This chapter reveals and examines the ways ordinary people expressed, disseminated and exchanged contrary views and subversive opinions. It especially focuses on three avenues through which the people’s voice and opinions were expressed and circulated: daily conversations, rumors and placards. The first and foremost thing the people were involved in was daily chats. The people expressed their contrary views when they came together in relatively safe places free from the state’s control, like houses, coffeehouses or gardens. Daily conversations were generally accompanied by rumors. Everyplace in the country was awash with numerous rumors. Rumors, mostly unfounded, expressed the hopes, desires or fantasies of people discontented with the regime, the government or a specific policy. Rumors challenged and sometimes undermined the credibility of the official propaganda and discourse. Finally, in those public places where open talks were risky, the people aired their grievances, contrary arguments and even criticisms through handwritten papers affixed on walls, trees or doors. All these operated as alternative media challenging the official propaganda of the government and its mouthpieces, the formal press.

This chapter examines how the peasants who were discontented with the state policies, taxes, monopolies, local exploitation and oppression expressed their criticism and made their voices heard through letters to the press, petitions to official authorities, placards, rumors and folk culture. It traces the peasants’ complaints about agricultural prices, agricultural loans, interest rates, landlessness, taxes, monopolies, enclosure of forests and grazing lands, bureaucratic malfeasance, exploitation and oppression by large landowners, village headmen and gendarmes. It also evaluates how popular demands and complaints influenced the state’s decision-making.

First, this chapter analyzes the non-elite socialization places in which anti-secular opinions were produced and expressed such as mosques, Qur’an courses, houses and coffeehouses. It shows the people’s insistence on their religious practices by receiving secret Qur’an courses or by disobeying the Turkish call to prayer. Second, it outlines a wide range of ways people expressed their critical views, ranging from seditious conversations, rumors, placards and anonymous critical letters to authorities, to writing on walls, doors and trees. Third, this chapter examines the rhetoric and discursive strategies anti-secular talks used. Fourth, it reveals how those social groups or individuals who had lost their authority or economic advantages due to secular reforms or those people who were discontented with economic conditions took part in the production and dissemination of anti-secular and anti-regime discourses. This chapter also shows how the non-elite daily socialization places contested the state’s secular propaganda and socialization spaces such as People’s Houses and Rooms.