sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

had decided to annul it and sent the provisions, which were collected before as the tithe tax, outside
their district by train. Worse, as “alone and powerless” women and peasants, they were forced to
work in the cargo‐carrying of these provisions until the train station. The telegram senders requested
that the seed and provisions be given to them, that they be saved from dying due to hunger and that
they be released from cargo‐carrying work. 7
In their complaint telegrams as well women were very straightforward about their fear of hunger
due to excessive taxes and violent behavior of tax collectors. Forty‐one women from Kırkkilise
[Kırklareli] who identified themselves as mothers and wives of soldiers (asker evlâdlarımız vâlideleri
ve âileleri) sent a telegram to the central government on 27 September 1916. They explained their
problem in a very simple language with the following words:
We sent our sons and husbands to the war. We did agriculture by gripping the plough.
They don’t leave the food as share of the little children, animals and servants [to us]. They
want to take almost all of our crops. The food that we have already eaten is also taken
into account. We will go hungry. We beg that you have pity on us. Firman. 8
The government sent a telegram to the Edirne governor on 30 September 1916 to ask for further
information about the case in the telegram. In return, on 7 October 1916 the Edirne governor tried to
prove that these women were wrong and wrote that the tax collectors had calculated the daily need
of the peasants at 500 grams of food and left them one year’s food according to this calculation. Who
was right or wrong is unknown, but it is obvious that the agricultural requisitions by use of force and
the rate of taxes aggrieved the peasant women and led them to raise their critical voices against
these practices. 9
Likewise, twelve other Turkish women collectively sent a telegram on 7 May 1918 from the İskilip
district of Çorum. They wrote that the taxes collected from them would leave them hungry. They
declared that each day 78 people had died in their district due to hunger and the daily bread had
been calculated as half kıyye (650 grams) 10 for four persons, which was about 162.5 grams of bread
for one person. They complained that Çorum governor had wanted them to deliver an additional
100,000 kıyye (130 tons) of grain to the local government and the army as tax. According to these
women, if they gave these cereals, they would die out of hunger on the streets. They requested the
cancellation of this tax on the grounds that “the government could not allow that the families of
those soldiers who were fighting for the protection of the honor of the nation die out of hunger.” 11
Peasant women, who were the main victims of the agricultural taxation or legal or illegal
requisitions of their animals by use of fierce force, also sent collective telegrams to the politicians to
request the protection of their economic rights. A telegram sent to the government from the Çermik
district of Diyarbakır province on 20 March 1915 by a woman called Abide and two other peasants,
İbrahim and Hüseyin, on behalf of all peasants, complained about the use of severe physical force
against them during the collection of the taxes. They stated that their animals had been taken away
as military tax, and the remaining ones were not used in agriculture, because they were used to carry
goods. In addition, they complained that the army also had forced women, children and elders to go
to other places to work in agriculture. They objected to this forcible sending to other places for work,
and claimed that otherwise they would be unable to grow their own crops for food on their own land
and, furthermore, their sexual honor would be ruined probably because they thought that being
forced to travel far away they could be exposed to the attacks of stranger men. 12
Many women also sent collective telegrams against the violence exerted on them to work
compulsorily during the war years. On 14 March 1918 fourteen Turkish women who introduced
themselves as mothers and wives of soldiers sent a telegram to the government from Uşak to
complain that they had been charged with the task of carrying the agricultural crops collected as the
tithe tax and army provisioning taxes to a ten hour distance. They protested this situation on the
grounds that because their sons and husbands were fighting on the front, they had been left alone to