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CHAPTER 7 – ERGENEKON 
219 
not necessary first of all to arouse the peasants’ awareness, is it not 
necessary to change once and for all economic conditions along with the 
methods of production and consumption? Because of excessive work 
there is no time for the villagers in Anatolia to gain awareness. Is it not 
ridiculous to bring up the subjects of school and health protection to 
those unfortunate people who having worked for more than ten hours a 
day on an unrewarding soil with the most primitive agricultural tools 
when after all that work they cannot even fill their stomach? There is no 
time for the peasant child to go to school. Starting from the age of eight 
or ten everything, from herding animals and carrying logs to working in 
the fields, all these worries for life and livelihood are on his weak 
shoulders. But a woman finds time only to breastfeed her baby. She 
milks the cow, she makes the dung, she cooks, she wields the hoe, she 
winnows on the threshing floor, she trades the produce between the 
village and the town. When we come to man, he spends half his life in 
exile and is an idler who is perpetually on the road. It is for these reasons 
that those who want to help the people who are suffering in the disarray 
of these countless pains, are in such a panic. What they need most of all 
is a powerful technique [teknik] and a multidimensional system [sistem] 
which they will be able to comprehend.
The equivalent passage in 
Yaban
reads
39
: 
How many patriots facing the enemy here have been struck in the back 
by the hand they are defending! (…)
The reason for this is still you, Turkish intellectual! What did you make 
of this ruined country, this poverty-stricken group of people? After 
sucking their blood for years, for centuries, and throwing them like dregs 
on the hard ground, now you find it proper to come and be disgusted 
with them. 
The people of Anatolia had a soul; you weren’t able to penetrate it. They 
had a mind; you couldn’t enlighten it. They had bodies; you couldn’t 
nourish them. They had ground on which to live; you couldn’t have them 
cultivate it. You left them in the hands of bestiality, ignorance, famine, 
and want. (…) This thing which pains you is your own work; it is your 
own doing.
39
Karaosmanoğlu 2006, 110-111, Jacobson, 135-136

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