The Amasya People's House (Halkevi) was a cultural institution that opened on 23 February 1934 and was effectively brought to an end by a law passed in 1951. Over its seventeen years it took charge of the city's national holidays, commemorations, lectures and cultural work. Its most distinctive legacy is the magazine Yeşilırmak, which it published between 1938 and 1939. The monthly survived for only eight issues, yet it remains one of the rare documents that carry both the concerns and the writers of Amasya in the fifteenth year of the Republic down to the present.

The Founding of the People's Houses

The People's Houses were preceded by the Turkish Hearths (Türk Ocakları). The Hearths were closed on 10 April 1931, and the foundation of their successor was laid by a decision taken at the Third Grand Congress of the Republican People's Party, held in Ankara in 1931. The congress had called for an organization that would give the country's cultural life a national structure. The People's Houses opened on 19 February 1932 as the product of that decision. Sources differ on how many centers began operating on opening day. The academic article on Amasya's magazine mentions fourteen centers, while the encyclopedia entry on the People's Houses gives nineteen.

The 1932 Regulation of the Republican People's Party's People's Houses defined the institution's aim as raising the Turkish nation to the rank it deserved among civilized peoples. It held that, alongside and after formal schooling, a body was needed to raise the cultural level of the public, and that the People's Houses would fill that role. The main target audience was adults. The doors of a People's House were open to everyone, but holding office in its administration required party membership. The institution had no formal headquarters. The Ankara People's House served as one in practice, while the Eminönü, Beyoğlu and Üsküdar houses in Istanbul were counted among the liveliest centers of the reforms. Because they worked under the close supervision of the party, the People's Houses generally functioned as its cultural and propaganda arm.

Their activities were grouped under nine branches. The language, literature and history branch organized talks and lectures, carried out local collecting work and published a magazine. The fine arts branch was responsible for bringing together amateurs and talented young people in music, painting, sculpture and architecture. The drama branch formed an acting company and staged plays, and the sports branch oversaw a broad list of disciplines running from rowing to wrestling, from shooting to the javelin game of cirit. The social assistance branch aimed to support destitute women, children, the elderly and the sick. The public classrooms and courses branch taught literacy, foreign languages, bookkeeping and typing, and after 1936 definitively took over the work of the nation schools opened in 1929. The library and publications branch was required to open a library and reading room in every People's House. The villagers' branch aimed at the development of villages, and the museum and exhibition branch at the collection of ethnographic material and the display of artists' works.

The number of People's Houses grew rapidly. It reached 167 in 1937, the fifth anniversary of the founding, and 209 in 1938, when membership hit 100,000. Under İsmet İnönü this growth continued, and the figure rose to 373 in 1939 and 478 in 1946. It was decided to open People's Rooms (halkodaları) in districts, towns and subdistricts with at least 150 members, and the first 141 opened on 19 February 1940. After the move to multi-party politics in 1946, participation, which had been compulsory for teachers and civil servants, loosened, interest in the institution declined, and no new People's House could be opened after that date.

The Opening of the Amasya People's House

The Amasya People's House was not among the centers founded in the first wave. The local institution opened on Friday, 23 February 1934, at 14:00. The aims stressed at the opening were that citizens should get to know one another more closely, come together, benefit one another and raise their national and moral standards. The article by Özer and Mutlu on Yeşilırmak notes that the Amasya People's House worked in harmony with the center and took on the task of reaching those outside formal education with the Republic's ideal of the conscious citizen. Work in literature, culture and history was the main pillar of that task.

The House took part in the national holidays and other events celebrated in the city. Alongside holiday ceremonies, commemorations of great Turks were also organized under its roof. No detailed account survives of which branches operated in Amasya and to what extent. How the lectures, plays, courses and library work envisaged by the regulation went on in the city can today be followed mainly through the pages of the magazine. The sixth and seventh issues of the magazine also shed light on the institution's inner workings. The issue published for the seventh anniversary of the People's Houses carries a speech by the House's chairman, Ekrem Bilgen. Bilgen describes the People's Houses as the basic hearths of Atatürk's reforms, touches on the difficulties with which such institutions were founded, and discusses how they might be taken to a higher level and how more productive work could be done for the people of Amasya.

