Abstract:

The Republic of Türkiye, which replaced the Ottoman Empire in a difficult establishment period, was faced with significant problems. One of these problems was that a considerable portion of the farming population did not own enough land to support their families. One of the problems inherited by the new state from the Ottoman Empire, which applied a modern, practically advantageous and quite complex land administration for its time, was the issue of land ownership. The timar system, later replaced by the iltizam system after timar’s deterioration, further complicated the matter of land ownership. The Land Regulation Edict, which was enacted to find a solution to this problem, could not fully resolve it. When the Republic of Türkiye was founded, this edict was in force and business and transactions were carried out accordingly. In a country where almost three quarters of the population was engaged in agriculture; unfortunately, the number of people who owned enough land to support their families was quite low. Those governing the new state had to both modernize agriculture and distribute enough land to those engaged in farming. From time to time, efforts were made to distribute a certain amount of land from treasury-owned lands to the peasants, but these attempts proved insufficient. In the constitutional amendment made in 1937, the issue of distribution of land to landless peasants was also included. However, during the period of Atatürk's death and the World War II that started immediately afterwards, a specific law regarding this matter could not be enacted during that period. In 1945, with the initiative of Prime Minister İsmet Pasha, the law could be enacted. However, both the opposition to this law from within the CHP (Republican People's Party) during the single party period and the opposition of the parties established during the transition to multi-party life prevented sufficient progress on this issue. In particular, the group who opposed this law and later left the CHP (Republican People's Party) and founded the DP (Democrat Party) continued their criticism as the opposition party between 1946 and 1950. Leaving aside the lack of progress during the CHP (Republican People's Party) government, the implementation of land distribution to farmers was interrupted especially after the DP (Democrat Party) came to power with the elections of May 14, 1950. Although the issue was occasionally revisited in the following years, successful outcomes in terms of providing enough land for farmers to support their families were not achieved.

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