The phenomenon of village and peasantry in Fakir Baykurt's and Kemal Tahir's works: A comparative sociological evaluation

The aim of this study is to compare the envision, imagination and viewpoints of the villagers in the works of Fakir Baykurt and Kemal Tahir and to reveal how the artists construct the social realities they discussed in their works in a literary way through a relational analysis. We can argue that the social change occurring in the living conditions of the village and the villagers determined and transformed the perspectives of the writers. The artistic activities that are not separate from social life undergo a certain transformation after the artists reconstruct the reality fictionally. The perspectives and artistic products of the artists' that cannot be considered apart from individual, political and economic living conditions take their meanings from a common representation of social, individual and literary life. In Turkey, various political events took place such as one party-system of Republican People's Party, transition to a multi-party system, coming of the Democratic Party to power alone between 1940 and 1960. After these political changes, the villagers began to play a mediating role in the political developments, which brought about the structural transformation of the village. Turkish National Security Law (1940), enacted in the war years; the Land Law (1945), enacted at the end of the war and the Marshall Aids (1948), which was provided by post-war US support, brought about a rapid change in the social life of the village. The peasant's living conditions were influenced by this political and economic transformation. Fakir Baykurt and Kemal Tahir's works, which are subjected to a specific comparison in terms of superstitions, religion, education, economic structure, gender, progress and innovation, were conveyed by focusing on how the villagers' beliefs, customs and economic conditions are evaluated by the villagers themselves. When we compare the works of Kemal Tahir and Fakir Baykurt which are discussed in these cases, some similarities and differences come into prominence. According to this, while there are fictitious characters who do not remain silent in the face of the injustices in the works of Fakir Baykurt about the village or villagers, the works of Kemal Tahir include characters who are inactive, manupulative and ready to obey. While the internalization of gender inequality by the villagers and their attitudes which are not open to the idea of progress and innovation, the siege of religion in every field of everyday life and pragmatic perspective on education are the main elements frequently encountered in the works of Kemal Tahir, the villagers in Baykurt's works are, in most cases, open to innovation, sensitive to issues such as gender equality and education and they also remain distant to religion. Key words: Village, Peasantry, Literature of Village, Sociology of Literaturen.