Europe of the interwar years witnessed the rise of agrarian populism in several countries. In a sense, something in the “spirit of the age” paved the way for the rise of agrarian ideologies throughout the world. The impact of the Great Depression also played a role in the rise of this phenomenon, since urbanization, industrialization, and liberalism increasingly were seen as responsible for this global economic catastrophe. Turkey of the 1930s and afterward witnessed the rise of such a populism, with an emphasis on the cult of the peasant as one of the most important intellectual motifs of cultural and political discourse. As a matter of fact, agrarian populism, or the so-calledköycülük(peasantism), as it was referred to in Turkish, was one of the most important constituent elements of Kemalist populism from the early 1930s through the end of World War II. In this period, the state devised cultural and practical projects for an ideological campaign emphasizing the significance of improving the social and economic conditions of the peasantry. For this reason, in the Turkish press, many wrote aboutköycülük,and official and semiofficial state institutions such as People’s Houses organized peasantist (köycü) activities throughout the country. The impact of such an intellectual campaign could be seen in some of the most important undertakings of the single-party regime, such as the establishment of the Village Institutes and the land-reform attempts.