The Local Press in Amasya

To understand the setting in which Yeşilırmak appeared, one has to look at the city's journalistic past. In the first modern census, held in 1927, the population of Amasya province, made up of the districts of the center, Gümüşhacıköy and Merzifon, was recorded as 115,191. Local journalism began within this small population in the 1920s. Its starting point was the newspaper Emel, published by Mehmet Sırrı Bey on 14 May 1920, and Emel is regarded as Amasya's first Turkish newspaper. Magazine publishing picked up pace between 1920 and 1950, and since 1934 more than twenty magazines have appeared in Amasya. The great majority are culture, arts and literature magazines.

Yeşilırmak stands at the head of the list of magazines running from 1934 to the present. Publications that followed the House's magazine include Gençliğin Sesi (1957), Merhaba (1960), İlke (1961) and Toplum (1962). Names from more recent decades such as Yeşeren, Kardelen, Harman, Yalıboyu and Külliye extend the list. Yeşilırmak took its name from the river that runs through the city.

Structure and Staff of the Magazine

Yeşilırmak appeared monthly as the organ of the Amasya People's House. Its first issue was published on 1 September 1938, and issues reached readers on the first day of the month. Niyazi Tarman took charge of the cover, illustrations and administrative work. The magazine was printed at Emel Press, one of Amasya's first printing houses. Nazım Berksoy was the license holder for the first five issues. In later issues the name of Alişan Reşit Tanural appears in that role. Tanural was also the Director of Education at the time. No photographs were used in the magazine.

The writing staff consisted mostly of teachers working in Amasya and educated people employed in various public institutions. Nazım Berksoy, Nazmi Çağan, Haşim Nezihi Çuhacıoğlu, Hüseyin Hüsamettin Yaşar, İ. Ertem, İzzet Nihat Orlu and Arif Öner wrote in almost every issue. H. Ülkün, İ. Dağlıoğlu, R. Mısırlı, Tevfik Akalın, Zehra Sümbül, M. Y. Özel, Talat Öncel, Şeref Erdem, İ. Rüştü Altıok, Ekrem Bilgen, N. Necip Onur, Eşref Payaslıoğlu, A. Demiray and Celal Eren appeared only in certain issues. The narrowness of the staff, as Karataş also notes, was a shared problem of all People's House magazines outside Ankara and Istanbul. The same people wrote poetry, passed on historical and geographical knowledge, and advised the public on subjects such as child-rearing and physical education.

In the opening piece of the first issue, Berksoy said that the magazine would not engage with political questions but would deal with current events as far as possible, and noted that it was appearing at a time when new and productive work was being started in every field in Amasya. The contents were accordingly made up of the Turkish reforms, Amasya's history and geography, historic anniversaries, agriculture, poetry and literature, physical education, child-rearing and city news. City news was reported in the magazine in single sentences.

Yeşilırmak Issue by Issue

The first issue, dated 1 September 1938, opened with İzzet Nihat Orlu's piece on 30 August. Berksoy announced the magazine's purpose. In his article Amasya and History, Nazmi Çağan recalled that Captain Nazif, who fired the first shot at Gallipoli and died from the first enemy bullet, Captains Hilmi and Mustafa Necip, who gave their lives to protect the Second Constitutional Era, and Captain Osman, who gave his life to put down the reaction and treachery that broke out in Zile in the most painful days of the War of Independence, were all from Amasya. He asked the governor and the mayor to have modest monuments built in school gardens so that these names would be known by future generations. In the same issue Orlu urged the people of Amasya to join the Turkish Aeronautical Association. Haşim Nezihi addressed the youth with his poem We Are Coming. On the sports page, İ. Ertem wrote about a match between Amasya's two strong football teams, Bozkurt and Halkspor, which was abandoned half-played for reasons unknown. H. Ülkün published a practical agricultural piece explaining why apples and pears drop from the tree. Nezihi also contributed the text of a lecture on the duties and aims of the People's Houses.

