Village Institutes

Village Institutes (Turkish: Köy Enstitüleri) were a group of rural schools in Turkey founded in accordance with a project led by Hasan Âli Yücel, who was the Minister of Education at the time.

However, the rate of literacy was as low as 5% in the early times of the Turkish Republic and the 80% of the total population were living in the villages.

A pedagogist named Halil Fikret Kanad had been working on this project for a long time and he supported the idea of training ambitious teachers being volunteers at these villages.

[2] Officially established in 1940, the village institutes started to be founded in the areas which have cultivable lands and easier access through railway.

[1] In these schools founded at 21 different regions of Turkey, the teachers would teach villagers both how to read and write and modern agriculture methods.

[citation needed] The schools were built near the cultivable fields because one of the aims of these institutes is to teach people the new methods for agriculture.

[citation needed] In 1945 the Village Institutes began to be subjected to violent attacks by the conservative wing of the CHP and the newly founded DP.

[6] The Government was forced to close them due to strong pressure from the society, opposition party and upcoming elections.

The Village Institutes were transformed into regular teacher-training schools by the DP government (elected in 1950) as a concession to the anti-secularist groups,[7] however these were eventually shut down in 1954.