Fay Kirby, Niyazi Berkes, and Mediha Esenel

"First of all, the (Village Institutes) referred to in this work are not the corrupted versions after 1946, especially those presented to foreigners, but the original and genuine Institutes from their establishment until 1946. Because of the inability to distinguish between these two and the confusion between them, what many people know as (Village Institutes) is not only different from the original Village Institutes, but also fundamentally opposed to them in terms of Türkiye's educational cause, the educational causes of nations striving for development, and even the educational problems of developed countries. After 1946, the original Village Institutes were not reformed, but transformed into schools based on completely different and even contradictory principles. Whether their name was retained as (Institute) as it was in the early days or changed to (Primary Teacher Training School) as it was later, in both cases what emerged was something other than the original Village Institutes. This so-called (reform) has shown that when the original Village Institutes are severed from the original educational vision that gave birth to and shaped them, and an attempt is made to (repair) them by replacing the parts of the whole with completely different parts, whatever its name may be, what is created is something completely different from the original.

The second, important conclusion is that the original Village Institutes were not schools established based on the ideas of Western educators such as Pestalozzi, Dewey, and Kerschensteiner, but rather a system that differed from them in some fundamental respects (which are very important for Turkey to know) and also in terms of quantity and quality. The educational institutions created in Türkiye in accordance with the ideas of these Western educators were the Primary Teacher Training Schools (Muallim Mektepleri), and the result of going down this path is that Türkiye's educational development has become stuck in a dead end at the point it reached fifty years ago.

(...)

In today's circumstances, in order to confidently proceed by returning to Kemalist revolutionary ideals, those who will manage educational affairs need to be much more realistic, and the people need to understand realities better than before. As will be seen in this study, the indecisiveness, cowardice, or self-serving tendencies shown by many who seem to have embraced Kemalism have made it incredibly easy for those who portray the most Turkish of all things, the most indigenous of all things, as having foreign roots and being destructive to society, causing many citizens to blindly believe this. There is nothing to guarantee that these situations will not be seen again in the future. Being vigilant against such attempts, based on past experiences, is the duty not only of the leaders of Turkish education, but also of every person committed to the ideal of the independent life and advancement of the Turkish nation and state. 

Fay KIRBY (July 1961, Canada)

Mavi Boncuk | 

Fay Kirby was born in America in 1926 and completed her higher education at Cornell and Columbia Universities. Between 1947 and 1950, she worked as a teacher in Turkey, and after returning in 1951, she remained in the country until 1954, studying the Village Institutes.

During this research, Kirby traveled to almost all of Turkey's provinces, and in 1954, she completed her doctoral thesis, originally titled "The Village Institute Movement of Turkey: An Educational Mobilization for Social Change," [1] which forms the basis of this study. 

She was given the task by the United States to study the lives of Balkan immigrants in villages, but while traveling through these villages, she came across village institutes. She became very interested and wrote a doctoral thesis on the subject. However, believing that the US would not look favorably upon this, she obtained Canadian citizenship and she met and married Prof. Dr. Niyazi Berkes,[2] in early 1956. but they later separated after Niyazi Berkes settled in Canada.

Initially, she tried to contact İsmail Hakkı Tonguç regarding the village institutes, but Tonguç suspected her of being a spy. She explained this situation in a letter to Sabahattin Eyüboğlu dated April 25, 1954, saying, "He seemed to me like an official preparing a report for the American aid delegation..."

 After 1962, she permanently settled in Turkey, and in the mid-1960s, she came to Çiftlik Köy in Çeşme, where she started a new life by establishing a chicken farm after 1962, and later moved to Ankara. She then dedicated her life to teaching English and passed away in Ankara in 1990.

“As can be understood from the conclusions reached in the thesis, the first educational scientist to grasp the universal dimensions of the effectiveness of the Village Institutes as an educational movement in accelerating the process of social development and change, to understand its ‘world-scale value’ in her own words, to examine and evaluate it with scientific methods, and to conduct the most comprehensive and original research in this field, which remains unsurpassed even today, is Ms. Fay Kirby. For this reason, the Village Institutes owe her a debt of gratitude.”