In the second issue (1 October 1938), Berksoy's monthly column, Aylık Konuşma, was devoted to the Language Reform. Berksoy said that learning had to be taken out of the hands of the bigots, or it would become a syringe that numbed the public, and he closed with sentences to the effect that, as we had cleansed the homeland of foreigners, we would cleanse the language of foreign words, hearing and thinking only in Turkish. Dağlıoğlu wrote on National Holidays, and Ertem on not leaving children unsupervised at play. Haşim Nezihi published his poem Reverie, dedicated to his daughter. A notable feature of this issue is R. Mısırlı's piece on the poets of Amasya, in which he introduced two poets, Afitabi and Akif. Orlu continued his series on Amasya's geography and history, Tevfik Akalın translated Claude Marsey's story Fate's Double Trick into Turkish, and the last page was given over to proverbs from various nations.

The third issue (1 November 1938) opened with the fifteenth anniversary of the Republic. Berksoy likened the young Republic to a fifteen-year-old child of dazzling beauty and vigor. Haşim Nezihi marked the day with his poem The Fifteenth Year, and Zehra Sümbül with a poem titled 29 October. In his piece Saving Children from the Street Is a Necessity, Ertem proposed building a children's garden in Amasya. The garden he proposed would be no haphazard playground but a place where manners and cleanliness were taught. M. Y. Özel contributed a piece titled Methodical Work, and Ülkün a second article on fruit trees. In this issue Orlu described Amasya's forests, vegetation and fauna. Berksoy's poem Love Again and the city news also appeared in the same issue.

The fourth issue (1 December 1938) was the heaviest in the magazine's run. Published after the death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, it was devoted from cover to cover to him. In a piece titled My Dear Fellow Townsmen, Orlu announced the news of his death in bold lines and dark type. In his piece After Our Eternal Father, Berksoy said the mourning was as great as Atatürk himself and as deep as Turkish history. Pieces by Talat Öncel, Şeref Erdem, Çağan and Ertem, Ertem's address for the House's day of mourning, and Altıok's poem The Three Minutes That Passed, the Six Torches Lit are the other parts of the issue. Amasya was the city where Atatürk set the War of Independence in motion, and the magazine acted in awareness of that bond. In the pieces, Atatürk was called the Eternal Leader or the Great Leader.

The fifth issue (1 January 1939) began with Berksoy's article on Kemalism. Şeref Erdem took up the work of the National Economy and Savings Society, founded in 1929, and the ninth Domestic Goods Week, arguing for giving up waste in favor of thrift and the use of domestic goods. Berksoy's poem The Hour of Waiting also appeared in this issue. The issue's long and informative piece was Haşim Nezihi's A Talk on the Notable Figures Raised in Amasya. Nezihi listed Amasya's people, living and dead, by field of art, literature, music, history and geography. Among the names mentioned were Mihri and Zeynep Hatun and Sıraci in literature, Şeyh Hamdullah in calligraphy, Asım Bey in music, Strabo in geography and Kâmil Hafız in history. He also divided the poets into three groups. The first group consisted of those no longer living, the second of living poets who continued the divan style, and the third of those wholly in the new style. The piece also mentioned that Hafız Ahmet Efendi had compiled a hundred-year-old cönk, a manuscript anthology. Orlu wrote about the origin of the name Amasya and the civilizations that had lived in the city. A piece by Hüsamettin Yaşar expressing his interest in the magazine was in the same issue.

The sixth and seventh issues were printed as a single issue on 1 March 1939. According to the notice titled An Apology on the magazine's last page, the reasons were the late arrival of the paper order, license holder Berksoy's trip to Yozgat, and printer Hasan Elmacı's being ill and unable to work for a time. The issue opened with Ekrem Bilgen's speech for the seventh anniversary of the People's Houses. In his piece Among Books, N. Necip Onur touched on the villages, vineyards and gardens extending to the Erbaa district of Tokat and the Taşova district of Amasya. Arif Öner's piece The Importance of Physical Training explained, with both physical education and biology, how regular exercise strengthens the body and its endurance in the struggle of life. Hüsamettin Yaşar briefly described Amasya's general history and notable figures under the title An Examination.

