The aime of this paper is to describe the social groups in relation to sedentarization. Nomadic people in Antalya, in the southern part of Turkey, make their living between winter camps (
kışla) and summer camps (
yayla). The society of nomads had drastically changed because of the Sedentarization law in 1934, land reform after 1945, and village development programs for modernization in 1950's by the goverment.
Social groups studied are (1)
aşiret: a social group like a "tribe", I define "tribe" in my paper as the group which selects subsistance areas (pasture). (2)
sülâle: a patrilineal descent group, (3)
oba: a temporaly moving group and camp group. I studied the traits of each group's formation and membership on winter and summer camps.
According to my study, 1950's-60's saw the big trend for the sedentarization. The situations depended on each family, most of which selected winter camps for residence. But all of the nomads who settled in did not abandon their nomadic lives. because the selection for settled life is one of the ways for rational economic strategies.
In that situation, the
Aşiret doesn't fulfill the function of an autonomous social group, it exists in name only as identity. The traites of
aşiret is something like clan in anthropologically. In terms of leader selection, the specific
sülâle is superior to others. By my study,
sülâle is said patrilineal descent group, but succession of the name from father's is about 1/3. There is possibility that a person can have membership in two groups. My study indicates it is related to the mutual recognition beween the name of a social group like
aşiret,
sülâle and the summer camps. The settled people living in a town don't recognize the social group's names and the summer camps.
The members of
oba are based on the nuclear family, and trait of oba has fluidity and openness with non relatives. The decision for pasture land depends on the condition of grass and farmland. The nomadic must pay if they can't pasture in his ownland, because their pastures are under the control of the state administration.
Çayır yaylası, is one of the summer camps in the Anamas Mts, there are some
yay/as for
yörük covering about lOOOOha on a plateau. It is like a small village with some springs, two tomb areas, one
mescit. Before 1950 there were several hundreds tents, but in 1994 only 14 tents. The nomad doesn't pay pasture fees for the land near the village, becouse the specific
aşiret, including settled people, have the custom of using there. Other summer camps near the village had began to pay money from 1993. In 1997 the goverment demands the land registration fees (
tapu.) for
Çayır yaylsı, This reflects the extention of the modern state administration.
Judging from my studies,
aşiret as social groups in winter camps doesn't today exist as [reality], it is in name only. The names show the classifications as [category] which go back to the old dynasties and nomadic life. However in the summer camps, the
aşiret has the [reality] to play a part in determining who can use the pasture land customarily. It shows that the [ideology], which informs the social actions for determining pastures, still influences in modern turkish administration with the a~iret. The nomadic people use this flexbility of the traits to continue their nomadic life.
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