(Pictured: Türkiye'de Köy Enstitüleri / Village Institutes in Türkiye, FAY KIRBY, [FIRST EDITION], İmece Publications, Ankara, 1962. 23 x 16 cm, 388 pages.)

[1] This work has been translated into Turkish with some changes from the original English text, which was accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Teachers College of Columbia University in 1960. Since the thesis was written with readers who have little knowledge of Turkey or who only know Türkiye as it was presented after 1946 in mind, the original work contained informative explanations. These explanations have been removed, as it was thought that Turkish readers would not need them.

In addition, some points left unexplained, assuming that those who will read the English version will know them, have been made slightly clearer in the Turkish text. Some parts related to the history of Western education, although relevant to the subject, have also been removed for the sake of brevity. It can be said that the only differences between the English and Turkish versions are those necessitated by differences in language and readership. But the main ideas and thesis are the same in both. The basic material on which the conclusions reached in the study are based, especially those concerning the factors that caused the collapse of the Village Institutes, are as they were in the original. Given the political, economic and educational events that existed in Turkey when it was written, it was not possible to state the meaning and importance of the Institutes without thoroughly discussing this last point. Although these are now historical events, they indicate the direction that Türkiye's education issue will take in the near future and knowing them has practical benefits.

The provinces and districts where Village Institutes were established are as follows:

- Akçadağ, Malatya (1940)
- Akpınar-Ladik, Samsun (1940)
- Aksu, Antalya (1940)
- Arifiye, Sakarya (1940)
- Beşikdüzü, Trbzon (1940)
- Cılavuz, Kars (1940)
- Çifteler, Eskişehir (1939)
- Dicle, Diyarbakır (1944)
- Düziçi, Adana (1940)
- Erciş, Van (1948)
- Gölköy, Kastamonu (1939)
- Gönen, Isparta (1940)
- Hasanoğlan, Ankara (1941)
- İvriz, Konya (1941)
- Kepirtepe, Kırklareli (1939)
- Kızılçullu, İzmir (1939)
- Ortaklar, Aydın (1944)
- Pamukpınar, Sivas (1941)
- Pazarören, Kaysei (1940)
- Pulur, Erzurum (1942)
- Savaştepe, Balıkesir (1940)

[2] Niyazi Berkes (October 21, 1908 – December 18, 1988) completed his secondary education, which he began in Nicosia, at Istanbul Boys' High School in 1928. He graduated from the Philosophy Department of the Faculty of Letters at Istanbul University in 1931. In 1935, he became an assistant in sociology at the same faculty. That same year, he went to the USA and worked on sociology at the University of Chicago until 1939. After becoming an associate professor of sociology at the Faculty of Language, History and Geography in Ankara, he went abroad. In 1952, he became a faculty member at McGill University in Canada, where he later became a professor.

(Pictured: Pertev Boratav, Niyazi Berkes and, Behice Boran)

He joined the Faculty of Language, History and Geography as a sociology assistant in 1939 and rose to the rank of associate professor. The process, which began in 1945 with a report written by Dean Prof. Dr. Enver Ziya Karal of the Faculty of Letters to the Ministry of National Education regarding four professors, culminated in purges in 1948.

In 1948, Associate Professors Behice Boran, Pertev Naili Boratav, and Niyazi Berkes were dismissed from the university. Mediha Esenel (Berkes), meanwhile, resigned on January 7, 1947.In 1948, as part of the "Purges of the Faculty of Language, History and Geography," Berkes was unlawfully dismissed from his position along with other prominent figures of the time, such as Behice Boran and Pertev Naili Boratav. After his dismissal, in 1952 he went to McGill University in Canada and became a professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies. 

Known for his work on the historical and social evolution of Turkey, Niyazi Berkes retired in 1975 and settled in England.

In addition to his works reflecting his views and thoughts on theoretical sociology, Berkes conducted research examining the changes Turkey underwent from the Ottoman period to the present day. His field study, "A Study on Some Ankara Villages" (1942), is one of the first monographs published in Turkey in the field of sociology.

