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tightened. For a developing nation to be independent at this time, as fewin Asia or Africa were, implied majör opportunities, as well as challenges,if a way could be found to profit from this conjuncture. The stakesvvere high. Japan, the only independent developing nation in Asia that canbe compared with Turkey in this period, clearly made unfortunate choiceswith its turn toward militarism in the 1930s and ended up paying a hideousprice. If we interpret "Asia" in the inclusive sense, Turkey was thesecond most successful Asian developing nation, after Japan, at this time.How well did Turkey profit from this exceptional conjuncture?The most interesting point here has to do with Turkey's economic responseto the global crisis of 1929. If we compare Turkey's performanceafter 1929 with that of other independent developing countries, of whichmost were found in Latin America, we fınd that for most, the economiccrisis quickly provoked political crisis as well. Not only Japan's turnaway from democracy, but also the collapse of the old Liberal leadershipsin majör Latin American countries and their replacement with a variety ofpopülist strongmen, like Getülio Vargas in Brazil or Juan Peron in Argentina,illustrate this point. In Turkey, however, the early republican leadership,which had shown a lack of original ideas about economic policy inthe 1920s, showed a new capacity to innovate in economic policy in the1930s and —not incidentally— held on to power in a way that was almostunique among the developing countries with which Turkey can be compared.The critical innovation was the new policy of etatism or devletçilik,as it is called in Turkish. The policy was apparently distilled outof recent European and American economic policy and, perhaps especially,out of the Soviet Five-Year Plan of 1928. It involved centralized planning,import substitution behind high protective barriers, and creation of apublic sector in which the state would lead in the development of majörindustries.What is significant about this in world-historical perspective is thatTurkey was the fırst developing country to adopt this policy package.Mexico followed soon after and, incidentally, also avoided the kind of regimecrisis seen in Brazil and Argentina. This same import-substitutionpolicy package became typical of developing countries alî över the world,as their numbers increased with decolonization after World War II. Versionsof the policy characterized the entire Third World until the 1980sturn toward privitization. What is important here is not the ultimate profitabiltyof the policy: it did make sense during that loosening of global interlinkagethat led even the most highly developed countries tovvard protectionismand autarkism.What I want to emphasize is Turkey's vanguard role in formulatingthis policy. This does not mean that other developing countries adoptedthe policy from Turkey. There vvere countries, like Iran and Egypt, thatclosely follovved developments in Turkey; hovvever, countries further96