In late 1940s, a series of essays published in Varlık Journal brought the young teacher Mahmut Makal to the agenda of Türkiye with a kind of sinister fame. Because of his everyday-life impressions in a village in Central Anatolia, Makal attracted the curiosity of intellectual circles in Istanbul and Ankara immediately. His observations were published later in 1950 as Bizim Köy (A Village in Anatolia) and coincided with the eve of the first transparent national elections, which resulted in the end of the One-Party rule that had been in place for more than a quarter of a century. Here I aim at presenting an assessment of the transition towards a democratic order in Türkiye via looking at both the living con- ditions in an ordinary Central Anatolian village and the ideal of “attaining the level of contemporary civilization” aimed at by representatives of Kemalism in the early republican period. In this context, I will make some critical comments on peasants and republicanism as well as the nature of the rela- tionship between politics and literature, and on the collateral, social problems encountered during the transition to a multi-party system in Türkiye.