Berkes' numerous articles on sociology and philosophy, published in various newspapers and magazines starting in the 1940s, were collected in his book "Essays on Philosophy and Sociology" (1985). In both his works and journal articles, Berkes, who deeply examined Turkey's social issues, made a significant contribution to the development of left-wing thought within the country. His work attracted attention not only in Turkey but also in international social science circles, and he is recognized as an influential thinker on modernization and social change processes. His struggle, particularly in the political atmosphere of the 1940s, reveals the originality and courage of his ideas. As a Republican intellectual, Niyazi Berkes, through his works and journal articles, shed light not only on his own era but also on the present day; his forward-thinking ideas have left a lasting legacy on Turkey's social and political structure.

Berkes divorced his wife Mediha Esenel [*] in 1954. Despite being away from his homeland, he continued to conduct research on Turkey. Niyazi Berkes, who dedicated his life to the social and political issues of Turkey, passed away on December 18, 1988, in England due to a heart attack.

SEE: 

• Berkes Niyazi, Ahmad Feroz (1998). The Development of Secularism in Turkey. London: McGill University Press. ISBN 1-85065-344-5
• Berkes, Niyazi (2007). Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Publishing. ISBN 978-975-08-0434-1

[*] Mediha Esenel (1914 – 2005) was a Turkish sociologist, writer and journalist. She was a faculty member of Ankara University until January 1947 when she resigned from her teaching post during the purge of leftist academics.

Narried to Niyazi Berkes, Mediha Esenel (Berkes), also wrote articles for the Yurt ve Dünya magazine and attracted attention particularly with her work on village sociology. By addressing topics such as village life, social structure, and rural development, Mediha Esenel (Berkes) held an important place in the left-wing intellectual circles of the time.

In 1953, she went to Canada with his eight-year-old son, Fikret[**]. She worked for about a year in a library in Canada that primarily contained Turkish books. After completing her work there, she returned to Turkey. In 1955, he began working as an English translator at the Maritime Bank. This job lasted for about five years. In the 1960s, he began teaching philosophy and sociology at Robert College. After retiring, he wrote *A Book That Came Too Late*. Esenel died in Istanbul on 26 August 2005.

"From a young age, I was accustomed to following Atatürk's reforms with great enthusiasm. Atatürk, who provided the greatest support to Turkish women, had witnessed the great sacrifices women made for the homeland during the War of Independence and believed that they would not be inferior to men in any field....I went to the village as a sociologist and educator who had grown up with Atatürk's reforms and was conducting doctoral-level research. In a broad sense, my aim was to determine the extent to which Atatürk's reforms had been embraced in the village and to gather information that would help the village develop in line with these reforms." Mediha Esenel (Berkes)

"A Book That Came Too Late" is a book that Mediha Berkes (Esenel) decided to write after her village studies, published in the 1940s in the once-banned Yurt ve Dünya magazine, were rediscovered by researchers in the 1990s. She therefore describes it as "late." However, as you read, you will see that we are – unfortunately – still living with the causes and consequences that Mediha Berkes pointed out in the 1940s and 1990s. Therefore, I can say that it is not a book that came too late, but one that is timeless.

Mediha Berkes begins by describing her environment and education as a daughter of the Republic born during World War I. Then, drawing on her writings and doctoral thesis from her studies in villages between 1940-45, she shares her impressions of Anatolian villages. Finally, she answers the question, "Why did Atatürk's reforms do not reach the villages?" While recounting these events, she so beautifully describes the cauldron of intrigue that simmered and engulfed intellectuals in the 1940s that she not only provides insights into village studies but also into crucial turning points for Turkey in fundamental issues such as feminism, politics, and education.

[**] Fikret Berkes (born 1945) is a Turkish Canadian ecologist. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba's Natural Resources Institute. Berkes studies community-based natural resources management in societies around the world.

Berkes was born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1945. His parents are Niyazi Berkes and Mediha Esenel. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, in 1968.  He obtained a Ph.D. in marine sciences from the same university in 1973.

In 1974, rather than continuing on with a postdoctoral position in marine ecology, Berkes worked with an anthropologist, Harvey Feit, studying the fishing practices of the Cree.

Berkes taught at Brock University, then became the Director of the NRI at the University of Manitoba in 1991.

 

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