Köylüler - 3

As a writer coming from the village, Apaydin wrote Dust in Smoke and Homeland Dediler, which are about the Turkish War of Independence, and Köylüler, which examines the Turkey of the 1920s from a different perspective, depicting the drama of the Anatolian peasants before and after the war and their relations with the state within the reality of the novel. It explains in simple language.

As a writer coming from a village, I owed it to myself to write the trilogy of novels called In Dust and Smoke / They Called Homeland / Villagers, and I carried this burden inside me for twenty years. I realized that I could not get rid of this debt without writing. I aimed to examine the place of the Turkish peasant within the state and the foundation, its development and its relationship with various heroes from 1918 to the present day. Maybe this is a showdown; with the exploiting classes, intellectuals and rulers…

I personally experienced the loneliness and despair of our villagers in my childhood.

I am the son of a peasant who served in the military for sixteen years, pulled triggers on all fronts of the First World War and the War of Independence, and was left without land, job and bread when he returned to the village wounded. I spent my childhood listening to him. I can't forget the day I became a student at the Village Teachers' School (later the Village Institute) in 1938 when he said, "This state is educating you, may all I suffer, all the blood and sweat I shed be halal."

How much would he like, let him say it himself, let me write it and benefit directly from it. But at that age, I could not adequately grasp the importance of this; I only understood it later. Still, I added a lot of his memories to my novel.

I present these novels in memory of those forgotten people whose bones, blood and sweat laid the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, most of whom are not even known today. My father was one of them.
-Talip Apaydin-
(From the Promotional Bulletin)



Number of Pages: 390

Year of Printing: 2016


Language: Turkish
Publisher: Literature Publishing

Cover Design: Emel Atik
Illustrated by: Aydin Toprak Apaydin

First Print Year: 2016

Number of Pages: 390

Language Turkish