“The peasant is the master of the nation!” This is a well-known, much-repeated statement of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of Türkiye. On Turkish Republic Day, Oct. 29, it is impossible not to remember what Atatürk did in the early years of the republic and the vision he set forth 101 years ago to build a new nation from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. As for me, the most meaningful pictures of Atatürk are those taken in the middle of golden wheat ears in the field. Such pictures demonstrate his will to improve agriculture in the country. Thanks to the bounty of those endless acres of wheat fields, the young Republic of Türkiye grew stronger and became a self-sufficient and independent country.
Atatürk’s words, “The peasant is the master of the nation!” were uttered to strengthen the rural areas, develop agriculture and animal husbandry and ennoble the Anatolian people in their own place. Nowadays, looking at the past a century later, we can value and understand better his vision and the importance of his efforts to strengthen agriculture in the early years of the republic. Even before the announcement of the republic on Oct. 29, he called for the İzmir Economic Congress, held earlier in the year in February and March, in order to make decisions that would shape the economic roadmap of the new Republic of Türkiye. The congress was a turning point. The manifesto was clear. In order to be a truly independent country, we had to grow and produce our own food, we had to produce our basic necessities, and we had to be totally economically independent. Today, this vision needs to be revisited in order to build a better tomorrow.
The action was taken at once. The real independence war against imperialism was the economic independence challenge. Although the war of independence has been won, the war of economic independence has not yet been fought. The first step was to improve agriculture in poverty-stricken Anatolia. In the congress, many decisions were taken in accordance with the demands of the peasants’ and farmers‘ groups in the direction of agricultural development and the establishment of a food industry based on agriculture and animal husbandry. In 1924, after the proclamation of the republic, the Agriculture Ministry was established, thanks to the adoption of the principle “Agriculture is the basis of the national economy!” Regional planning was carried out with rapid decisions, and the Livestock Breeding Act was passed in 1926.
One of the most important contributions of the Izmir Economic Congress was to empower civilian entrepreneurs. A handful of farmers in Uşak embarked on the adventure of opening the first private sugar factory in the republic. The “Uşak Terakki-i Ziraat Türk Anonim Şirketi” (Uşak Terakki-i Ziraat Turkish Joint Stock Company), headed by Nuri Şeker (note that his surname means “sugar” in Turkish), was established entirely through the efforts of local initiative. They started growing sugar beet in Uşak. Expanding rapidly throughout the country, the sugar factories became a national success, not only in their production but with the community of engineers and experts, they became a hub of social and cultural life, establishing social facilities to ensure the happiness and quality of life of their employees.
The congress also spiked the initiation of trade fairs. The first-ever international agriculture fair was held in 1924 in Adana, a city in the midst of the fertile Çukurova plain. Atatürk himself was the Honorary President of the fair, which was opened on Jan. 5, just six months after the establishment of the republic, and one year after the Izmir Economic Congress. Soon after, in 1927, the İzmir Trade Fair was started as the foremost organization in the Aegean, which for many years introduced Turkish products to the world market.
Atatürk himself tried to set an example to give hope to the farmers. He bought a barren piece of land in the Ankara steppe and founded the Atatürk Forest Farm in 1925. In 1937, he donated the land, which he had bought entirely with his own money, to the National Treasury, in a way gifting it to the Turkish people. He pioneered the establishment of the Tekir Farm Agricultural Credit Cooperative, which was founded in 1936 in Silifke, Mersin, and became its number-one partner. In doing so, he also underlined the importance he attached to cooperatives. In Anatolia, Atatürk visited not only city centers but also rural areas and farms, met with peasants, farmers, traders and food industrialists in chambers of commerce, listening to their problems and sharing his views on how the region could develop.
At the recent Çukurova Agricultural Summit in Adana, Atatürk’s vision for the development and strengthening of the region was stressed by Ebru Baybara Demir, who is the creator and chair of the summit. Atatürk visited the city exactly nine times. Three of these visits took place before the establishment of the republic, and his visit on March 15, 1923, immediately after the İzmir Economic Congress, is particularly significant in regard to farming in the region. Atatürk talked for hours with the villagers and had dinner with the farmers at the Farmers’ Association and made long speeches for the development of agriculture and agricultural production in the region. One later visit was to open the Agricultural Exhibition on Jan. 3, 1925, and to visit the Agricultural School where he exchanged ideas with farmers about good farming.
Today, especially with climate change affecting agriculture everywhere in the world, water management and dry farming practices have become increasingly important. It is an incredible vision that this problem was foreseen and solutions sought in the early years of the republic. Atatürk worked with Ali Numan Bey, a graduate of the Bursa Agricultural School, in the first establishment of the Gazi Farm, which later became the Atatürk Forest Farm, and was impressed by the success he achieved in the middle of the barren land in such a short time. Atatürk encouraged him to go to the United States to further his studies in agriculture at the Kansas Agricultural College and the University of Nebraska. Ali Numan Bey returned to Türkiye and helped establish the Dry Farming (then written as Drayfarming, with the exact spelling in Turkish) Experiment Station in Eskişehir, and published a book on the topic in 1937 where he emphasized the need to work with an agricultural system suitable for the country’s arid climatic conditions and rainfall regime. The extraordinary yields he achieved on barren Anatolian soil were then recognized as the “Turkish Miracle.” After the 1934 law on surnames was put into action, he was given the surname Kıraç by Atatürk, meaning “barren, or arid soil,” a name suggesting his ability to turn barren land into fertile soil. Today, when the efficient use of water is still being discussed in our water-scarce country with the effects of the climate crisis being felt every day, it is necessary to look again at the vision of Atatürk and Ali Numan Kıraç almost exactly a century later.
The importance given to agriculture in the early years of the republic, and in particular the establishment of an agri-food industry, had revived a nation exhausted after the War of Independence and given it a taste of true independence. By looking at what happened in the early years of the republic, it is possible to draw inspiration from the past and make brand new breakthroughs for the future, for a nation that feeds itself!
