PDF Dosyası - Ankara Üniversitesi Kitaplar Veritabanı

ness, faced by the need to have the State play an essential role in this domaindue to the difficulties to attain foreign funding and the relativelypoor development of the national capitalist entrepreneurial sector 8 . TheState, as the paramount motive force of the country's development, totallyor partially assumed the direction of the main branches of the economy,and laid the groundwork for an industrialization process, the economicfoundation for the country's entry into modernity. The greatendeavor for economic transformation mainly influenced the urban environmentduring the first two decades of the Republic, whereas the agriculturedid not experience a similar development 9 .These political, institutional, educational, cultural, religious and economictransformations shaped an undoubtedly revolutionary change in acountry that had been the seat of a decaying empire for centuries. Ascholar who has carried out in-depth studies about this experience emphasizedthat "[...] within the span of three-quarters of a century, Turkish societyhad evolved from absolutism to constitutional monarchy and thenon to the Republic [...] from a multinational theocratic empire to a nationalsecularist state, from a peasant economy to industry, from total dependenceabroad for industrial products to relative self-suffıciency" 10 .It was indeed a transformation from above, carried out by a coalitionof social sectors that included important military leaders, representativesfrom the State's officialdom, most intellectuals and the urban bourgeoisie,but one that succeeded in attracting the support of broad masses ofthe people for the task of saving and renevving the fatherland, called forby Atatürk's political genius".8. The non-doctrinarian spirit that favored the introduction of economic planning isquite reveaiing for, although the Republican leadership was inspired by the Sovietmodel and was even adviced by a Soviet delegation headed by Professor Orlov, at thesame time it requested the cooperation of a North American commission led by W.D.Hines and E.W. Kemmerer. See William Hale's The Political and Economic Developmentof Modern Turkey, Croom Holm Ltd., London (reprinted), 1984, p. 56. Seealso Soviet author Gennadi Starchenkov, "Problems of Investment and EmploymentPlanning in Turkey" in the collection The Near and Middle East Countries: Economyand Policy, Academy of Sciences, Moscow, USSR, 1982.Like a senior French diplomat, also an expert in Turkish affairs, has aptly pointedout, two great revolutions influenced Atatürk's Revolution: the French Revolution inthe political and institutional realms, in the process of secularization and, in general,in the country's republican orientation; and the Soviet Revolution in regard to economicdevelopment and the State's leading role. See Eric Rouleau, "Turkey: BeyondAtatürk" in Foreign Policy, No. 101, Summer, 1996.9. In regard to the urban emphasis of endeavors tovvard economic transformation andthe relative stagnation of agriculture, see Helio Jaguaribe, opt.cit., p. 65, and alsoWilliam Hale, op.cit., p. 62.10. Kemal Karpat, op.cit., p. 75.11. For the conceptualization of revolutions from above, see Ellen Kay Trimberger, Revolutionfrom Above: Military Bureaucrats and Development in Japan, Turkey, Egyptand Peru, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1977. Also, by Fred Halliday and MaxineMolyneux, The Ethiopian Revolution, Verso, London, 1981, pp. 25-31.34