Istanbul vs. The Village: The Great Urban-Rural Divide

A young woman from a village arrives in Istanbul; a wealthy city family meets relatives from a small Anatolian town; a disillusioned character goes back to the village to start again. The contrast between city and countryside drives a great many Turkish dramas. It reflects real social change, and it comes with a set of words that are useful far beyond television.

Key vocabulary

şehir / kent: city. Both are common; kent sounds more formal and appears in terms like kentsel dönüşüm (urban renewal) and kentli (city dweller). şehirli: city person.
köy: village. köylü: villager. Note that köylü can also be used as a condescending insult, like "hick".
kasaba: small town.
taşra: the provinces, everywhere outside the big cities. taşralı: provincial. It is a neutral word in literature and sociology but can sound patronizing in conversation.
memleket: hometown or home region, the place your family comes from.
varoş: the outskirts of a city; often used, sometimes pejoratively, for poorer neighborhoods on the edge.
gecekondu: an informal house built without permission, literally "landed overnight" (gece = night, kondu = landed, settled). The name refers to houses put up very quickly, often by new arrivals from the countryside.
göç: migration. göç etmek: to migrate. köyden kente göç: rural-to-urban migration.

Cultural context

From the 1950s onward, millions of people moved from villages to Turkey's cities in search of work and education. Many settled in gecekondu neighborhoods on the edges of Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir, relying on relatives and hemşehri (people from the same hometown) to find jobs and housing. Over the decades many of those neighborhoods were legalized, rebuilt or replaced with apartment blocks.

The hopes of that era are captured in a well-known saying: İstanbul'un taşı toprağı altın, "Istanbul's stones and soil are gold", meaning that riches were waiting in the big city. Today Turkey is a mostly urban country, yet many city families keep close ties to their village: they spend summers there, still own a small house or orchard, and proudly say bizim köy (our village).

Grammar point: origin and direction

The suffix -lı / -li / -lu / -lü tells you where someone is from or belongs: köylü, şehirli, taşralı, İstanbullu. For movement, use the ablative -dan / -den (from) and the dative -a / -e (to): köyden kente (from village to city), Anadolu'dan İstanbul'a (from Anatolia to Istanbul). Note the proper-noun apostrophe and the buffer y after a vowel: Ankara'ya, Rize'ye.

Example sentences

Köyden kente göç 1950'lerden sonra hızlandı. Rural-to-urban migration sped up after the 1950s.
Dedem "İstanbul'un taşı toprağı altın" diye köyden gelmiş. My grandfather came from the village believing Istanbul's streets were paved with gold.
Emekli olunca köyüme döneceğim. When I retire, I'll go back to my village.
Taşrada hayat daha sakin ama iş bulmak zor. Life in the provinces is calmer, but finding work is hard.
Bu semt eskiden gecekondu mahallesiydi. This district used to be a gecekondu neighborhood.
Yazları köye gidiyoruz. We go to the village in the summers.

The -miş in the grandfather's story

Köyden gelmiş uses -miş because the speaker is retelling a family story they did not witness. This "reported" use of -miş is exactly how Turks tell stories about the past, including fairy tales, which begin Bir varmış, bir yokmuş (once there was, once there wasn't).

Related expressions

köyüne dönmek: to go back to one's village; in dizi, often a symbol of giving up on the city or of finding oneself again.
şehir hayatı / köy hayatı: city life / village life.
büyükşehir: metropolitan city; also the official status of Turkey's largest municipalities.

What you'll notice in dizi

Newcomers to Istanbul overwhelmed by traffic, prices and indifference.
City characters portrayed as sophisticated but cold, and village characters as warm and honest, or the reverse.
Class differences played out between a mansion on the Bosphorus and a gecekondu across town.
A return to the village as a turning point. Real life is more mixed than these contrasts suggest, but they remain a favorite storytelling device in many series.