They Burn the Thistles - conservative ideology in radical garb?

Yashar Kemal's "They Burn the Thistles" is a pretty long journey toward not much of a conclusion, as, unsurprisingly, the peasants of the village of Vayvay triumph over the tyrannical landlord, Ali Safa Bey, and celebrate by burning the thistles in the fields - yet as hinted earlier on it's an ambiguous victory as there are many other aghas and beys (various rulers backed by the distant government in Ankara) ready to step forward and try to grab the land again, illegally, through trickery and thuggery. The heroic Slim Memed, who kills Bey at the end (in an amazingly poorly scripted denouement, as it appears he just walks into his home and shoots him - what took so long?), disappears into the sunset, in the style of so many American Westerns - I believe there is at least one sequel to this novel? In the last chapters, Memed at last gets together with his destined believed, Seyrim (sp?), and his new love inspires him, in part, to break out of his funk and take action. In the preface to the NYBR edition, Bill McKibben notes that the true hero of the novel is the village (or the villagers) of Vayvay, who shake of the yoke of oppression. Yes, maybe - I would guess that's how Kemal would like us to see it, the heroic peasantry uniting in common interest, but many aspects of that disturb me and don't ring true. Why are the villagers so dependent on the inspiration of the young outlaw, Memed, to take action? Why can't they act without him? Oddly, he reminds me at times of an Osama character, hiding in the mountains and eluding authority - though clearly he is not a terrorist and his motives are all good. And what about the Beys and aghas (the rulers), are they really so horrible (in the book they are cruel to the point almost of comedy, with their stuttering and their annoying wives), but in the reality, Turkey in the 1920s, are they in some ways reformers, modernists, who upset the village life? Is Kemal at heart a conservative, fetishizing the village ways and opposed to progress?