Serder Efe, 32, helps his mother feed their dairy cows, cats and donkey. Efe has returned to his ancestral village after living abroad in Austria and working in the southern Turkish resort city of Antayla. "The large city," he says, "offers larger opportunities, but also, larger problems. I always prefer to live in the village, because I can't find such a comfortable life in the city."
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Tozakli, an agricultural village 100 miles west of Istanbul, is home to 810 people. Life in the village has changed dramatically since the 1970s, when electricity was first introduced and the village was joined to nearby towns by a paved, two-lane highway.
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Settled by Muslims escaping the massacres in Bulgaria during the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878), the traditional peasant village has recently modernized, integrating high-tech equipment into their dairy and agricultural operations. Still, farm work is organized on a family level. Here, Kenan Uysul and his wife, Fatima, milk their dairy cows.
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Fatima Uysul and her son, Kenan Uysul, with one of their calves. Animal husbandry is a profitable business in the Turkish countryside, where cows can cost more than used cars.
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The introduction of genetic engineering means that dairy cows that used to produce about five liters of milk per day, can now produce 20-25 liters, according to Serdar Efe, the son of a village farmer. In Tozakli, farmers deliver milk to several collection points, where it is measured and collected to bring to a facility where it's processed.
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A paved highway divides the village of Tozakli, 100 miles west of Istanbul.
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Children attend a local school in Tozakli until the age of 12, when they are sent to regional schools in nearby villages. According to Ali Inan, the village head, 99 percent of Tozakli's residents are educated. But many young people leave the village to take factory jobs in larger towns in Thrace and the Marmara region.
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In Tozakli's only school, students dressed in standard school uniforms, pose for a photograph. "The situation here is improving in our village," says the municipal guard Yusuf Erturk, who was born in here in 1964.
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There are three times as many tractors as cars in Tozakli. There are 97 tractors, in fact, for a population of 810. Some of them are used for basic family transportation in the off season.
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In one of Tozakli's seven kahvehane, or coffee houses, men pass time during the off season. The rhythms of modern agricultural life mean relaxing winters in the Turkish countryside, after the summer crop has been harvested and the winter crops recently planted.
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A moderate form of Sunni Islam dominates village life, where the call to prayer is broadcast from the village mosque. Typically, middle-aged and older men carry their prayer beads as they go about their chores.
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Ustalik Bedgesi, a barber, leads the midday prayer in the Tozakli village mosque. Villagers take turns leading prayers since their village lacks a regular imam.
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Ustalik Bedgesi cuts hair in his barbershop, one of two in the village. Like their urban counterparts, boys and men in Tozlaki pay special attention to grooming.
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A woman looks out the window of her brightly painted home. With an average monthly salary of about $430, villagers in Tozakli are wealthier then their counterparts in other parts of rural Turkey.
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Violent downpours led the Tozakli stream to overflow its banks and flood a farmer's newly planted fields.
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A man in Tozakli rides on the back of a tractor. "Our total arable land is 10,000 square kilometers and it is not increasing," said Fedai Yenici, an engineering teacher who has transferred to the nearby city of Luleburgaz. "The new generation moves to other places."
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A shepherd uses his cell phone to make a call in Tozakli.
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A boy gets a chance to ride on a pile of grain pulled by his grandfather's tractor in Tozakli, an agricultural village 100 miles west of Istanbul.
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In the 1970s, there were no cars in the village and agriculture was powered by humans and animals alone. Now there are 35 cars in Tozakli, and horses are used much less frequently.
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Like most Turkish villages, the average age of the population of Tozakli is getting older. According to the villager leader Ali Inan, "the population has been declining, due to migration and economic conditions."
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Fatima Uysul cooks on a gas stove in an outdoor kitchen in the village of Tozakli.
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Elmas Baran, 28, is unmarried and lives with his parents and sister, who share farm duties. "Life is not difficult in the village," he said. "And I like the atmosphere."
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Ali Adiguzel, 60, who lives in Tozakli, works at a coal mining plant above the village, where coal is dug out of an open pit mine 100 meters deep. Serdar Efe, a village resident, said the coal mine disturbs him. "They take the coal and cut down the trees," he said.
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Workers in a coal furnace plant, adjacent to a strip mine above the village of Tozlaki, that employs between 15 and 20 workers. Coal mining and production can be hazardous to the town's environment, affecting ground water, local land and creating methane gas.
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A funeral is held for one of the village's grandmothers. Men carry her coffin to her sister's home for a communal prayer.
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Women wearing black coats attend the funeral for a village grandmother.
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An imam prays over the deceased woman in the Tozakli cemetery.
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Less than 35 percent of Turks now live in villages, as compared to 80 percent in the 1930s when President Ataturk established model farms to encourage the modernization of agriculture. As new technology and machinery was introduced, fewer workers were eventually needed and rural unemployment led to a massive migration from the countryside to Turkey's cities.
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