At the center of the issue was a notice of death. Abdizade Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yaşar, the author of the History of Amasya, had died on 12 February 1939. In his article Amasya Has Lost a Valued Son, Çağan proposed that this date be declared Turkist Hüsamettin Yaşar Day. Haşim Nezihi wrote an elegy. Eşref Payaslıoğlu recorded that of the eight volumes Yaşar had planned, he had managed to have four printed, each of more than four hundred pages, and that his work had served as a model for other cities. The same issue carried A. Demiray's poem To the National Chief, Nezihi's poem for Bayburtlu Zihni, and Tevfik Akalın's translation of Bruno Ruby's story The Helper Angel.

The last issue of Yeşilırmak came out on 1 April 1939. Alişan Reşit Tanural wrote of 23 April as the day of Turkish sovereignty and as Children's Day. In his piece Revolution in Mentality, Ertem announced that a Reading Festival would be held that year in the first grade of primary schools, and stressed that commemorating Atatürk was a sacred duty falling on every Turk. Onur honored Abdizade with gratitude in a piece titled The Historian of Amasya. Öner continued his piece on physical exercise, Celal Eren contributed Our Dear Children, and Akalın translated Lermina Flandre's story The Grain of Wheat. The magazine did not appear after this issue. Its eight issues cover the seven months between September 1938 and April 1939.

The Value of Yeşilırmak

Özer and Mutlu consider Yeşilırmak important for showing the course of Amasya in that period, and note that throughout its publication it took on the task of bringing Republican thought to every part of society. On one hand the magazine gives compact information on the city's history and geography, and on the other it records, with the same intensity, the fifteenth year of the Republic in autumn 1938 and, right after it, the death of Atatürk. The death of Abdizade Hüseyin Hüsameddin is likewise remembered in its pages as a significant loss for the city's local historiography.

Factors that kept the magazine's life short include paper and printing difficulties and financial hardship. The narrowness of its writing staff was likewise a general problem of People's House magazines outside Ankara and Istanbul. Even so, Yeşilırmak remains a source consulted for local history studies. Each issue recorded its own period's holiday and commemoration ceremonies, farming practices, view of Amasya's notable figures, and even football matches.

The End of the People's House

With the Democrat Party's coming to power in 1950, the existence and status of the People's Houses began to be debated. Under Law No. 5830, adopted in the Assembly on 8 August 1951 and published in the Official Gazette on 11 August 1951, the movable and immovable property of the People's Houses was transferred to the Treasury or to its former owners. The People's Houses had not been formally closed, but they had effectively ceased to exist. The Amasya People's House also closed with this law. Law No. 5830 was annulled by the Constitutional Court in 1961, and the Republican People's Party gained the opportunity to take back People's House buildings along with its party buildings. Some of the buildings were then being used by associations such as the Turkish Aeronautical Association, the Red Crescent and the Child Protection Society. The People's Houses founded after 1960 under the same name have no connection with those that operated between 1932 and 1951.

Chronology

1920: Mehmet Sırrı Bey publishes Emel, regarded as Amasya's first Turkish newspaper, on 14 May.

1931: The Turkish Hearths are closed; the Republican People's Party Congress decides to establish a national organization in the cultural field.

1932: The first People's Houses open on 19 February.

1934: The Amasya People's House opens on 23 February.

1938: The first issue of Yeşilırmak appears on 1 September. The 1 December issue is devoted to Atatürk's death.

1939: Abdizade Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yaşar dies on 12 February. Issues six and seven appear together on 1 March. The final issue is published on 1 April.

1951: The People's Houses effectively come to an end with Law No. 5830, adopted on 8 August.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Özer, Şerife; Mutlu, Hamdi. "Amasya Halkevi Yayın Organı: Yeşilırmak Dergisi Üzerine Bir İnceleme (1938-1939)". Karadeniz Araştırmaları 18/71 (2021): 787-800.
  • Taşdemir, S. "Amasya Halkevi ve Yeşilırmak Dergisi". ICANAS 38: 3047-3066.
  • Karataş, M. "Amasya Halkevi Dergisi: Yeşilırmak Bibliyografyası". Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları. Ankara: İksad Yayınevi, 2020: 87-110.

Official sources

  • Menç, H. Amasya Basın Tarihi. Amasya: Amasya Belediyesi Yayıncılık, 2003.

Books

  • Çeçen, A. Atatürk'ün Kültür Kurumu Halkevleri. İstanbul: Cumhuriyet Kitapları, 2000.

Other sources

Online sources