The temple of enlightenment of villages: Village institute

The establishment, contributions and distribution of Village Institutes, which were established as a result of the progressive revolutions of the Republic of Turkey, remain a topic of debate today. Village Institutes were not established suddenly and spontaneously. The discussions that went back and forth until the Tanzimat Reforms period in the Ottoman Empire had a result that came and went in the 1930s and 1940s and was put into practice. Its roots were in the decisions of the 1923 Izmir Economic Congress held after the establishment of the Republic, and its first steps were taken with the Village Trainer Courses established in 1936. The main reason for the establishment of Village Institutes was to revive the economically collapsed state after the War of Independence and to provide literacy to poor villagers. By adopting knowledge as a tool, Village Institutes brought not only new revolutionary ideas but also education, secularism, democracy and management initiative to the villagers. Village Institutes have become the embodiment of the synthesis of mental labor and manual labor, that is, theory and practice. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the establishment of Village Institutes, the conjunctures that created them, their dissolution and their subsequent effects on Turkey. The starting point of this study can basically be expressed with the following question: How did Village Institutes contribute to the development of villages? This study will use various sources such as historical documents, statistics, memoirs and interviews to support these arguments.