically using the same norms. Lastly, this thesis demonstrates that women took active roles in using gendered norms and v expectations to lessen their domestic and agricultural workloads, shaping state policy and redefining gendered divisions of labor and affecting the politicians to reconsider the legitimacy of agrarian policies and necessity of making land reform in rural Turkey. Thus, they contested for all of the structural forces worsening their working and living conditions in two research sites. And their gendered contestation shows us that landless peasant households are not composed of conflict free individuals sharing solely the same class specific interests. vi To my beloved husband and son vii Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor, Prof. Benita Roth, for her intellectual stimulation, emotional support, valuable comments, patience and encouragements while making research and writing this dissertation. As an academic role model for me with her discipline and dedication to her work, she read it very carefully, gave timely feedbacks and edited it many times. And her experience in social movements, and critical feminist perspectives enriched my interpretations. I am also greatly indebted to Prof. Leslie Gates and Prof. William Martin not only for their presence and criticisms as my committee members, but also their insight, kindness and patience throughout the dissertation process. Their comments have been very influential in how I formulated my questions and organized chapters. I also thank Prof. Kent Schull for his encouragement, questions and comments as an academician specialized in the Middle East, criminology and state theories. My field research and research in the archives was a secretive trip to knowledge. For their trust in my project and me and for their support in this trip, I am deeply grateful to Hikmet Çetinkaya, Ali Rıza Bodur and Bülent Çoşkungür. Hikmet Çetinkaya who witnessed land occupations in Göllüce and Atalan as a journalist gave me invaluable support to conduct interviews with other journalists and activists by using his personal networks. And Ali Rıza Bodur who took an active role in the mobilization of landless peasants in two cases took me to the villages and, with his help, I was able to make interviews with the peasants themselves. Lastly, I owe special thanks to Bülent viii Çoşkungür because he made invaluable documents- the leftist journals, newspapers, and personal archives- on the peasant discontent and movements from the archives of TÜSTAV accessible to me. In addition, my dissertation was funded by the dissertation year award (DYA) of the department of sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton and the SALT Research Institute in Istanbul. I thank them for their generous support. Finally, I thank my parents, Sezer, Erdogan, Savas and Guler for their encouragement, support, care and for imagining otherwise in times of negativity and loss. I am also grateful Canan and Asli for their valuable friendship in every step of this dissertation. Lastly, I owe my deepest gratitude to my beloved husband, Akın Sefer, without whose support I could not complete this thesis. I am truly grateful for his dedicated support and encouragement from the first days of my studies till the very end as my life coach, best friend, great husband, and wise mentor. No words could express my appreciation of his support, encouragement, and inspiration. And I owe special thanks to our son, Nedim Barış, who disciplined us to work efficiently and pulled us back to real life. Thus, I dedicate this thesis to Akın and him. ix Table of Contents List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………..xii Chapter 1-Introduction………………………………………………………………...1 Introduction.....................................................................................................................1