In the rural areas each season has different tasks and activities. Except in the south and west, winter is a period of frost, snow, and social activities. Animals are often kept indoors and fed mainly chopped straw. With the spring thaw, plowing and sowing are soon under way. After a month or so of less-urgent work, the hay harvest is followed immediately by the main grain harvest, a period of intense activity lasting some six to eight weeks; everyone works, some people 16 to 20 hours a day. Most village areas contain weavers, masons, carpenters, and smiths such as tinsmiths. Some villagers go to town for craft services, and a number of craftsmen travel around the villages—particularly specialists, such as sieve makers or sawyers.
It is impossible to summarize in a few words the material culture of the towns and cities, which not long ago were the central part of a great empire and have since been profoundly influenced by European fashions and technology. Most towns, large and small, nevertheless still contain markets where simple lockup shops stand side by side in rows. Usually these are arranged by craft or wares—coppersmiths, jewelers, cobblers, tailors, motor mechanics, and so on. Retailers also are grouped by commodity. The larger towns have become increasingly Westernized, with modern factories, offices, and shops. Large-scale commuting from sprawling suburban areas is typical of the major cities, where it produces traffic congestion, air pollution, and strains on public transportation.
Safranbolu, Turkey: bazaarA bazaar in Safranbolu, Turkey.© EvrenKalinbacak/Shutterstock.com
Dress
Turkish men have increasingly adopted the styles and sombre colours of European male dress. Fezzes and turbans were abolished by law in 1925, and most peasants now wear cloth caps. The famous Turkish baggy trousers, exceedingly full in the seat, are still quite common in rural areas and among the poorer town dwellers, but the traditional cummerbund and colourful shift or waistcoat are rare. Village women still largely preserve traditional attire. They wear some locally customary combination of baggy trousers, skirts, and aprons. In many areas it is still possible to identify a woman’s town or village and her marital status by her dress; village women in Turkey have never worn a veil, but they have traditionally covered their heads and mouths with a large scarf. This practice has been revived among the more devout urban women, though the scarf is often combined with Western dress.
Turkish boys in traditional dress.AP Images
Religious practice
For the observant, Islam entails many duties. Men and women are to maintain a state of ritual purity, pray five times a day, fast during the month of Ramadan every year, and strive, if possible, to visit Mecca at least once in their lifetime. Islam provides basic ideas about the nature of morality, charity, transgression, reward and punishment, and relations between men and women, as well as about cleanliness and impurity. Social roles and kinship Male and female roles
In rural areas the main responsibilities of the men are the heavy agricultural work, looking after the livestock, and making all contacts outside the home, both official and economic, including shopping. Women—widows, for example—might do men’s work, but men never undertake women’s tasks. One consequence of this is that men are more dependent on women than women are on men, and a bereaved widower who has no other adult women in his household may remarry within a few days or weeks. Women are concerned with the care of children and their houses and with the preparation and cooking of food. They are also responsible for milking, caring for the chickens, making cakes of winter fuel from dung and straw, weeding vegetable plots near the village, and reaping barley and other short-stemmed crops. Overall, women are responsible for a high proportion of the agricultural work in addition to their domestic duties.
In urban areas the role of women is related to social class. The emancipation of women was among the Westernizing objectives of Atatürkism, and for the urban educated middle and upper classes much has been achieved. Women were given the right to vote in 1930, women were first elected to parliament in 1935, and a woman first held the prime ministership in the 1990s. Women are found in medicine, science, and the arts, and increasing numbers of women work in industry and the service sector. The position of working-class urban women—particularly from the families of recent migrants—and of women in rural areas, however, remains highly traditional.
The structure of social relationships is in innumerable ways profoundly affected by the sharp social segregation of men and women. This segregation is related to attitudes toward sex and sexuality, which are often seen as ritually impure and somewhat shameful; for example, sex is a banned topic between close kin, and a young couple is forbidden to show any interest in each other if anyone else, even a member of the household, is present. Marriage and family life
The traditional rural household consisted of a man, his wife, his adult sons and their wives, and his young children and grandchildren. On the death of the household head, this large household broke up into as many first-generation households as there were sons, each beginning the process again. The former high death rate among adult men, the lack of living sons, and, very rarely, quarrels between generations made these large households a minority of all households at any one time. Thus, although most villagers probably lived some part of their lives in such a household, most village households at any given time contained only parents and children, with perhaps other random relatives. The average size of a household was probably between five and six persons.
In most rural areas household heads were grouped in patrilineal lineages or clans—that is, a group of men descended only through males from a common ancestor, usually a great-grandfather but perhaps an even earlier ancestor. Such lineages were concerned primarily with mutual support and defense within the village, and the members often had adjacent houses and lands. This traditional organization persists in many areas.
Traditional village weddings involve elaborate ceremonies and last several days. Large transfers of wealth often are involved. Regional variations are considerable, but commonly a man may still make a marriage payment to the father of his son’s bride and also pay for the wedding, the total cost amounting to as much as or more than one year’s total income for an average household, without counting the need to provide a new room or house. These traditions have largely broken down among the urban educated classes, where traditional and Western courtship styles have demonstrated the ability to intermingle. In some cases, families arrange for an introduction between potential spouses; if they are compatible, the two may choose to continue with a period of courtship. This pattern, more common among urban educated youth, results in a longer period, on average, between meeting and marriage, as well as a later marriage age. Dating is growing more common among university populations.
Kinship carries strong obligations of mutual support and interest. People look to their kin for day-to-day sociability, for hospitality in other villages, for help in trouble, for cooperation in weddings and funerals, and for aid in urban migration, in finding jobs, and in getting official favours. Kinship and marriage ties have had important political and economic implications, both at higher levels of power in the towns and in links between towns and villages. Social change
Change in Turkish society—which, as in many other developing countries, includes growth in population, communication, production, urbanization, and administration and education—has been rapid, complex, and extremely uneven.
A vast increase in jobs available in towns and cities has attracted migrant labour in the form of men who work in urban centres, many of whom work in cities still keep their families in the village tilling the land. It has also meant that many village households have uprooted themselves and moved to towns and cities, greatly increasing the urban population.